Seminars in arthritis and rheumatism
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Semin. Arthritis Rheum. · Jun 2009
ReviewSelective costimulation modulation with abatacept: a look at quality-of-life outcomes in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.
To highlight the importance of improving quality of life (QoL) in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and to provide a summary of the QoL benefits provided by abatacept in patients who have an inadequate response to disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) and/or tumor necrosis factor (TNF) antagonists. ⋯ Improvements in QoL are rated by patients as 1 of the most important benefits of an effective treatment; however, inclusion of QoL measurements in clinical trials as a measure of efficacy is a relatively recent event. Abatacept has been shown to alleviate both the physical and the emotional/social burdens that RA imposes on the patient, including improvements in day-to-day activity and reducing sleep problems and fatigue in patients with RA who have an inadequate response to DMARDs and/or TNF antagonists.
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Semin. Arthritis Rheum. · Jun 2009
Discordance between hip and spine bone mineral density measurement using DXA: prevalence and risk factors.
Diagnostic discordance for osteoporosis is the presence of different categories of T-scores in 2 skeletal sites of an individual patient, falling into 2 different diagnostic categories identified by the World Health Organization classification system. ⋯ Densitometrists and clinicians should expect that at least 4 of every 10 patients tested by DXA to demonstrate T-score discordance between spine and total hip measurement sites. T-score discordance can occur for a variety of reasons related to physiologic and pathologic patient factors as well as the performance or analysis of DXA itself.