Search

The author discusses the facts and fictions of precision medicine in autoimmune diseases. Topics include why autoimmune diseases provide an excellent field for precision medicine model application, the application of cellular, molecular and transcriptional profiling and single-cell RNA sequencing of synovial tissue in the identification of rheumatoid arthritis patient clusters and the value of the integration of large molecular and clinical data from patients with autoimmune diseases.

The author discusses the role of therapeutic virtual reality (VR) in the future management of chronic pain as indicated in several studies. Topics covered include the importance of attention in modulating pain, how modulation of neural activity during acute painful stimuli has been shown to occur during VR experiences and the evidence from clinical trials that VR significantly reduces subjective experiences of acute pain. It tackles VR as a tool for traditional non-pharmacological treatments.

The authors discuss research which investigated effectiveness of biologics in treating patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), conducted by T. Frisell and colleagues and published within the issue. Topics explored include the comparison of tumour necrosis factor inhibitors (TNFi) biologics with RA drugs such as abatacept, rituximab, and tocilizumab, concerns over the limited sample size utilized by researchers, and the need to consider cost-effectiveness and safety of RA medications.

The article discusses a study on the immunologic heterogeneity within the overall group of patients classified as having psoriatic arthritis. The authors examined the efficacy of steering the choice of biologic on a per-patient immunologic basis in the strategic arm as compared with a standard-of-care approach. The authors have addressed recent calls for novel trial design. Slight caution is warranted as the strategic arm and standard-of-care arm were different in some key factors.