Matthew H Liang

Matthew H Liang
Brigham and Women's Hospital | BWH · Department of Medicine

MD, MPH

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397
Publications
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Publications

Publications (397)
Article
Background: The CSP590 randomized trial was designed to estimate the effect of lithium on suicidality. After a third of the intended number of participants were enrolled, the hazard ratio of suicidality was 1.10 (95% CI: 0.77, 1.55). Based on this, the trial was stopped for futility. However, only 17% of patients adhered to the specified protocol....
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Objective To describe the methodology used to develop new classification criteria for adult and juvenile idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIMs) and their major subgroups. Methods An international, multidisciplinary group of myositis experts produced a set of 93 potentially relevant variables to be tested for inclusion in the criteria. Rheumatol...
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Background: There has been little systematic examination of variation in pediatric burn care clinical practices and its effect on outcomes. As a first step, current clinical care processes need to be operationally defined. The highly specialized burn care units of the Shriners Hospitals for Children system present an opportunity to describe the pr...
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Objective To develop and validate new classification criteria for adult and juvenile idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIM) and their major subgroups. Methods Candidate variables were assembled from published criteria and expert opinion using consensus methodology. Data were collected from 47 rheumatology, dermatology, neurology and paediatric c...
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Objective: To develop and validate new classification criteria for adult and juvenile idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIM) and their major subgroups. Methods: Candidate variables were assembled from published criteria and expert opinion using consensus methodology. Data were collected from 47 rheumatology, dermatology, neurology, and pediatr...
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Background: The estimation of an effect size is an important step in designing an adequately powered, feasible clinical trial intended to change clinical practice. During the planning phase of VA Cooperative Study #590, “Double-Blind Placebo-Controlled Study of Lithium for Preventing Repeated Suicidal Self-Directed Violence in Patients with Depress...
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The detection of biomarkers in the preclinical phase of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and recent therapeutic advances suggest that it may be possible to identify and treat persons at high risk and to prevent the development of RA. Several trials are ongoing to test the efficacy of a therapeutic intervention in primary prevention. This paper reviews pot...
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Since the 2002 Dusseldorf meeting, one new agent, Benlysta, has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for systemic lupus erythematosus. Experiences from the field in conducting trials of all the agents tested during this period have provided valuable practical insights. There has been incremental progress in defining the minimal clin...
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Group sequential designs are used to potentially shorten randomized clinical trials and thereby reduce subject burden, improve safety, and save time and resources. Clinical trials comparing treatments for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) might adopt such designs if the ordinal outcome scales for SLE, such as the Systemic Lupus Activity Measure an...
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Restorative sleep is an important component of quality of life. Disturbances in sleep after burn injury were reported but all based on uncontrolled or nonstandardized data. The occurrence and the effect of long-term sleep problems in young adult burn survivors have not been well defined. This 5-year (2003-2008) prospective multicenter longitudinal...
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Background Adipokines exert pleiotropic actions, including immunoregulatory and matrix degrading effects. They seem to be involved in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular (CV) disease as well as inflammatory rheumatic disease (IRD), and, in theory, they might contribute to the accelerated atherosclerosis in IRD. While leptin increases CV risk, adipon...
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Objective: To investigate the determinants of healthcare utilization and costs with use of glucocorticoid (GC) drugs among adult systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients. Methods: This cross-sectional study analyzed established SLE patients identified by ICD-9-CM diagnosis codes from a large US insurance claims database in 2007-2011. Five patien...
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The sensitivity of the long-awaited SLICC classification criteria for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) has now been examined in a cross-sectional observational study. Will the new criteria enable advances in the management of SLE?
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Objective: To estimate the minimal clinically important difference (MCID) in seven self-administered measures assessing fatigue in Swedish patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Method: The participants (n = 51, women 98%, age 52.8 ± 12.1 years, disease duration 18.7 ± 13.6 years) met in groups of six to nine persons. After completing se...
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Identifying persons with early rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a major challenge. The role of the Internet in making decisions about seeking care has not been studied. We developed a method for early diagnosis and referral using the Arthritis Foundation's website. A person with less than 3 months of joint pain symptom who has not yet sought medical at...
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Clinical trials in many diseases are experiencing more difficulties in achieving sufficient or timely enrollment of participants; anecdotal reports from trials of novel therapies for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) seem to be facing the same challenges. General factors associated with this trend include the growth of the contract research indust...
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Background Inadequate classification criteria for IIM are a fundamental limitation in clinical studies. An international, multidisciplinary collaboration, the International Myositis Classification Criteria Project (IMCCP), supported by ACR and EULAR, was established to address this problem. Objectives Develop and validate new classification criteri...
