Lupus News

New treatments and trial designs, particularly focused on patients with refractory disease, remain among the top unmet needs in rheumatology in 2019, according to expert opinions culled from the Advances in Target Therapies annual meeting and published in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.

Phase 3 results from the AURORA study demonstrated combining voclosporin with mycophenolate and low-dose corticosteroids was superior to standard care for treating patients with lupus nephritis. The results were made available through a press release from Aurinia Pharmaceuticals.

When journalist Ben Hammersley coined the word “podcast” in 2004, he was attempting to put a name to the phenomenon resulting from the timely convergence of widely available MP3 player technology, inexpensive audio software and weblog culture — a renaissance of radio programs that could be downloaded and played at the listener’s convenience, anytime or anywhere.

Among a large cohort of patients with psoriasis, researchers found around 20% had an immune-mediated inflammatory disease develop before psoriasis onset and 14% had one develop after psoriasis onset, according to a study using data from the Danish National Patient Registry.

Hair loss in systemic lupus erythematosus can indicate active disease, and nonscarring alopecia shows changes unique to lupus on histology and direct immunofluorescence, according to researchers in Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.

ATLANTA — Limited access to supportive laboratory assays in developing countries significantly reduces the diagnostic utility of the ACR/EULAR criteria for systemic lupus erythematosus, which relies on an antinuclear antibody titer of 1:80 for its entry criterion, noted a presenter at the 2019 ACR/ARP Annual Meeting.

ATLANTA — Although a 300 mg dose of anifrolumab failed to meet the primary endpoint of systemic lupus erythematosus responder index, a post-hoc analysis showed possible clinical benefit of the drug, according to a speaker at ACR/ARP 2019.

ATLANTA — Upregulation of the cGAS-STING pathway may be implicated in disease flares of systemic lupus erythematosus that are triggered by exposure to ultraviolet B light, according to a speaker at ACR/ARP 2019.

ATLANTA — The Lupus Foundation of America conducted two studies that aimed to help patients feel empowered and motivated to self-manage their disease, according to findings presented at ACR/ARP 2019.

Researchers compiled a treatment algorithm for cutaneous manifestations of lupus erythematosus based on data from 104 studies, according to a study presented at the American College of Rheumatology/Association of Rheumatology Professionals annual meeting.