Jan 19th, 2022 - WAIKOLOA, Hawaii — Fluorescence imaging can be an important tool for early detection of retinal diseases, according to a presentation at Retina 2022. Rishi P. Singh, MD, said that technologies such as fundus autofluorescence (FAF), fluorescence lifetime imaging ophthalmoscopy (FLIO) and oxidized flavoprotein fluorescence (FPF) provide opportunities to identify cell dysfunction before it occurs....

Jan 19th, 2022 - WAIKOLOA, Hawaii — In a series of published reports, the Classification of Atrophy Meeting group provided consensus-based imaging parameters for multimodal assessment of geographic atrophy. The group also revised the definitions of specific features of geographic atrophy (GA) and identified features that may predict progression to atrophy. “In the first CAM report, we described the imaging moda...

Sep 28th, 2022 - The purpose of this protocol is to study the natural history of spondyloarthritis (SpA) in children and adults. Spondyloarthritis encompasses a spectrum of immune-mediated inflammatory diseases that exhibit overlapping features, but differ from other types of inflammatory arthritis in genetic predisposition, pathogenesis, and outcome. Ankylosing spondylitis (AS), the most common form of SpA, fr...

Aug 23rd, 2019 - To update evidence-based recommendations for the treatment of patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) and nonradiographic axial spondyloarthritis (SpA). We conducted updated systematic literature reviews for 20 clinical questions on pharmacologic treatment addressed in the 2015 guidelines, and for 26 new questions on pharmacologic treatment, treat-to-target strategy, and use of imaging. New q...

Nov 14th, 2022 - Background/Purpose: Cardiac sarcoidosis (CS) is potentially life-threatening and it typically causes heart failure, ventricular arrhythmia, AV block or sudden death. CS has been reported to account for 25% of sarcoidosis patient deaths, thus highlighting the importance of early diagnosis and treatment. Diagnostic challenges and lack of a unified screening approach make it difficult to estimate ...

Nov 14th, 2022 - Background/Purpose: In some patients, interstitial lung disease (ILD) may be the dominant or even sole overt manifestation of an otherwise unrecognised autoimmune connective tissue disease (CTD). Accurate diagnosis can be challenging given considerable overlap of the clinical, radiological and histological disease features. Distinguishing CTD related ILD from idiopathic ILD, enables appropriate...

Nov 14th, 2022 - Background/Purpose: Idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIM) are a group of disorders in which autoimmune responses produce a chronic state of inflammation resulting in degeneration of skeletal muscle structure and function. Our previous work generated a robust model of inflammatory myositis by combining a mouse with impaired sarcolemmal membrane repair synaptotagmin VII (SytVII)-/- with a mous...

Nov 14th, 2022 - Background/Purpose: Dermatomyositis (DM) is an autoimmune connective tissue disease that primarily affects the skin and lung; few effective treatment options are available. Lenabasum is a cannabinoid type 2 receptor agonist that activates the resolution phase of inflammation. Results from DETERMINE, a Phase 3 trial of lenabasum, demonstrated improvement in CDASI activity (CDASI-A) scores with t...

Nov 14th, 2022 - Background/Purpose: Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapies have revolutionized the treatment of cancer and can be curative. CD19-targeted CAR-T cells hold promise for the treatment of refractory autoimmune diseases, but therapies that indiscriminately deplete all B cells are limited by infection risk. In contrast, precision immunotherapies that selectively eliminate autoreactive B cel...

Nov 14th, 2022 - Background/Purpose: The pathogenesis of SSc-associated interstitial lung disease (ILD) is incompletely understood. The MUC5B promoter gain-of-function single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs35705950 has been associated with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), familial pulmonary fibrosis (FPF), and RA-ILD, but not with SSc-ILD. Overexpression of MUC5B has been found in honeycombed pulmonary tis...

Nov 14th, 2022 - Background/Purpose: Delayed diagnosis of inflammatory arthritis (IA), including rheumatoid arthritis (RA), ankylosing spondylitis (AS) and psoriatic arthritis (PsA), is associated with joint damage and disability. Thus, timely rheumatology access is necessary for favorable disease outcomes. Sex of the patient may influence various aspects of IA including healthcare utilization patterns. Our aim...

Nov 14th, 2022 - Background/Purpose: Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a complex autoimmune disease that affects multipe end organs, including the brain. Despite a prevalence of over 50% in SLE patients depending on the attribution model, neuropsychiatric symptoms of SLE (NPSLE) are among the least understood complications. Notwithstanding the paucity of data examining underlying mechanisms, accumulating ev...

Nov 14th, 2022 - Background/Purpose: Skeletal myopathy in systemic sclerosis (SSc) is poorly understood. The etiology of myopathy in SSc is heterogeneous and can result from an inflammation, disuse, malnutrition, or other neuromuscular diseases. The purpose of this study was to determine the clinical phenotype and risk of mortality of SSc patients with and without a myopathy. Methods: To understand the clinical...

Nov 14th, 2022 - Background/Purpose: Disease activity indices that accurately assess inflammation in Takayasu’s arteritis (TAK) are needed. While clinical assessment is often considered the gold standard, determining if a symptom represents active vasculitis or damage can be challenging in TAK. FDG-PET can directly assess vascular inflammation but specificity of imaging findings, especially in absence of corres...

Nov 14th, 2022 - Background/Purpose: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the spine and sacroiliac joints (SIJ) are important tools for the diagnosis of axial SpA and the presence of inflammation at baseline is associated with a better treatment response. However, data on the relevance of the complete resolution of inflammation / the presence of residual inflammation for a clinical response over time is missing....

Nov 14th, 2022 - Background/Purpose: Pain is a hallmark feature of psoriatic arthritis (PsA); however, its apparent multi-factorial nature makes it difficult for rheumatologists to assess and manage. Clinically, nociplastic processes appear to contribute to the PsA pain experience, as shown by frequent co-existing fibromyalgia (FM), a prototypical nociplastic pain disorder [1,2]. Yet there are no objective data...

Nov 14th, 2022 - Background/Purpose: Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) degrade extracellular matrix and have been implicated to play a role in a number of fibrotic processes. Specifically, MMPs have been speculated to play a role in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis-associated interstitial lung disease (RA-ILD) as well as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), which shares historadiological features with RA...

Nov 14th, 2022 - Background/Purpose: In patients with active systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), circulating platelets have an activated phenotype characterized by the expression of P-selectin (CD62P). We have shown that in human SLE, platelets interact with T regulatory cells and repress their immunosuppressive functions through a P-selectin/CD15s-dependent interaction (1). We sought to investigate for other p...

Nov 14th, 2022 - Background/Purpose: Type 1 interferons (IFN-1) are major drivers of disease activity in systemic (SLE) and cutaneous lupus erythematosus (CLE). Plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) are the major producers of IFN-1 during viral infection. Therefore, pDCs have been hypothesized to be the primary IFN-1 producing cell in lupus. IFN-1 production by pDCs has not been extensively studied due to relianc...

Nov 14th, 2022 - Background/Purpose: Psoriatic arthritis (PsA) is a chronic inflammatory disease involving joint and enthesis disease. Ultrasound (US) has demonstrated its useful tool for the diagnosis of PsA and monitoring of inflammatory lesions in PsA. Our purpose is to conduct a study using US to evidence inflammatory changes in the joint and in the entheses in patients with active PsA (aPsA) who started Ap...