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Background Systemic rheumatic diseases (SRDs) are associated with increased cardiovascular (CV) morbidity due to accelerated atherosclerosis. However, SRDs are also associated with cardiac vasculitis that may contribute to the increased CV risk. In the Feiring Heart Biopsy Study (FHBS) a high occurrence of inflammatory cell infiltrates (ICI) in the...
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A long-term randomized trial of unstable patients with schizophrenia found no benefit of long-acting injectable (LAI) risperidone over oral treatment in preventing or delaying time to psychiatric hospitalizations or on clinical outcomes. The initial analyses did not examine whether benefits of LAI emerged in selected subgroups.Patients with schizop...
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This study examines the psychometric properties of the Quality of Well Being Scale (QWB), the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), the Heinrich-Carpenter Quality of Life Scale (QOLS), and the Lenert PANSS-based utility measure in a cohort of patients with schizophrenia and identifies threshold values of clinically meaningful change using t...
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Response shift (RS) refers to a change in the meaning of one's self-evaluation of a target construct as a result of a change in the respondent's internal standards of measurement; a change in the respondent's values; or a redefinition of the target construct. To explore the influence of social, psychological, and medical factors on self-report of f...
Article
The American Burn Association and the Shriners Hospitals for Children Outcomes Program has been in development for more than 15 years. Many of the tools and important findings are described in this special issue of The Journal of Trauma. This unique program in outcomes research introduces a model for outcome assessments from the patient-centered pe...
Article
The Multi-Center Benchmarking Study (MCBS) is an innovative program giving a new paradigm for monitoring health outcomes in children and adolescents with burn injuries. This article presents the methodologies for conducting a multicenter long-term cohort study of 1,140 children and adolescents with small to large burn injuries followed from the acu...
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Interactions between family members and characteristics of family life and function may affect a child's recovery from burn injury. We prospectively examined the relationship between family characteristics and physical and psychosocial recovery from burns. The families of 399 burned children aged 5 years to 18 years admitted to one of four Shriners...
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The Long-Form Psychosocial Questionnaire (LFPQ) includes full versions of the Child Stress Reaction Checklist, the Family Environment Scale, and the Parenting Stress Index. Condensed versions of these measures were used to create a Short-Form Psychosocial Questionnaire (SFPQ) that could be used as an indicator of child well-being and specific areas...
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There have been few studies on costs of burn treatment. Furthermore, quantifying the actual cost of care at the patient level is hindered by anomalies of our insurance system. This article presents a practical method for determining the cost of caring for pediatric burn patients, using a cohort of patients from the Multi-Center Benchmarking Study a...
Article
To assess the epidemiology, clinical features, and outcomes of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) in the predominantly African Caribbean population of Barbados. A national registry of all patients diagnosed with SLE was established in 2007. Complete case ascertainment was facilitated by collaboration with the island's sole rheumatology service, med...
Article
Improving a patient's ability to self-monitor and manage changes in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) symptoms may improve outcomes. To determine the efficacy of a comprehensive care management program (CCMP) in reducing the risk for COPD hospitalization. A randomized, controlled trial comparing CCMP with guideline-based usual care. (Cli...
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Epidemiology is the study of the distribution of illnesses and diseases and the factors affecting their incidence and clinical course in the population. Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), an autoimmune disease with a broad spectrum of clinical and immunological manifestations, is a major challenge to study epidemiologically, but research on SLE ha...
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To describe the clinical course and management of patients with a pathologic diagnosis of "healed" giant cell arteritis (GCA), and to determine whether previously published histological descriptions of healed arteritis can identify patients with a greater likelihood of clinically significant arteritis. All temporal artery biopsy reports between 199...
Article
Last year a resident sent an e-mail harangue about how much time it was taking her to do the things her preceptor had asked her to do for patients. It had eaten into her “free time” to take care of these patients. Although she may have been tired at the time she wrote the e-mail, this resident is a very conscientious physician. She wanted to say th...
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Disparities in health outcomes occur in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) especially in economically disadvantaged populations. At the 9th International Congress on SLE, June 24-27, 2010, held in Vancouver, British Columbia, a symposium "Narrowing the Gap in the Treatment and Study of SLE worldwide" was held. Participating physicians from the Cari...
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The introduction of antipsychotic medication has been a major advance in the treatment of schizophrenia and allows millions of people to live outside of institutions. It is generally believed that long-acting intramuscular antipsychotic medication is the most effective approach to increasing medication adherence and thereby reduce relapse in high-r...
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Background: Clinical trials are widely considered the gold standard in comparative effectiveness research (CER) but the high cost and complexity of traditional trials and concerns about generalizability to broad patient populations and general clinical practice limit their appeal. Unsuccessful implementation of CER results limits the value of even...
