Rheumatology

Both the story of getting to Haiti and the story of getting supplies has been incredibly helped by people online, especially on Twitter.

Identifying the needs of the Haitians who were affected by the earthquake, finding a place to stay and work, and getting there would be impossible for us without the help and coordinated efforts of many people.

Roundup: Safety and efficacy of Diclofenac; effect of Duloxetine; MIS non-instrumented facet arthodesis; paresthesia coverage; and Milnacipran for fibromyalgia.

Witness the outrageous 20-30% administrative overhead of medical insurance companies....That includes a covert and obnoxious 'cost-savings-is-more-important-than-patient-care' reward system.

The international community of epilepsy specialists is providing financial support and specialized medical equipment contributed by its manufacturer to help re-establish services to epilepsy patients in Haiti halted by the devastating earthquake.

10 days and counting to Haiti. My mind is whizzing and my days are packed with to-do lists that overflow into the next day. I keep trying to project myself into that moment when I return, and stare at my desk and try to figure out where I was and what I was doing before I left. It seems impossible to emotionally transport myself from these moments now, to there, and, then back.

A frank discussion of healthcare reform and its expected effects on the practice of pain medicine.

Tanezumab, a monoclonal antibody that targets nerve-growth factor, reduced pain in three common pain conditions.

When the earthquake in Haiti happened, my wife and I were at a musical, and I got an iPhone update saying "massive earthquake in Haiti." I went home and started researching and found out just how really terrible the earthquake was. I called up a friend who led a mission trip to Katrina and one following the San Diego wildfires.

Auxilium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. just announced that it has received marketing approval from the FDA for XIAFLEX(TM) (collagenase clostridium histolyticum), a novel, first-in-class, orphan-designated, biologic, for the treatment of adult Dupuytren's contracture patients with a palpable cord.

Is it just me, or is everyone else out there dying to get their hands on an iPad?

When our home state of New Jersey became the 14th state in the nation to legalize medical marijuana, OBTN decided to take a closer look at the herbal remedy. With help from oncologists on our advisory board, we sought to filter through the smoke and examine the realities of medical marijuana.

New research suggests that targeting macrophages may be a more effective approach to lupus kidney disease management.

Although NSAIDs are the most effective treatment for persons who experience the pain of osteoarthritis (OA), the risk of adverse effects with NSAIDs may outweigh the benefits in many older patients. The GI risk is well known; increased attention has been paid recently to the cardiovascular risk. The goals of OA management are pain reduction and improvement or preservation of mobility. A multidisciplinary approach to treatment is recommended.

A description and guide to manifestations and differential diagnosis of the many subtypes of juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA): oligoarticular, polyarticular, systemic, enthesitis-related, and psoriatric JIA.

Pain in the neck and shoulder set in during labor for this 38-year-old woman. The diagnosis was Parsonage-Turner syndrome or neuralgia myopathy, a rare condition affecting the brachial plexus.

PVNS is a rare, proliferative lesion of synovial tissue. This patient with a long history of knee pain recovered well after synovectomy.

This online CME activity provides a step-by-step guide to the latest information on the diagnosis and management of gout.

TNF antagonists are not highly effective in 30 to 50 percent of patients, but investigators have discovered that patients with higher baseline levels of type I interferon beta were more likely to respond to therapy.

A simple model based on age and bone mineral density (BMD) alone may predict 10-year risk of hip, major osteoporotic, and any clinical fracture in older women as well as more complex fracture risk assessment tool (FRAX) models with BMD.

Chronic pain is known to be a cause of disability in older patients. It also is an overlooked and potentially important risk factor for falls and fall-related injuries in this age-group.

Continuous measures of disease activity used for assessment of adult rheumatoid arthritis may be valid measures in children with polyarticular-course juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA). The scores may be valid in larger cohorts of children with polyarticular-course JIA that include children with early JIA and with varying degrees of disease severity.

Both systemic inflammation and immune dysregulation, including autoantibody production, may occur even in the absence of autoimmune rheumatologic diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus.

In patients with fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS), the global impression of improvement is correlated with changes in clinical rating scale items or subscales assessing multiple symptom domains.

Women with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) are at increased risk for coronary artery disease (CAD) and mortality. The dominant risk factors are SLE itself, age, and high total triglyceride levels rather than the traditional Framingham risk factors.

USA Today has published an interesting opinion piece by Kevin Pho, MD, encouraging physicians to embrace social networking tools as a way to interact with patients. For me, the comments on the article were as interesting as the article itself.

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Apple's iPad is sleek, innovative, and should change the landscape of the tablet computer market going forward. But for all the things they got right, Apple has a few things to learn if it wants to become the the healthcare industry's tablet leader.

Psychological effects resulting from psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis (PsA) are more likely to occur in African Americans, Asians, and Latinos than in whites, according to a recent National Psoriasis Foundation (NPF) survey report. In addition, very severe disease is more common among members of these groups.

What if the insurance industry profited most when it did the most to enhance effectiveness, efficiency and caring even while absorbing the cost of covering the entire population (pure community-rating)--akin to universal healthcare?