ACR Journals on Air Podcast

Welcome to ACR Journals on Air, the ACR’s newest podcast series featuring interviews, commentary, and analysis on research from our three peer-reviewed journals: Arthritis & Rheumatology, Arthritis Care & Research, and ACR Open Rheumatology. Join us each episode for engaging discussions with authors and independent experts about recently published studies, their implications for clinical care, and how they move the field of rheumatology forward.
Whether it’s an expert analysis of a manuscript or deep dive with an author—our goal is the same—to understand the impact of the science and bring it from the bench to the bedside.
Podcast Host

Victoria Shanmugam, MBBS, MRCP, CCD, has clinical expertise caring for patients with autoimmune diseases, vasculitis, and chronic wounds. She has led several research studies investigating scleroderma, hidradenitis suppurativa, and the interplay of the host immune response and the microbiome in chronic wounds. Dr. Shanmugam is a frequently invited speaker at professional meetings. Her work in wound healing, hidradenitis, and scleroderma has been published in high-impact peer-reviewed journals, such as Arthritis Care and Research, Current Opinion in Rheumatology, International Wound Journal, and Clinical Rheumatology. Connect with Dr. