As reported in Arthritis Care & Research , the randomized controlled study focused on patients aged 45 years or older, who were registered with 38 practices in New South Wales and Victoria, and had self-reported activity-related knee pain at least 3 months earlier.

Who should we treat?

Discontinuation of mycophenolate mofetil for at least 10 days is associated with an improved antibody response to COVID-19 vaccination among people with rheumatic diseases, research suggests.

Coates et al found no statistically significant differences by gender in terms of leadership aspirations, share of time spent on research, self-efficacy in career development, and work–life integration.

The study, published in The Lancet Rheumatology , included 158 participants treated with cyclophosphamide or placebo in SLS I and 142 participants who were given cyclophosphamide or mycophenolate mofetil in SLS II.

Phase 2 trial results suggest that low-dose interleukin-2 therapy with aldesleukin may represent a promising add-on treatment option for systemic lupus erythematosus.

These findings “should alert clinicians and patients to the increased cardiovascular risk in the weeks beginning after a gout flare and should focus attention on optimizing preventive measures,” write the authors of a commentary accompanying the research published in JAMA .

Adverse events were reported by 90% of participants who received botulinum toxin A and 80% of those who received placebo, most commonly base-of-thumb pain (20 vs 37%), thenar muscle motor deficit (47 vs 7%), and other musculoskeletal pain (17 vs 20%).

In addition, a significantly higher proportion of patients who continued methotrexate achieved CDAI low disease activity (≤10 points) at week 16 relative to those who did not receive background methotrexate, at 8.8% versus 1.8%.

These improvements were significantly greater than that seen among people included in quartile 1, who had the lowest level of vitamin K intake, at an average reduction of 112.9.

An in-depth molecular analysis of synovial biopsies from people with rheumatoid arthritis who participated in the R4RA trial has identified gene signatures associated with treatment response.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a considerable impact on rheumatology training and research opportunities, suggest findings from an international survey study by the COVID-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance.

“Participants who did not progress to arthritis almost had a complete relief of pain and nearly returned to the normal range of MRI-detected inflammation that can be found in symptom-free controls,” she noted.

Medicine Matters’ focus, in this difficult time, is the dissemination of the latest data to support you in your research and clinical practice, based on the scientific literature.

Participants who felt insufficiently informed were 41.8%, 67.6%, and 83.7% among seniors, specialists, and fellows, respectively.

A single ultrasound-guided corticosteroid and local anesthetic intra-articular hip injection offers greater pain relief to people with moderate hip osteoarthritis than the best current treatment of advice and education, research suggests.

Medicine Matters’ focus, in this difficult time, is the dissemination of the latest data to support you in your research and clinical practice, based on the scientific literature.

“How do we identify those patients who are really suitable for this type of visit?

They caution, however, that “[t]he TULIP-1 and TULIP-2 trials were not powered or designed to demonstrate efficacy in individual organ domains,” and call for future research “to examine anifrolumab efficacy in less commonly affected organ domains, especially as patients with severe active lupus nephritis and severe neuropsychiatric manifestations were excluded from these studies.” medwireNews is an independent medical news service provided by Springer Healthcare Ltd. © 2022 Springer Healthcare Ltd, part of the Springer Nature Group Lancet Rheumatol 2022; doi:10.1016/S2665-9913(21)00317-9

Medicine Matters’ focus, in this difficult time, is the dissemination of the latest data to support you in your research and clinical practice, based on the scientific literature.