Published in The Journal of rheumatology
To estimate the prevalence and incidence of multimorbidity (MM) in a population-based cohort of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) compared to subjects without RA. Between 1999-2013, residents of Olmsted County, Minnesota with incident RA who met the 1987 American College of Rheumatology criteria were compared to age- and sex-matched non-RA su...
Published in The Journal of rheumatology
Both erectile dysfunction (ED) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) are associated with increased cardiovascular (CV) risk. It is unknown if these diagnoses are associated or if their combination confers additional CV risk. We aimed to define the incidence of ED in RA, and to determine if ED correlates with increased CV risk in RA. Medical information con...
Published in The Journal of rheumatology
To study differences in pain reports between patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) and nonradiographic axial spondyloarthritis (nr-axSpA), and to assess how pain sensitivity measures associate with disease and health outcomes. Consecutive patients with axial SpA (axSpA) were enrolled in the population-based SPARTAKUS cohort (2015-2017) and clas...
Published in The Journal of rheumatology
Increasing numbers of patients are developing rheumatoid arthritis (RA) at an older age, and optimal treatment of patients with elderly-onset RA (EORA) is attracting greater attention. This study aimed to analyze the efficacy and safety of biologic/targeted synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (b/tsDMARDs) in EORA and non-EORA elderly pa...
Published in The Journal of rheumatology
Macrophage activation syndrome (MAS) constitutes 1 subtype of the hyperinflammatory syndrome hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH), and the term MAS-HLH was recently proposed for HLH with underlying autoimmune/autoinflammatory conditions. The mortality of MAS-HLH has been estimated at 5-10%. Here we report our experiences with moderately dosed e...
Published in The Journal of rheumatology
Sublingual microscopy assesses systemic sclerosis (SSc) vasculopathy. Digital thermal monitoring (DTM) may identify patients at risk for digital ulcer (DU). The purpose of this analysis was to assess sublingual microscopy and DTM in SSc patients with and without previous DU in order to determine the utility of these clinical tools. SSc registry pat...
Published in The Journal of rheumatology
Delays in the diagnosis and treatment of psoriatic arthritis (PsA) are common. These delays contribute to impairments in quality of life and joint damage. This study aims to calculate the incidence rate of PsA over time and identify clinical features that may be used for PsA prediction in patients with psoriasis (PsO). The study population for PsA ...
Published in The Journal of rheumatology
Current smoking reduces clinical response to several disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs. It is unknown if this is also the case for prednisone. We aimed to determine whether current smoking affects the clinical response to concomitant prednisone in a methotrexate (MTX)-based treatment strategy. In the CAMERA-II trial (isrctn.com identifier: 7036...
Published in The Journal of rheumatology
Tofacitinib (TOF) is the first Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitor approved for psoriatic arthritis (PsA). It has shown efficacy in patients refractory to anti-tumor necrosis factor-α in randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Our aim was to assess efficacy and safety of TOF in clinical practice. This was an observational, open-label multicenter study of PsA...
Published in The Journal of rheumatology
To evaluate the evolution of telomere length from peripheral blood leukocytes (PBLs) in subjects from the Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI) cohort in relation to the incidence of osteoarthritis (OA), and to explore its possible interactive influence with the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroup. Dynamics of telomere sequence loss were quantified in P...
