Vasculitis and Giant Cell Arteritis News

The situation with COVID-19, or the currently circulating coronavirus, is developing so rapidly that new information may likely be available by the time you reach the end of this paragraph. But along with factual information, misinformation also abounds on social media, on cable news channels and in print publications. Healio Rheumatology will attempt to set the record straight for health care providers looking to sort out fact from fiction.

The United Rheumatology Spring National Meeting will offer attendees lectures on cutting edge topics such as genomics and transcriptomics in addition to a range of continuing medical education activities. But the real appeal of United Rheumatology, and of the meeting, will be the guidance that can be provided to independent rheumatologists regarding practice management strategies and interacting with payers.

Colchicine treatment increases the rate of diarrhea and adverse gastrointestinal events, but not liver, sensory, muscle, infectious or hematological events, or death, according to the results of a meta-analysis published in Arthritis Research & Therapy.

Plasma exchange did not reduce the incidence of death or end-stage kidney disease among patients with antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody-associated vasculitis, according to data published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Approximately 35% of relevant industry payments to U.S.-based authors of American College of Rheumatology clinical practice guidelines remain undisclosed, according to findings published in Arthritis & Rheumatology.

The administrative codes for Behçet's disease, adult-onset Still’s disease and familial Mediterranean fever are “very good to excellent” in terms of estimates of specificities and positive predictive value, according to findings published in the Journal of Clinical Rheumatology.

SCOTTSDALE, Arizona — The rheumatic effects of checkpoint therapy remain, despite their increased spotlight in recent years, among the most poorly defined of the immune-related adverse events associated with the emerging cancer treatment, according to Cassandra Calabrese, DO, of the Cleveland Clinic.

Clinicians who treat vasculitides are accustomed to uncertainty. Vasculitis, in its many forms, presents a laundry list of challenges, often leaving rheumatologists frustrated, if not stumped, at some point during diagnosis and management. But the challenges are not limited to vasculitis itself. An entire cross-section of conditions — from antiphospholipid syndrome to HIV to hematologic malignancies — can mimic vasculitis, prompting frequent misdiagnoses and potentially fatal treatment decisions.

Join Peter Grayson, MD, MSc, and I as we discuss a range of topics, including imaging in large-vessel vasculitis, doctors going into research, Twitter, rock ‘n’ roll and Disney World.

Among patients with immunoglobulin A vasculitis, smoking is associated with renal involvement, while generalized purpura and pretreatment neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio predict both gastrointestinal and renal symptoms, according to findings published in Arthritis Research & Therapy.