Difficult-to-treat psoriatic arthritis: refining the definition using a statistical model in a real-life cohort.

Objectives: The study aims to evaluate the applicability of the D2T psoriatic arthritis (PsA) definition, adapted from rheumatoid arthritis, within a single-center observational cohort of PsA patients treated with b/tsDMARDs. In addition, we aimed to establish a numerical index defining D2T-PsA based on the ratio of observed to expected failed b/tsDMARDs and to develop a predictive model identifying features associated with the D2T condition.

Methods: The study included 267 consecutive adult PsA patients receiving b/tsDMARDs, collecting demographic, clinical, and clinimetric data.

The change over time in the prescription pattern of the first targeted drug after failure of conventional therapy in patients with rheumatoid arthritis: a 20-year real-world experience.

Objectives: To evaluate the change over time in the pattern of the first biologic/targeted synthetic drug (b/tsDMARD) prescription and baseline characteristics in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) from 1999 to the present.

Methods: A retrospective data analysis from RA patients enrolled in an Italian single-center registry was conducted. The analysis was limited to all the patients who received the first b/tsDMARD between October 1999 and December 2022.

The impact of EMA recommendations on the real-life use of Janus kinases inhibitors for rheumatoid arthritis: the Expanded Risk Score in RA as a tool to quantify the risk of cardiovascular events.

Objective: To evaluate in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) the impact of EMA recommendations on the real-life prescription of JAK inhibitors (JAKis) and the use of the Expanded Risk Score in RA (ERS-RA) to quantify the risk of major adverse cardiac events (MACE).

Methods: We conducted a retrospective analysis of real-life RA patients treated with JAKis. Patients were classified as ineligible for JAKis if they fulfilled EMA criteria (>65 years-old, history of malignancy, or increased risk of venous thromboembolic events [VTE] or MACE including smoking).

Immunosuppressant Treatment in Rheumatic Musculoskeletal Diseases Does Not Inhibit Elicitation of Humoral Response to SARS-CoV-2 Infection and Preserves Effector Immune Cell Populations.

COVID-19 has proven to be particularly serious and life-threatening for patients presenting with pre-existing pathologies. Patients affected by rheumatic musculoskeletal disease (RMD) are likely to have impaired immune responses against SARS-CoV-2 infection due to their compromised immune system and the prolonged use of disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs), which include conventional synthetic (cs) DMARDs or biologic and targeted synthetic (b/ts) DMARDs. To provide an integrated analysis of the immune response following SARS-CoV-2 infection in RMD patients treated with different classes of DMARDs we carried out an immunological analysis of the antibody responses toward SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid and RBD proteins and an extensive immunophenotypic analysis of the major immune cell populations.