News & Comment

Medication adherence in gout is low, and discontinuation of urate-lowering therapy puts patients at risk of flares and cardiovascular events. A strategy to regularly monitor serum urate levels and the dissolution of urate deposits (particularly if visualized by patients) might encourage adherence in the long term.

Multidimensional and single-cell profiling of peripheral blood and inflamed tissues is a powerful and high-resolution tool for the stratification of patients with autoimmune rheumatic diseases into distinct cellular and/or molecular endotypes. The road towards precision rheumatology is long, but the time has come to enter the territory of clinical validation.

In a head-to-head phase III trial of two drugs that target IL-5 or its receptor, benralizumab was noninferior to mepolizumab for the induction of remission in patients with eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis.

Despite the transformative potential of treatments for systemic autoinflammatory diseases, these conditions remain underfunded and understudied. Urgent, coordinated action among stakeholders is needed to overcome regulatory and research barriers, as is innovation and advocacy for the development of effective therapies for these rare diseases.

A nanoparticle-based formulation of the anticancer drug pazopanib, which inhibits VEGFR1 and VEGFR2, shows promise as a disease-modifying drug for osteoarthritis.

New research has identified apolipoprotein E expressed by fibroblasts and macrophages in the infrapatellar fat pad and synovium as a pathogenetic mediator and potential therapeutic target in knee osteoarthritis.

Ribonucleoprotein complexes containing Xist, a long non-coding RNA involved in X chromosome inactivation, are immunogenic and promote autoimmune responses.

Results of a new study indicate that eosinophils have a role in maintaining bone homeostasis through their inhibitory effects on bone-resorbing osteoclasts.

Age-related B cells (ABCs) have pathogenic roles in autoimmune diseases. Research has now identified ZEB2 as the transcription factor that mediates differentiation into ABCs.

A meta-analysis of data from six genome-wide association study cohorts implicates several signalling pathways, including Hedgehog and Notch signalling, in Dupuytren disease.

The voltage-gated sodium channel Na_v1.7 is expressed on chondrocytes, regulates chondrocyte biology and osteoarthritis progression, and is a promising dual target for modifying disease while providing pain relief in osteoarthritis.

New findings provide insight into the natural history of subclinical synovitis, a reported predictor of the development of rheumatoid arthritis, and identify various factors associated with its reversal.

As in rheumatoid arthritis, achieving low disease activity or remission in psoriatic arthritis (PsA) remains a challenge and unmet need for many individuals. However, the complex pathogenesis, heterogeneity and varied tissue involvement in PsA mean that dedicated definitions and novel solutions are required for difficult-to-treat disease.

New research has shown that tryptophan metabolism is altered in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, and that correction of this metabolic alteration has a protective effect against collagen-antibody-induced arthritis in mice.

Janus kinase inhibitors have therapeutic potential for patients with immune-mediated inflammatory diseases, and evidence of greater risks of cardiovascular disease and malignancy than with TNF inhibitors should be carefully considered before recommendations against their use are made. Assessment of the risk–benefit ratios in these patients can instead guide clinical decision-making.

New findings suggest that targeting the DAMP protein S100A4 could mitigate both inflammatory and fibrotic pathways in systemic sclerosis.

In patients with antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA)-associated vasculitis in sustained remission, reinfusion with rituximab after B cell repopulation resulted in fewer clinical relapses than did reinfusion following serological ANCA flare.