Rheumatology

ATLANTA — Nearly one-third of primary care providers who treat patients with arthritis failed to follow Exercise Is Medicine guidance for physical activity, according to data presented at ACR/ARP 2019.

ATLANTA — Treatment with repeat doses of rituximab is superior to daily azathioprine for preventing relapse among patients with ANCA-associated vasculitis with a history of relapse, according to data presented at the 2019 ACR/ARP Annual Meeting.

ATLANTA — Fatigue and gastrointestinal complaints were the most common patient-reported adverse events associated with methotrexate among individuals with rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis, according to a speaker at ACR/ARP 2019.

Guideline-based registries designed by physicians, patients and information technology experts demonstrate high data completion and value, with the CONQUER registry specifically showing promise as a growing resource for studying systemic scleroderma in a longitudinal, U.S.-based population, according to data presented at the ACR/ARP 2019 Annual Meeting.

ATLANTA — Over the past 2 years, women have represented 44.9% of speakers and moderators at the American College of Rheumatology annual meetings, according to a presenter here. Though slightly higher than the mean reported for U.S. medical conferences in 2017, more work should be done to achieve equal representation.

ATLANTA — Methotrexate significantly reduced the progression of joint damage among patients with erosive hand osteoarthritis, but demonstrated no significant improvement in pain or function over placebo, according to a presentation at the 2019 ACR/ARP Annual Meeting.

ATLANTA — More than one-third of patients with rheumatic diseases reported using marijuana to relieve pain with minimal guidance from their physicians, according to findings presented at ACR/ARP 2019.

SAN DIEGO — Rheumatologists should exercise caution when diagnosing patients with suspected vasculitis as several lesser-known diseases can affect the large and medium-sized arteries imitating vasculitis, according to a presenter at the 2019 Congress of Clinical Rheumatology West.

Concomitant steroid-pulse treatment and baseline lymphopenia were among risk factors for pneumocystis pneumonia among a cohort of patients with rheumatic diseases receiving steroid treatment, according to findings published in Arthritis Research & Therapy.

Rivaroxaban failed to demonstrate noninferiority to dose-adjusted vitamin K antagonists in patients with thrombotic antiphospholipid syndrome, and the agent even showed a nonsignificant doubling of the risk for recurrent thrombosis, according to results from an open-label, randomized, noninferiority trial published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.