Rheumatic Disease

Managing oral, ocular and cutaneous complications is critical to optimizing outcomes in conditions ranging from Sjögren’s syndrome to juvenile dermatomyositis, according to a presenter who offered a cross-section of “pearls and myths” at ACR Convergence 2021.

mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were not linked to severe disease flares in patients with rheumatic diseases, although use of rituximab or mycophenolate mofetil dampened vaccine response, according to a presenter at ACR Convergence 2021.

Data show that cannabis use tripled from 2014 to 2019 among patients with rheumatic disease. Experts said this may be due to patients’ dissatisfaction with their health. A review of the data was the top story in rheumatology last week.

Women with inflammatory arthritis may be rejecting or discontinuing medications during pregnancy and lactation, due, in part, to inconsistent information from their providers about the safety of arthritis medications, according to findings in ACR Open Rheumatology.

EULAR has released a list of 23 recommendations — including 21 “mandatory” items — such as blinding, the development of scoring systems and defining target pathologies, for all rheumatic and musculoskeletal disease studies using ultrasound.

Treatment access issues and distress related to COVID-19 are highly associated with disease activity and flare among patients with rheumatic disease, according to data published in Arthritis Care & Research.

CV events cause substantial morbidity and mortality among patients with rheumatologic diseases. Moreover, a robust body of data chronicles these associations.

The mortality risk for a 35-year-old patient with a rare autoimmune rheumatic disease during the COVID-19 pandemic is similar to that of a 55-year-old in the general population, according to UK data published in Rheumatology.

Patients with autoimmune rheumatic diseases are less likely to avoid an office visit or laboratory tests due to COVID-19 and were more likely to have telehealth visits, according to a speaker at ACR Convergence 2020.

The incidence of COVID-19 infection was low among patients with rheumatic diseases who were using biologic therapies, according to data presented at the ACR Convergence 2020.