Rheumatology

The practice of empathy in rheumatology is a science that should be “explored, exploited and adopted” for the best care of patients, according to Leonard H. Calabrese, DO.

While the FDA approved a number of therapeutic agents for patients with rheumatologic diseases in 2020, safety signals such as angioedema and drug hypersensitivity have emerged, according to presenters at ACR Convergence 2020.

Retrospective data from a large U.S. health care system demonstrated that telehealth improved no-show rates and cancellations for rheumatology outpatient appointments.

The intersection of immunology and rheumatology may be a fruitful source of information regarding COVID-19 therapeutic possibilities and vaccine development, according to the keynote speaker at ACR 2020.

Time moves in funny ways in medicine. Physicians and researchers can work for decades in obscurity on a cure for a particular disease and make little progress. But once the critical breakthrough comes, 6 months or a year can change everything.

It’s summertime but the living ain’t easy. I have to share my reflections with you that after a sprinting start and glimpse of flattening the curve, we are still in the third inning of this astral baseball game of COVID-19. And right now, the home team isn’t winning.

While FDA- and EU-approved JAK inhibitors have shown comparable efficacy and safety across a spectrum of immune-mediated diseases, more study is required to fully parse the mechanism of action, according to a presenter at the 2020 Interdisciplinary Autoimmune Summit.

Rheumatologists are familiar with the enhanced inflammatory response seen in the most severe patients with COVID-19 and could play a key role in the fight against the virus, according to a presenter at the 2020 Interdisciplinary Autoimmune Summit.

In the face of the unique threat that COVID-19 poses to patients with autoimmune diseases, communication across disciplines is essential “as our fields increasingly blend together,” noted presenters at the 2020 Interdisciplinary Autoimmune Summit.

As COVID-19, the viral ‘storm of the century’, continues to batter health care systems across the world, clinicians and researchers are scrambling to understand the virus and how to contain it. The process is imperfect; despite international research efforts, the data, as yet, have been simultaneously overwhelming and insufficient.