About 20% of patients with psoriasis develop psoriatic arthritis as a result. This arthritis can be quite difficult to manage. In addition to the drugs already available, there are three new drugs for this, and the most effective of these is secukinumab, an antibody ag...

A recent review of the literature (see here) found that we couldn't say whether high intensity exercise was any better - or worse - than low intensity exercise. An earlier study (see here) had suggested that both resistance training and aerobic exercise have advantages...

Fatigue is one of the hardest symptoms to treat. In Rheumatoid Arthritis, physical activity helps (reducing fatigue by about 14 points on a scale from 0-100) and psychosocial interventions (broadly defined) can reduce fatigue by about 10 points. There was no evidence f...

Lots of us are hypermobile, and some hypermobile people have joint pains. What should they do about it? There haven't been many trials. One trial in children (see here) showed no difference between generalised and targeted physiotherapy. One study looked at whether it...

Tripterygium wilfordii Hook F is a bit of a mouthful. It is an extract from roots used in traditional chinese medicine, with over 300 ingredients. It was tested against methotrexate, the most widely used treatment for Rheumatoid in the West in the TRIFRA trial (Ann Rhe...

High uric acid is common, and is associated with gout. However, many studies have shown that even in people without gout, having a high uric acid level is not entirely good news. It is associated with a higher risk of dying overall! Yikes!

Well, the good news f...

Runner's knee - patellofemoral pain syndrome - is very common, felt as a pain in the front of the knee. Forces on the patella (kneecap) can be half a person's weight when walking but up to three times their weight during stair climbing and seven times their weight duri...

We knew that being overweight isn't good for you, but didn't appreciate that inflammatory arthritis - the type in which the immune system attacks the joints - is more common in overweight women. Well, an analysis of the famous Nurses' Health Study - involving over 200,...