This week I took a twitter disagreement from the impersonal world of twitter to the podcast world of a back and forth conversation. Really enjoyed talking to Dr. Len Calabrese about monoclonal antibodies, FDA regulatory pathways, and life in general. 

Excited to share an editorial that I wrote along with Cody Bruggemeyer and Desh Nepal, two trainees with me at the Medical College of Wisconsin. We discussed what I believe to be a pervasive (but seldom discussed) issue in rheumatology RCTs: unblinding. I suspect many of our studies suffer from this. Have a listen! 

Happy to share the FIRST randomized trial in CPPD today. It's kind of a weird study but worth a quick discussion. 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2665991323001650

This week I dive into the health related quality of life measures that were reported in the ADVOCATE study. I found them overall somewhat convincing and they have affected my practice. Have a listen and be sure to follow along. Find my work at ebrheum.com 

Quick episode this week from a recent Perspective piece I had published in the New England Journal. Have a listen or a read!

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2304828

Podcast this week discussing key opinion leaders (KOLs) and pharmaceutical companies. Please subscribe to my newsletter (ebrheum.com) and be sure to share the podcast with friends! 

Nice quick RCT rundown this week, covering the ALLHEART study, a pragmatic RCT of urate lowering therapy to reduce cardiovascular disease. Quick listen for a useful teaching point! 

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)01657-9/fulltext

Today I cover the recently published long-COVID study from Norway. It's a great paper that challenges much of the prevailing wisdom. I think there are some interesting limitations, but anyone who sees post COVID patients (aka all of us) would do well to read it. Or have a listen here! 

PDF: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2802893

Fun study this week from JAMA Network Open and the French Vasculitis Study Group. They used a target trial emulation (one of my favorites) to ask whether RTX > CYC in AAV (another one of my favorites). I tried to use this to compare between observational and randomized data. 

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2799018 

This week I hope to debunk one of rheumatology's "paradoxes." We love to talk about these and subject our fellows to memorizing them for the boards. We often use them to guide clinical practice, but I suspect that many "paradoxes" are actually the result of shoddy epidemiology. Todays' paper from JAMA dermatology covers one that I have heard frequently, which is that steroids cause psoriasis flares. I hope you enjoy!

Follow me @ebrheum and check out my newsletter where I cover more of these (links on ebrheum.com)