Nerve stimulation a ‘tectonic shift’ in rheumatoid arthritis

DESTIN, Fla. — Vagal nerve stimulation represents a new frontier in the management of rheumatoid arthritis, according to a presentation at the Congress of Clinical Rheumatology East.
“Regardless of how one views vagal nerve stimulation and the SetPoint device, the reality is that we now have an FDA-approved, nonpharmacologic therapy for treatment-resistant rheumatoid arthritis,” Leonard H. Calabrese, DO, RJ Fasenmyer chair of clinical immunology at Cleveland Clinic, and chief medical editor of Healio Rheumatology, told Healio. “It has met the required endpoints in

Finger-prick blood test may spot active tuberculosis early and predict who develops disease

Household contacts of people with tuberculosis (TB) have a high risk of getting TB themselves, at around 2%. It is currently difficult to detect TB in its early stages, or predict who will go on to have TB, and therefore preventive treatment is not widely used. Most contacts are asymptomatic and current approaches rely mainly on symptom-based screening and sputum testing, which often miss early or hidden disease. As a result, many infections are only identified once the disease has progressed.

Leukemia stem cells cause treatments to fail, but findings open new avenues to overcome resistance

Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the HI-STEM Stem Cell Institute have deciphered a key mechanism that contributes to treatment failure in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). They show that there are not just one, but four different subtypes of leukemia stem cells. This diversity could explain why one of the most important AML drugs does not work sufficiently in some patients or loses its effectiveness over time—resulting in the return of leukemia.