Welcome to the latest issue of touchREVIEWS in RMD, which aims to provide healthcare professionals with a wide range of topical articles in the field of rheumatic and musculoskeletal disorders.
We begin with an expert interview in which Victoria Furer describes a study on the immune response to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccination in patients with rheumatic disease, and its implications for future vaccination strategies. In another expert interview, Ronald van Vollenhoven discusses the efficacy and safety of deucravacitinib, an allosteric Tyk2 inhibitor with promising data as an emerging option for the treatment of active systemic lupus erythematosus, an area of substantial unmet needs.
Next, we describe a significant breakthrough in the treatment of gout. In an editorial, Jeff Peterson discusses clinical evidence in support of the concomitant use of methotrexate and pegloticase, a combination which doubles the response rate in comparison to pegloticase monotherapy and also reduces the frequency of infusion reactions.
A growing body of evidence supports the role of nutrition in the prevention of rheumatic and musculoskeletal disorders. Philippou and Nikiphorou present an editorial discussing the importance of the Mediterranean diet supplemented with dietary omega-3 fatty acids.
Our final editorial describes vilobelimab (an anti-C5a monoclonal antibody), which appears to be a safe and effective novel therapeutic option for patients with antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody-associated vasculitis, a group of conditions that have a profound impact on health-related quality of life.
We also feature three review articles. The first focuses on spondyloarthritis, which comprises a family of inflammatory rheumatic diseases with some key clinical features in common, but aspects of the pathophysiology remain poorly understood. Mistegaard and Proft consider the role of the complement system in spondyloarthritis.
The quest for an effective and safe disease-modifying drug for the treatment of osteoarthritis has been fraught with challenges. Kirkham-Wilson and Dennison review contemporary approaches to management and future potential developments in the treatment of this very common condition.
Finally, we consider systemic sclerosis, a challenging condition that is currently incurable. However, there have been significant advances in the understanding of pathogenesis and approaches to management in recent years. Herrick reviews these developments and discusses future challenges.
The editors of touchREVIEWS in RMD would like to thank our contributors for producing insightful and informative articles. We are also grateful to all organizations and media partners for their on-going support, and to the members of our editorial board for their continued involvement and advice. We hope that you find this issue to be interesting and informative. If you are interested in contributing to our upcoming issues, please feel free to submit [here] or contact us directly.
Peter C Taylor
Peter C Taylor holds the Norman Collisson chair of Musculoskeletal Sciences at the University of Oxford and is a Fellow of St. Peter’s College. He studied pre-clinical medical sciences at Gonville and Caius College at the University of Cambridge and his first degree was in Physiology. He subsequently studied clinical medicine at the University of Oxford and was awarded a PhD degree from the University of London for research on pathogenesis of arthritis. Professor Taylor has specialist clinical interests in inflammatory arthritis. He has over 30 years’ experience in clinical trial design in studies of biologic and small molecular therapies in rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis. In experimental medicine studies, Professor Taylor employs targeted therapies as probes of pathogenesis to investigate the in vivo biology of the target in the pathobiology of the disease phenotype under investigation.
