Immune hallmarks of rheumatoid arthritis management: A brief review.

The purpose of this review was to examine current evidence on immunomodulation mediated by conventional drugs and the use of novel biological agents for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Currently, treatment is focused on maximizing quality of life through sustained clinical remission and/or attenuating disease activity. To do so, disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs, especially methotrexate, are used alone or in combination with other drugs, including leflunomide, biological disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (bDMARDs) and targeted synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (tsDMARDs).

Guidelines on COVID-19 vaccination in patients with immune-mediated rheumatic diseases: a Brazilian Society of Rheumatology task force.

Objective: To provide guidelines on the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination in patients with immune-mediated rheumatic diseases (IMRD) to rheumatologists considering specific scenarios of the daily practice based on the shared-making decision (SMD) process.

Methods: A task force was constituted by 24 rheumatologists (panel members), with clinical and research expertise in immunizations and infectious diseases in immunocompromised patients, endorsed by the Brazilian Society of Rheumatology (BSR), to develop guidelines for COVID-19 vaccination in patients with IMRD. A consensus was built through the Delphi method and involved four rounds of anonymous voting, where five options were used to determine the level of agreement (LOA), based on the Likert Scale: (1) strongly disagree; (2) disagree, (3) neither agree nor disagree (neutral); (4) agree; and (5) strongly agree.

Incidence of neoplasms in the most prevalent autoimmune rheumatic diseases: a systematic review.

This article is a systematic review of the literature about the coexistence of cancer and autoimmune rheumatic diseases, their main associations, cancers and possible risk factors associated, with emphasis on existing population-based studies, besides checking the relation of this occur with the use of the drugs used in the treatment of autoimmune diseases. A search was conducted of scientific articles indexed in the Cochrane / BVS, Pubmed / Medline and Scielo / Lilacs in the period from 2002 to 2012. Also consulted was the IB-ICT (Brazilian digital library of theses and Masters), with descriptors in Portuguese and English for "Systemic sclerosis", "Rheumatoid Arthritis", " Systemic Lupus Erythematosus" and "Sjögren's syndrome", correlating each one with the descriptor AND "neoplasms".

Non-pharmacological therapy and complementary and alternative medicine in fibromyalgia.

Fibromyalgia is a chronic painful syndrome that affects up to 5% of the world population. It is associated with sleep and mood disorders, fatigue, and functional disability. Its pathogenesis involves a disorder of the central modulation of pain, impairment of the descending inhibitory system, and hyperactivity of substance P.

[Extensive cutaneous necrosis as an initial manifestation of secondary antiphospholipid syndrome (APS)].

Diffuse necrotic-hemorrhagic lesions limited to the skin in secondary antiphospholipid antibody syndrome (APS) to systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) are not frequent. We report the case of a white woman, 37 years of age, hospitalized in September 2007 with a history of psychosis of several years' duration, presenting with polyarthritis and erythematous, maculopapular, bullous skin lesions on the upper and lower limbs, rapidly followed by extensive necrosis and skin ulceration on all four limbs who was diagnosed with SLE and positive lupus anticoagulant. The investigators highlight the occurrence of skin necrosis of catastrophic characteristics, as a possible initial manifestation of secondary APS without systemic vascular involvement that evolved satisfactorily with a combination treatment of anticoagulation and immunomodulation.