News & Comment

The treatment of rheumatic diseases in India is beset with several problems, such as a high patient load and grossly inadequate number of trained rheumatology specialists. In this Perspectives article, Handa explores the most pressing challenges and suggests helpful approaches to overcome the limitations in rheumatology care in India.

Rheumatic diseases are a common health-care problem in Thailand. Patient care is influenced not only by differences in the prevalence, clinical traits and genetic variants of these diseases in Thailand compared with other countries, but by the country's health-care systems, availability of medicine and physicians, and rheumatology training, education and research. The author provides his expert view of the current challenges and barriers, recent successes and future prospects of rheumatology in Thailand.

Osteoarthritis (OA) is an important cause of disability worldwide, and its impact is growing rapidly. In this Opinion article, the authors draw attention to the current and projected burden of OA for individuals and for health-care systems, and call for a shift in the approach to the disease.

With the advent of the internet and advances in social media and mobile devices, how people access information is rapidly evolving. In this Perspectives, Francis Berenbaum discusses the emerging uses of social media in medicine, with insights as to how social media is used in rheumatology in particular and how these developments are changing the way in which clinicians and patients interact.