Asgar Ali Kalla's research while affiliated with University of KwaZulu-Natal and other places

... Sustained advocacy and calls for action have been made for greater prioritisation of musculoskeletal health within health reform agendas, ignited by the 2000-2010 Bone and Joint Decade [10]. While there is undoubtedly greater awareness of the health, social and economic burden attributed to impaired musculoskeletal health (conditions, primary pain and injury and trauma), the most recent GBD health estimates reaffirm a worrying trajectory of increasing global disability for many conditions and in many nations a burden-system response gap persists and will widen [11][12][13]. Without system-level reform efforts and harnessing emerging opportunities for prevention and management of musculoskeletal impairment, an enduring disease burden and persisting inequity in access to care and health outcomes will continue. ...

... This T2T principle has been a key concept in driving better outcomes for adults with rheumatoid arthritis, as evidenced by a wealth of research subsequent to these recommendations [2]. It is now considered the standard of care for adults with RA [3][4][5] and has been adapted for other rheumatological disorders, such as ankylosing spondylitis [6], psoriasis [6], systemic lupus erythematosus [7], and more recently in knee osteoarthritis [8] and osteoporosis [9]. In RA, the utilisation of the T2T strategy has been demonstrated to be more important than the therapeutic agent itself [10][11][12][13], with one small meta-analysis suggesting that protocol-driven tight control may have additional benefit [14]. ...

... Upskill local health professionals through high-quality, evidence-based education and training: Provision of highquality education and training for health professionals responsible for treating osteoarthritis in these settings is essential to improving the delivery of care. 88 Providing education and training on how to diagnose, monitor, and manage osteoarthritis can empower and enable primary health professionals in these lower-resourced settings to provide the key evidenced-based treatments. It can also help primary healthcare professionals understand when to refer patients to specialists or allied health. ...

... Menopauseassociated bone loss is highly treatable, yet few women in this study reported using such treatments, raising concerns over equitable access to healthcare. The HIV clinics in South Africa could consider routine bone health assessment in older menopausal women, and new tools (i.e., the new South African FRAX tool) (69) are now available for this purpose. Future longitudinal studies on fracture incidence in aging women with HIV are warranted. ...

... To date, some studies were reported about the change of rheumatology practice in clinicians during the early pandemic [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. To our knowledge, as of the first anniversary of the pandemic, changes in the rheumatology practice point of view of the clinician have not previously been reported in any countries. ...

... The benefits of tele-education was more evident in its ability to reach rheumatologists worldwide with the increase of educational content being moved to online platforms inspired/necessitated by the COVID-19 restrictions which has enabled education to be delivered in a more inclusive manner. [60] Rheumatology societies across the world increased their provision of online resources, such as webinars. Teaching sessions delivered on virtual platforms, such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams, enable interaction through live video audience participation or can be watched on demand. ...

... The COVID-19 pandemic drastically altered the way rheumatologists provide clinical care, forcing the rapid adoption of telehealth for patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and other rheumatologic disorders. More than 95% of health centers across the United States offered telehealth services during the COVID-19 pandemic (1), and reports from rheumatology practices across the globe indicate that between 40% and 90% of rheumatology encounters occurred via telehealth during the initial COVID-19 transition (2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8). ...

... Meyers et al., found diuretic use in 78 of 92 women with gout. The same observation has been made by other authors (18% of premenopausal women developed diuretic-induced gout, and tophaceous gout in women abusing diuretics for weight loss purposes) [6,9]. In addition, in our patient, arterial hypertension was certainly the favoring factor that fits into the metabolic syndrome. ...

... The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused a significant burden on healthcare systems around the world, leading to substantial changes to treatment settings for patients with rheumatic diseases and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) [1][2][3][4]. The highly transmissible nature of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) increases the risk of nosocomial infection [5,6]; thus, outpatient clinics and hospital attendance have been reduced in order to improve physical distance for those patients who still need to attend in person [3,4,[7][8][9]. Minimised patient management via telemedicine has become an important tool in the management of chronically ill patients [3,4,[7][8][9]. However, ongoing concerns about acquiring COVID-19 have prompted some patients to avoid appointments or stop the use of parenteral medication [10], although continued treatments are needed to avoid disease flares [4,[7][8][9]. ...

... Osteoporosis has a high prevalence rate in Africa. In Egypt, for example, about one-fifth of men and one-third of women are affected [4]. ...