News

Treatment with the monoclonal antibody Taltz (ixekizumab) significantly reduced the symptoms of radiographic axial spondyloarthritis (rad-axSpA) in patients participating in a Phase 3 clinical trial, early data show. The study, called COAST-V (NCT02696785), met its primary and all key secondary endpoints, therapy developer Eli Lilly said in a…

Retrophin and the U.S. subsidiary of Britain’s Horizon Pharma will each donate $3 million over a six-year period to the Rare Disease Institute (RDI) at Children’s National Health System in Washington, D.C., helping it to strengthen care available and expand as a “center of excellence” for rare…

Active inflammation in the bone is a major risk factor for bone loss in patients with ankylosing spondylitis. That finding was in the study “Bone edema on magnetic resonance imaging is highly associated with low bone mineral density in patients with ankylosing spondylitis,” which was published in the open-access…

In recognition of Rare Disease Day 2018, Bionews Services — which publishes this website — will attend and report on three relevant conferences in the U.S. dealing with policies and programs of importance to patients and their families. The three are among 50 events in 32 states…

A rock-painting contest in Las Vegas. A fashion show in New York. A 7,000-meter race around the Washington Monument that’ll coincide with a similar #Racefor7 event in Bengaluru and Mumbai, India. From Athens to Atlanta, from San Diego to Sydney, people across the globe will mark World Rare Disease…

Treatment with Merck’s Simponi (golimumab) is now recommended for patients with severe non-radiographic axial spondyloarthritis (nr-axial SpA) in England and Wales. Nr-axial SpA and ankylosing spondylitis (AS) are collectively called axial spondyloarthritis. The term Nr-axial SpA was originally used to define cases of AS that do not exhibit radiographic evidence…

Axial spondyloarthritis patients who do not respond initially to treatment with TNF-alpha inhibitors (TNFi) share some commonalities, researchers discovered in a study aimed at evaluating factors associated with TNFi failure. In particular, researchers found these patients tend to be older, lack a protein marker associated with the disease, have…

Use of biological disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (bDMARDs) does not prevent spinal fractures in patients with ankylosing spondylitis, according to a Swedish population-based study. Findings from the study, “Do biological disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs reduce the spinal fracture risk related to ankylosing spondylitis? A longitudinal multiregistry matched cohort study,”…

David Curtis Glebe, a retired 64-year-old public prosecutor now living in Millsboro, Delaware, knows he’s lucky to be alive. In mid-2013, while in Arizona, Glebe was diagnosed with pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer (PNET) — the same disease that killed Apple’s founder and CEO Steve Jobs. After three years of progress…

Two single variants in immune system-related genes may help predict ankylosing spondylitis with active disease response to therapy. The study “The Diagnostic and Prognostic Role of Interleukin 12B and Interleukin 6R Gene Polymorphism in Patients With Ankylosing Spondylitis” was published in the Journal of Clinical Rheumatology. Two pathways…