The COVID-19 Infodemic Simplified

In this week's news roundup from Rheumatology Nework, we formally launched our podcast “Overdrive” which you can find in iTunes. To kick off the series, Dr. Kim Gorgens, a psychologist with the University of Denver and a Rheumatology Network advisory board member, interviews Dr. Linda Mona, a clinical psychologist who is also a patient with chronic disease. They discuss maintaining good relationships with your patients---which Dr. Mona says holds more benefits than you may realize.

And, this week we featured a study published in Arthritis Care and Research that shows rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients actually have a lower rate of type 2 diabetes than people without RA or patients with hypertension, osteoarthritis and psoriatic arthritis. In fact, patients with psoriatic arthritis have a higher risk of diabetes they report.

And, there have been numerous studies in recent years that test the utility of activity trackers in clinical research. Researchers writing in Arthritis Research and Therapy test that concept in a small pilot study of gout patients. The goal was to better determine the frequency of gout flares and it seemed to provide some insightful evidence to support more trials in the future.

In our one-on-one interview today, we talk with Dr. Daniel Solomon, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and chief of clinical sciences in the division of rheumatology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He currently serves as editor and chief of the journal Arthritis and Rheumatology.

This week, Dr. Solomon and colleagues published a commentary called “The Infodemic of COVID-19.”

They focus on how the pandemic has impacted the journal, the medical publishing world and how best clinicians can navigate current challenges. They begin by highlighting the infodemic surrounding hydroxychloroquine and the cytokine storm.

Please join me in welcoming Dr. Solomon.

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