BACKGROUND Rheumatologists increasingly perform ultrasound (US) imaging to aid diagnosis and management decisions. There is a need to determine the role of US in facilitating early diagnosis of inflammatory arthritis. This study describes the impact of US use by rheumatologists on diagnosis and management of inflammatory arthritis in routine UK clinical practice. METHODS We conducted a prospe...

INTRODUCTION Numerous studies across different health systems have documented that many patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) do not receive disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs). Relatively little is known about correlates of DMARD use and whether there are socioeconomic and demographic disparities. We examined DMARD use during 2001 to 2006 in the Medicare Current Beneficiary Surve...

2015 While many patients with rheumatoid arthritis respond to treatment with diseasemodifying antirheumatic drugs, some patients have refractory disease. The mechanism of action of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) gel and its direct action on melanocortin receptors is thought to result in steroid-independent anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory effects, in addition to steroidogenic effects....

OBJECTIVE To measure the long-term rate of radiographic progression in a cohort of patients treated early vs late with conventional DMARDs. METHODS The long-term rate of radiographic progression in patients included in the Swiss clinical quality management in rheumatoid arthritis (SCQM-RA) registry who initiated treatment with conventional DMARDs within the first year of symptom onset (early ...

Combinations of disease modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) are increasingly being used in patients with early rheumatoid arthritis (RA) when long term results with sequential DMARD monotherapy are disappointing. Combination DMARD therapy may be more effective than monotherapy, and has no additional short term adverse events. The evidence for using combination DMARD therapy is still weak, ho...

BACKGROUND Most registration trials in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) include a placebo arm in the setting of an incomplete response to disease-modifying antirheumatic treatment (DMARD-IR). A minimum duration of 6 months is required despite serious methodological and ethical shortcomings. OBJECTIVE To study whether a 3-month placebo period is sufficient to prove efficacy. METHODS Meta-analysis o...

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) disease activity may improve during pregnancy but postpartum flares are common. Patients taking disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs should be counselled about effective contraception. Knowledge about drug safety in pregnancy is limited but the Therapeutic Goods Administration categories and online resources are a guide to the data currently available. Begin prepregna...

Methotrexate has become the "anchor drug" for rheumatoid arthritis (RA), taken by many more patients than any other disease modifying anti-rheumatic drug (DMARD) or biological agent. Methotrexate has greater efficacy and effectiveness than any other non-biologic DMARD, and greater tolerability and safety than other DMARDs. The efficacy of methotrexate is comparable to biologic agents in paralle...

OBJECTIVES To identify baseline disease-related predictors in patients with early inflammatory polyarthritis (IP) for starting subsequent biological therapy and to determine if patients who failed their first non-biological disease-modifying antirheumatic drug (DMARD) within 6 months were more likely to need biological therapy. METHODS Patients with early IP recruited between 1990 and 1994 (c...

AIMS The aim is to make a systematic review of the literature to assess the effect of lipid-lowering drugs on venous thromboembolism (VTE) occurrence. METHODS AND RESULTS MEDLINE and EMBASE databases were searched to identify studies that evaluated the effect of lipid-lowering drugs, in particular statins and fibrates, on VTE risk until April 2009. A scoring system was used to divide studies ...