ArthritisDigest2013
UK reform essential in care of people with arthritis
Widespread reform is needed to enable high quality care planning for people in the UK with long-term conditions, such as arthritis, says a Health Committee report. The settings discussed include home, hospitals and specialist care.
Services for rheumatology patients should be maintained across all settings and cannot simply be moved into the community, according to evidence submitted to the Health Committee by The British Society for Rheumatology. The report reads: Continue reading
People with rheumatoid arthritis want less time-consuming treatment – and would sacrifice other benefits
People with rheumatoid arthritis could be willing to accept treatments with lower efficacy and greater risk if they were less time-consuming, highlights research published in Arthritis Care and Research.
A total of 901 people with rheumatoid arthritis were assessed and presented with a series of treatment-choice questions.
Each hypothetical therapy regimen included six qualities: response rate; mode of administration; treatment duration; treatment frequency; and the risks of immediate, mild and serious treatment reactions. Continue reading
Number of pain sites linked to quality of life in older adults
The more musculoskeletal pain sites an older person has, the lower their health-related quality of life, according to a large study published in Rheumatology.
A total of 12,408 adults over 50 years in the UK completed questionnaires about their mental and physical health. They also shaded sites of pain that lasted more than a day in the past four weeks on a blank outline of the body divided into 44 pain sites. About 72% of respondents were in pain: 5.4% reported a single pain site; 66.3% had pain at two or more sites and 51.6% had pain at four or more sites. Continue reading
Rheumatoid arthritis drug may take on some aggressive cancers
Some cancer patients with aggressive tumours may benefit from a class of anti-inflammatory drugs (JAK inhibitors) used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, suggests a study published in Cell Reports.
“There are JAK inhibitors in use for rheumatoid arthritis and being tested against a number of other conditions,” Weber said. “Our data suggest that these anti-inflammatory drugs may be a way to treat some patients missing both p53 and ARF [proteins that are encoded by genes known for being highly mutated in various cancers].” Continue reading
One-third of knee replacements in the US classified as inappropriate
More than one-third of total knee replacements in the US have been classified as “inappropriate” using a patient classification system developed and validated in Spain, says research published in Arthritis & Rheumatology.
The study highlights the need for consensus on who should receive knee replacements.
Over 600,000 knee replacements are performed in the US each year according to The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and numbers are increasing. Continue reading
