Medicines stewardship.

Medicines stewardship refers to coordinated strategies and interventions to optimise medicines use, usually within a specific therapeutic area. Medicines stewardship programs can reduce variations in practice and improve patient outcomes. Therapeutic domains for medicines stewardship are chosen to address frequently used drug classes associated with a high risk of adverse outcomes.

Prolonged COVID-19 symptom duration in people with systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases: results from the COVID-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance Vaccine Survey.

Objective: We investigated prolonged COVID-19 symptom duration, defined as lasting 28 days or longer, among people with systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases (SARDs).

Methods: We analysed data from the COVID-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance Vaccine Survey (2 April 2021-15 October 2021) to identify people with SARDs reporting test-confirmed COVID-19. Participants reported COVID-19 severity and symptom duration, sociodemographics and clinical characteristics.

Waiting for JAK inhibitor safety data.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recently added a new 'black box warning' on all currently approved Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors indicated for the treatment of arthritis and other inflammatory conditions based on results from the ORAL Surveillance study of tofacitinib versus tumour necrosis factor alpha inhibitors in rheumatoid arthritis. This is a warning difficult to ignore because the data, being from a randomised controlled trial, are of high fidelity and hard to reproach. It is especially problematic because safety data for all the other JAK inhibitors will be pending for several years.

Activated osteoarthritis following immune checkpoint inhibitor treatment: an observational study.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have revolutionized cancer therapy but can result in toxicities, known as immune-related adverse events (irAEs), due to a hyperactivated immune system. ICI-related inflammatory arthritis has been described in literature, but herewith we introduce and characterize post-ICI-activated osteoarthritis (ICI-aOA). We conducted a multicenter, retrospective, observational study of patients with cancer treated with ICIs and diagnosed with ICI-aOA by a rheumatologist.

Real-time prescription monitoring: helping people at risk of harm.

Misuse of opioid analgesics and other psychoactive medicines is a serious and increasing problem in Australia. Measures are being taken to try and prevent this progressing to a public health crisis like the opioid overdose epidemic seen in the USA One measure is real-time prescription monitoring. This provides real-time information about the patient’s supply of psychoactive medicines which have a high risk of being misused Having identified a patient at risk, many factors may delay appropriate management or result in the patient being discharged from care.