Volume 13 Issue 11, November 2017

A new publication by the ACR provides clear recommendations for the prevention and treatment of osteoporosis in patients being treated with glucocorticoids, but will they improve the historically inadequate management of this patient population?

The DRESS study has shown that safety and efficacy were maintained for up to 3 years upon disease activity-guided dose reduction of TNF inhibitors. However, which patients are ideally suited for de-escalation remains to be investigated.

This Review explores the main mechanisms of inflammation and the role of innate immune sensors in gouty arthritis, and discusses potential therapeutic approaches aimed at regulating these processes.

Autoantibodies are known to regulate the function of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), but the involvement of such functional autoantibodies in autoimmune disorders is not fully understood. In this Review, the author discuss evidence showing agonistic and antagonistic effects of anti-GPCR functional autoantibodies in the pathogenesis of different rheumatic diseases.

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are key regulators of gene expression. In this Review, the definition and function of lncRNAs, their importance in immune cell responses and the potential roles of these molecules in rheumatic diseases are discussed.

In this Review, the role of canonical Wnt signalling in articular cartilage is discussed, along with the regulatory mechanisms that exist to fine-tune Wnt signalling and the rationale for developing drugs that modulate Wnt signalling for the treatment of joint diseases such as osteoarthritis.

In this Consensus Statement, a group of experts propose that high-quality immunoassays, rather than indirect immunofluorescence, should be used as the primary screening method for detecting anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies when diagnosing patients with suspected granulomatosis with polyangiitis or microscopic polyangiitis.