Rheumatology

Ultrasounds are a safer and equally effective diagnostic tool compared with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to diagnose and monitor pregnant women with suspected active rheumatoid arthritis (RA), according to a new report published in Radiology Case Reports.

Adherence to newly initiated biologic therapy for rheumatoid arthritis is important for long-term adherence.

When patients with rheumatoid arthritis experience failure of an anti–tumor necrosis factor (anti-TNF) therapy, clinical guidelines support either cycling to a different anti-TNF agent or switching to a treatment with a different method of action (MOA). However, payers often require cycling of anti-TNF options before they will reimburse for treatments with a different MOA.

In a new study, published in Arthritis Research & Therapy, a research team led by Soo-Kyung Cho, MD, sought to investigate the incidence of malignancy in early rheumatoid arthritis and found that the use of biologic disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs decreased the overall risk of developing malignancies, though it did not affect the risk of developing hematologic malignancies.