Interleukin-5 (IL-5) inhibitors represent novel therapies for eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis (EGPA). This study assessed the effectiveness and safety of the IL-5 receptor inhibitor benralizumab in a European cohort of patients with EGPA.

Skin ultrasound has shown promising results in the evaluation of skin involvement in patients with systemic sclerosis, as substantiated by a recent systematic literature review from the World Scleroderma Foundation Skin Ultrasound Working Group. In this Viewpoint, we will discuss the role of ultrasound in evaluating skin involvement in patients with systemic sclerosis, particularly the possibility of using this technique to detect an early subclinical skin involvement from the very early phase, suggesting its possible use in both diagnosis and disease follow-up. To detect subclinical skin involvement, it is essential to understand the difference between the skin of patients with systemic sclerosis and that of healthy controls, including defining exactly which structures are affected by the disease and which are spared. The potential of this non-invasive technique might suggest its future role in both clinical practice and clinical trials, possibly replacing invasive and painful procedures such as skin biopsies and promoting patient retention in clinical trials.

Quantifying glucocorticoid toxicity is crucial to efforts to reduce it. The Glucocorticoid Toxicity Index (GTI) measures toxicity effectively in clinical trials by calculating two scores: the cumulative worsening score (CWS) and the aggregate improvement score (AIS). However, in clinical practice, high patient volumes limit the time available for standardised assessments. We aimed to compare the GTI with an abbreviated version of the GTI, the GTI-Metabolic Domains (GTI-MD), which could help to address this issue by using data that are collected easily at routine visits and do not require additional effort from clinicians.

Inflammation around the tendons of interosseous muscles of the hand (interosseous tendon inflammation) was recently observed with MRI for the first time in patients with rheumatoid arthritis and in at-risk individuals with detectable anti-citrullinated protein antibodies, generating the hypothesis that interosseous tendon inflammation precedes clinical arthritis. To better understand the role of interosseous tendon inflammation during the development of rheumatoid arthritis, we studied the frequency of interosseous tendon inflammation in healthy individuals and in those with arthralgia that was suspected of progressing to rheumatoid arthritis (ie, clinically suspect arthralgia) and the association of interosseous tendon inflammation with other symptoms of inflamed joint tissues and with clinical arthritis development.

Many international clinical guidelines recommend therapeutic exercise as a core treatment for knee and hip osteoarthritis. We aimed to identify individual patient-level moderators of the effect of therapeutic exercise for reducing pain and improving physical function in people with knee osteoarthritis, hip osteoarthritis, or both.

Despite developments in pharmacological treatments, chronic fatigue is an unresolved issue for most people with inflammatory arthritis that severely disrupts their personal and working lives. Fatigue in these patients is not strongly linked with peripheral disease activity but is associated with CNS-derived symptoms such as chronic pain, sleep disturbance, and depression. Therefore, a neurobiological basis should be considered when pursuing novel fatigue-specific therapeutics. In this Review, we focus on clinical imaging biomarkers that map candidate brain regions and are crucial in fatigue pathophysiology. We then evaluate neuromodulation techniques that could affect these candidate brain regions and are potential treatment strategies for fatigue in patients with inflammatory arthritis. We delineate work that is still required for neuroimaging and neuromodulation to eventually become part of a clinical pathway to treat and manage fatigue.