The preoperative care of patients undergoing orthopedic surgery and treated with biologic agents is of great significance.Perioperative use of biologic agents could lead to such complications as infection and delayed postoperative woundhealing. This narrative review aimed to evaluate the current information on the use of biologic agents in patientsundergoing orthopedic surgery...

BACKGROUND Limited information exists on the impact of tumor necrosis factor inhibition on COPD exacerbations. This retrospective study characterized this impact among COPD patients with underlying autoimmune conditions, exposed to tumor necrosis factor inhibitors (TNFi) and/or non-biologic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs). PATIENTS AND METHODS Adult COPD patients with ≥1 diagno...

OBJECTIVE The effects of a 12-week treatment with modified-release prednisone (MR-pred) on the costs of drug treatment of RA were modelled. METHODS With the results of a recent randomized trial as source data, we expressed the effect of treatment (MR-pred vs placebo) on the decrease in the proportion of RA patients meeting disease activity thresholds for reimbursement of biologic treatment. ...

INTRODUCTION Chronic inflammatory rheumatic diseases (RDs) trigger high costs for healthcare systems and society due to the disability and comorbidity associated with these disease entities. The aim of this study was to analyze patients with RD, assess the use of conventional synthetic and biologic therapies, and estimate the overall cost of treatment in Italy. METHODS Administrative healthca...

Biologic agents have dramatically shifted the treatment paradigm for rheumatic disease. Use of these agents can decrease disease burden, allow the patient to be weaned from corticosteroids, and reduce the likelihood of relapse. Eye disease associated with rheumatic conditions may present with a wide range of signs and symptoms. This coexisting pathology should not be overlooked and should be co...

There has been much fanfare, and rightly so, heralding a revolution in the treatment of autoimmune disease using biologic agents-antibodies or other molecules that specifically target known mediators of disease. But not all patients respond to even the most successful biologic agent, which may provide clues about alternate disease mechanisms. Studies aimed at understanding the mechanism of acti...

BACKGROUND Psoriasis is associated with high treatment costs due to the increasing use of biologic drugs. Phototherapy has been demonstrated to be safe and cost effective for the treatment of psoriasis, although it is limited by the requirement for patients to visit a hospital various times a week. OBJECTIVES To evaluate the efficiency of home-based phototherapy with narrow-band UV-B radiatio...

Systemic therapy for breast cancer is evolving rapidly. The medical treatment of cancer includes chemotherapy, endocrine therapy, and therapy with targeted biologic agents. In the past, a patient’s stage, based on tumor size and nodal involvement, would determine the recommendations for medical therapy, whereas now the biologic features of the tumor direct the treatment plan. As a result of adv...

BACKGROUND Drug survival is a marker for treatment sustainability in chronic diseases such as psoriasis. OBJECTIVE The aim of these analyses was to assess survival of biologic treatments in the PSOriasis Longitudinal Assessment and Registry (PSOLAR). METHODS PSOLAR is a large, prospective, international, disease-based registry of patients with psoriasis receiving (or eligible for) systemic ...

we describe the case of a male patient suffering from long-lasting crohn’s disease of the small bowel who developed thyroiditis hassimoto, raynaud’s phenomenon, and primary biliary cirrhosis, during the course of the underlying bowel disease. it is not clear whether these co-morbidities appeared coincidentally, or because they share some common immunopathogenetic mechanisms. in this patient, cr...