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To investigate the influence of cumulative lifetime hip joint force on the risk of self-reported medically-diagnosed hip osteoarthritis (OA). Prospective cohort. General population. Members of Canadian Association of Retired Persons, community-dwelling. Health-professional diagnosed hip OA, self-reported. Exposure data on lifetime physical activity...
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Background: Long-acting injectable risperidone, a second-generation antipsychotic agent, may improve adherence to treatment and outcomes in schizophrenia, but it has not been tested in a long-term randomized trial involving patients with unstable disease. Methods: We randomly assigned patients in the Veterans Affairs (VA) system who had schizoph...
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To assess and compare the benefits of 3 psychosocial treatments for rheumatoid arthritis (RA). RA patients were randomized to cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT), relaxation response training (RR), or arthritis education (AE). All treatment was conducted in groups. Follow-up occurred immediately after treatment and 6 and 12 months later. Pain, other R...
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Where risk factors have been identified in knee and hip osteoarthritis (OA), with few exceptions, no prevention strategies have proven beneficial. The major risk factors for knee OA are advanced age, injury and obesity. However, there is limited or no evidence that they are modifiable or to what degree modifying them is effective in preventing deve...
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Objective. This study examines the determinants of patients' side effects from arthritis medication. Proposed predictors were patients' beliefs about medications, objective disease activity, treatment regimen, and psychiatric and rheumatoid arthritis symptoms. Methods. In a longitudinal design, 100 rheumatoid arthritis outpatients were investigated...
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This study examines the determinants of patients' side effects from arthritis medication. Proposed predictors were patients' beliefs about medications, objective disease activity, treatment regimen, and psychiatric and rheumatoid arthritis symptoms. In a longitudinal design, 100 rheumatoid arthritis outpatients were investigated at baseline and aga...
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The objectives of the study were 1) to assess the effect of cash lottery on participation rates in a web-based study of physical activity and joint health and 2) to compare recruitment via direct e-mail versus advertisement in an online newsletter. A sample of 1,150 individuals, randomly selected from a database of members of the Canadian Associati...
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Long-term control or remission of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) may be possible with very early treatment. However, no optimal first therapeutic strategy has been determined. To assess the potential cost-effectiveness of major therapeutic strategies for very early RA. Decision analytic model with probabilistic sensitivity analyses. Published data, the...
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Early life factors have been associated with risk of developing autoimmune disease in adulthood. We investigated the association of preterm birth and being breastfed with the incidence of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in 2 large prospective cohorts. We studied participants from the Nurses' Health Study (NHS) and the Nurses' Health Study II (NHSII) who...
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The internet is used by many new rheumatology patients before visiting a health care provider, and is also used for health education, for recruiting study participants, administering surveys, conducting clinical trials, data entry and management of multicenter trials, and providing a forum for patients to share experiences in chat rooms. The intern...
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Test the efficacy of educational interventions to reduce literacy barriers and enhance health outcomes among patients with inflammatory arthritis. The intervention consisted of plain language information materials and/or two individualized sessions with an arthritis educator. Randomization was stratified by education level. Principal outcomes inclu...
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No new drugs have been approved for the treatment of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) by the Food and Drug Administration for the last 30 years. One barrier has been the lack of validated biomarkers and surrogate endpoints. Validation of SLE biomarkers in the past have been methodologically flawed. We put forth a conceptual framework and five cri...
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The utility of flow mediated dilation (FMD) a measure of endothelial function is limited by operator dependence. Pulse amplitude tonometry (PAT) is a novel, less operator-dependent technique to assess endothelial function. This study compares PAT to FMD in SLE and controls. Thirty women with SLE and 31 controls were enrolled. Medications, cardiovas...
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Current cigarette smoking is a risk factor for SLE, and recent work has demonstrated that early-life smoke exposure was related to the risk of related rheumatic conditions in female children. Therefore, we sought to investigate whether early-life cigarette smoke exposure might be associated with incidence of SLE in adult women. We studied 93,054 Nu...
Article
The main aim of the present study was to compare the occurrence of inflammatory cell infiltrates in the aorta, a vessel with a high occurrence of atherosclerosis, with that in the saphenous vein (SV) and internal mammary artery (IMA), which are protected from atherosclerosis. Samples from the aorta, SV, and IMA of 65 patients with inflammatory rheu...
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Some evidence suggests that perinatal factors, including birth weight and breastfeeding, may influence the occurrence of autoimmune rheumatic diseases. However, few studies have investigated these factors in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Therefore, we evaluated the role of birth weight, being breastfed, and preterm birth on the...
Article
To estimate the minimal clinically important difference (MCID) of seven measures of fatigue in rheumatoid arthritis. A cross-sectional study design based on interindividual comparisons was used. Six to eight subjects participated in a single meeting and completed seven fatigue questionnaires (nine sessions were organized and 61 subjects participate...
