Welcome to the latest issue of touchREVIEWS in RMD, which aims to provide healthcare professionals with a wide range of topical articles in the field of rheumatic and musculoskeletal disorders. We begin with an expert interview in which Victoria Furer describes a study on the immune response to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccination […]

Advances continue to be made in the treatment of systemic sclerosis (SSc, also termed ‘scleroderma’); however, it remains a challenging disease for both patients and for the clinicians caring for them. The purpose of this review is to highlight these advances, as opposed to going into detail of the many different aspects of treatment of […]

The term spondyloarthritis (SpA) encompasses a number of disease entities that share common clinical, biological and genetic characteristics. Common clinical features include inflammation in the axial skeleton, including the spine and sacroiliac joints, and inflammation of peripheral musculoskeletal structures such as arthritis, enthesitis and dactylitis.1 The disease is therefore divided by (predominantly) axial or peripheral manifestations. […]

Antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA)-associated vasculitis (AAV) represents a spectrum of disorders primarily affecting the small blood vessels in various organs. It often affects the kidneys, causing rapidly progressive renal failure due to necrotizing crescentic glomerulonephritis. Another major cause of mortality in AAV is life-threatening pulmonary haemorrhage. Historically, AAV has been divided into granulomatosis with polyangiitis […]

While the efficacy of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccine in preventing serious disease is well documented, studies are now emerging in immunosuppressed individuals. Among these are studies on the vaccination response in individuals with autoimmune inflammatory rheumatic diseases who take immunosuppressant therapies. In this expert interview, Dr Victoria Furer from the Tel Aviv […]

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic, relapsing and remitting autoimmune disease,1 affecting 13–7,714 per 100,000 individuals.2 Inflammation in SLE can lead to tissue damage in any organ system, frequently due to acute flares,1 with commonly affected organ systems including the cardiopulmonary, central nervous system, haematological, mucocutaneous, musculoskeletal and renal systems.3 Consequently, patients with SLE can display a diverse […]

Reducing the risk of rheumatic and musculoskeletal disease (RMD) is crucial to prevent associated chronic disease burden. However, the process is complex because the aetiopathological factors contributing to disease onset are not entirely understood. Healthy eating based on the Mediterranean diet (MD) can effectively prevent many chronic conditions and, potentially, RMD. Together with physical activity, […]

Gout is a systemic and underserved disease. Many primary care physicians are treating gout as an episodic disease, providing therapies for only the acute attack.1 As a result of this, many patients with gout are languishing without even being given simple, oral, urate-lowering therapies.2 Additionally, patients who are prescribed an oral urate-lowering therapy are often underdosed and/or […]

Globally, osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common joint condition, affecting 10% of men and 18% of women over the age of 60 years.1 OA represents a group of overlapping disease processes of differing aetiologies, all of which cause a pattern of degenerative disorder of the synovial joints. Classical radiological findings associated with a diagnosis of OA […]