Costs for Rheumatoid Arthritis and Gout Management Diverging

Nathan Wei, MD, fellow of the American College of Rheumatology, offers his opinion on recently reported diverging costs for the treatment of gout and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in JAMA.¹   

In this video, Dr Wei suggests that the ongoing obesity epidemic in the United States may be behind some of these emerging treatment cost differences. Earlier identification of RA, coupled with goal-directed disease-modifying therapy, may be getting increasing proportions of patients into remission while lowering treatment costs associated with RA.

Reference

1. Lim SY, Lu N, Oza A, et al. Trends in gout and rheumatoid arthritis hospitalizations in the United States, 1993-2011. JAMA. 2016;315(21):2345-7.

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