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This study tested the hypothesis that a personality trait, somatic absorption, is correlated with symptom severity in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Patients completed self-report questionnaires assessing intensity of their RA symptoms, somatic absorption, and psychiatric distress. Disease activity and severity were measured through eryth...
Article
It has been 30 years since Lyme disease was first described in a cohort of patients from Connecticut. An understanding of disease transmission, clinical manifestations and prevention strategies has been established. With the number of new cases increasing each year, it is important that clinicians are aware of the available treatment options. Most...
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To determine the minimal clinically important difference (MCID) for 7 measures of fatigue in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Study subjects completed 7 fatigue instruments [Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS), Multidimensional Assessment of Fatigue (MAF), Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory (MFI), Vitality scale of the MOS-SF-36, Chalder...
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Emerging data suggest that if rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is detected and treated in the early stages of disease, long-term treatment might not be necessary.1, ² The aim of this article is to address how we might identify persons with symptoms of early RA in the general population.
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To evaluate the FDA's approval process and postmarket surveillance strategies for THR devices. The FDA Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) 510k releasable database was used to document approved THR devices. The CDRH Medical Device Reporting data files were used to study the efficiency of the FDA's post-market surveillance system. Manu...
Chapter
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. Notice: The indications and dosages of all drugs in this book h...
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To provide a single source for the best available estimates of the US prevalence of and number of individuals affected by arthritis overall, rheumatoid arthritis, juvenile arthritis, the spondylarthritides, systemic lupus erythematosus, systemic sclerosis, and Sjögren's syndrome. A companion article (part II) addresses additional conditions. The Na...
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Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a complex phenotype characterized by a wide variety of clinical manifestations but the skin is involved in 70-80% of patients. Acute cutaneous lupus erythematosus lesions, like other organ manifestations of SLE wax and wane with other manifestations of active disease and quantifying it is a useful a "signal" to...
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Statin medications have been suggested for widespread use in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). We studied the dose effectiveness and tolerability of pravastatin in SLE. We compared 41 SLE subjects in a two-month open-label dose-titration study of pravastatin to 22 SLE controls. Lipids, ALT, CPK, CRP, adverse effects were assessed. L...
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To evaluate a theory-based educational program to prevent Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses (TBI), a randomized controlled trial of an educational program was delivered to ferry passengers traveling to an endemic area in southeastern Massachusetts. Rates of TBI and precautionary and tick check behaviors were measured over three summers in...
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The objective of this study was to identify reliable and valid instruments to measure cognitive impairment in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), and to define minimally important change of cognitive impairment in SLE for clinical trials. Neurocognitive measures used in randomized clinical trials in SLE were reviewed, and response criteria were dev...
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Objective: Several inflammatory rheumatic diseases are associated with accelerated atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis may result from systemic and/or local vascular inflammation. The aim of this study was to evaluate the occurrence of chronic inflammatory infiltrates in the aortas of patients with and those without inflammatory rheumatic disease who...
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A feasibility study for a trial of strategies for the prevention of atherosclerosis in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) was stopped because of inadequate recruitment. There is little understanding of the factors influencing patients' decisions about participation in prevention trials. Our goal was to determine factors that patients...
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Lyme disease (borreliosis) incidence continues to increase despite a growing knowledge of primary and secondary prevention strategies. Primary prevention aims to reduce the risk of tick exposure and thereby decrease the incidence of new Lyme disease cases. Secondary prevention targets the development of disease or reduces disease severity among peo...
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Although early initiation of disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) is effective in controlling short-term joint damage in individuals with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), the long-term benefit in disease progression is still controversial. We examined the long-term benefit of early DMARD initiation on radiographic progression in early RA. We id...
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To determine the radiographic joint space width (JSW) in undamaged metacarpophalangeal (MCP) and proximal interphalangeal (PIP) joints of patients with early rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and to identify important clinical determinants of JSW. Radiographs of patients with RA of <1 year's duration, from an early arthritis cohort at a tertiary care rheum...
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This article discusses the clinimetrics of disease activity and organ damage, and response criteria using systemic lupus erythematosus as a paradigm. Similar considerations apply to the other systemic rheumatic illnesses. Clinically relevant and psychometrically tested measures of disease states aid the conduct of clinical studies and trials that a...
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No new drugs have been approved for the treat- ment of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) in more than 30 years, and no drugs have been approved specif- ically for the treatment of lupus nephritis. The remark- able advances in our understanding of the pathogenetic mechanisms of SLE make it possible to target specific molecules, rather than treat th...
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To compare the effectiveness of 3 therapeutic strategies in preventing progressive joint damage, in a population-based cohort. The 3 strategies were infliximab with concomitant disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs), etanercept with concomitant DMARDs, and etanercept alone. We used sequential radiographs to assess all patients who were trea...