Outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 infection among children and young people with pre-existing rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases.

Objectives: Some adults with rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases (RMDs) are at increased risk of COVID-19-related death. Excluding post-COVID-19 multisystem inflammatory syndrome of children, children and young people (CYP) are overall less prone to severe COVID-19 and most experience a mild or asymptomatic course. However, it is unknown if CYP with RMDs are more likely to have more severe COVID-19.

Ten years with biologics: to whom do data on effectiveness and safety apply?

Objectives: During the past decade, the position of biologics in the therapeutic armamentarium, the number of approved indications and the number of available biologics have changed. Available data on (long-term) safety might thus pertain to patient populations not comparable with contemporary patients. The aim of this study was to assess the extent to which contemporary patients who start or switch biologic therapies are comparable with those patients who gave rise to the currently available data on effectiveness and safety.

Cancer risk in patients with rheumatoid arthritis treated with anti-tumor necrosis factor alpha therapies: does the risk change with the time since start of treatment?

Objective: To determine the short-term and medium-term risks of cancer in patients receiving anti-tumor necrosis factor alpha (anti-TNFalpha) therapies that have proven effective in the treatment of chronic inflammatory conditions.

Methods: By linking together data from the Swedish Biologics Register, Swedish registers of RA, and the Swedish Cancer Register, we identified and analyzed for cancer occurrence a national cohort of 6,366 patients with RA who first started anti-TNF therapy between January 1999 and July 2006. As comparators, we used a national biologics-naive RA cohort (n = 61,160), a cohort of RA patients newly starting methotrexate (n = 5,989), a cohort of RA patients newly starting disease-modifying antirheumatic drug combination therapy (n = 1,838), and the general population of Sweden.