News

Obesity can make the spinal arthritis disease axial spondyloarthropathy worse, Irish researchers report. Obese patients are likely to have worse symptoms, less physical function, and lower quality of life, according to a team at St. James’s Hospital in Dublin. Overall, two-thirds of axSpa patients are either overweight or obese, the study…

Novartis recently reported that long-term radiographic data from a clinical trial showed that treatment of ankylosing spondylitis (AS) with Cosentyx (secukinumab) resulted in no disease progression in a vast majority of the patients analyzed. The multi-center, Phase 3 MEASURE I study (NCT01358175) showed that almost 80 percent of AS…

A study of patients with ankylosing spondylitis, rheumatoid arthritis, and psoriatic arthritis who switched from Remicade (infliximab) therapy to a biosimilar, sold as Remsima or Inflectra (CT-P13), showed that 24% of patients stopped taking the therapy within six months for reasons that appear unrelated to the therapy’s health benefits. The…

Children’s National Health System no longer treats just kids. Its Rare Disease Institute, launched in April 2017, has partnered with the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) to become the first of many U.S. “centers of excellence” to look after patients with rare diseases, regardless of age. The effort…

Novartis will present new four-year data from the MEASURE 1 study showing how Cosentyx (secukinumab) benefits patients with ankylosing spondylitis at the 2017 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting in San Diego, Nov. 3-8. The data shows that Cosentyx is capable of reducing structural disease progression in ankylosing spondylitis patients, which…

More therapies are now available for the 30 million or so people with rare diseases in the U.S. than ever before, and millions of dollars are being invested in clinical studies that will test new ways of evaluating — and advancing — potential treatments, including the use of natural history…

As Congress begins debate this week to overhaul the U.S. tax code, lawmakers should leave the Orphan Drug Act (ODA) — and the tax incentives it offers pharmaceutical companies to develop therapies for rare diseases — off the table. That’s the message being pushed by the National Organization for…

Patients with non-radiographic axial spondyloarthritis (nr-axSpA) treated with Amgen‘s Enbrel (etanercept), which blocks tumor necrosis factor (TNF), experience a very early reparative response to therapy, new research shows. The study, “Modification of structural lesions on MRI of the sacroiliac joints by etanercept in the…

CreakyJoints has released a guide for people living with ankylosing spondylitis, the first to be developed by patients and reviewed by rheumatologists. “A Patient’s Guide to Living with Ankylosing Spondylitis,” is available for download free of charge (by following the link) for patients and their caregivers.

Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) patients must be screened for certain cancers due to their higher risk, a study from Taiwan warns. The study, “Ankylosing spondylitis and the risk of cancer,” appeared in the journal Oncology Letters. It aimed to assess whether AS is associated with an increased cancer risk.