Rheumatoid Arthritis News

The risks for major adverse cardiac events and venous thromboembolism in patients with rheumatoid arthritis did not significantly differ between those receiving Janus kinase inhibitors or adalimumab, according to data.

TNF inhibitor use in pregnant patients with well-controlled rheumatoid arthritis reduces the risk for children born small-for-gestational-age, according to data published in Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.

Pre-exposure prophylaxis with Evusheld, combined with aggressive outpatient treatment, may reduce COVID-19 severity in patients with immune-mediated inflammatory disease on B-cell depletion, according to a letter published in RMB Open.

Patients with immune-mediated inflammatory diseases demonstrate a lower, less durable COVID-19 vaccine response and are at risk for losing humoral immune protection, according to data published in The Lancet Rheumatology.

The movement away from long-term steroid use has reached all corners of rheumatology, and for good reason: Extended use of glucocorticoids can be associated with a raft of adverse outcomes.

Short telomeres were strongly associated with prevalent interstitial lung disease among patients with rheumatoid arthritis, according to cross-sectional study results published in Respiratory Medicine.

Infections are more common in patients with rheumatoid arthritis who receive tofacitinib compared with those who receive TNF inhibitors, according to data published in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.

In the phase 2 TRAIL1 trial, treatment with pirfenidone slowed the rate of lung function decline in patients with rheumatoid arthritis-associated interstitial lung disease and demonstrated a similar safety profile to that observed in other trials of the drug.

Methotrexate use at the pre-arthritis stage of symptoms and subclinical inflammation fails to prevent clinical arthritis, but does improve symptoms and MRI-detected inflammation vs. placebo, according to data published in The Lancet.

The future of rheumatoid arthritis treatment has expanded beyond just managing the disease itself, according to Linda Li, PT, PhD, professor and Harold Robinson/Arthritis Society Chair in Arthritic Diseases at the University of British Columbia.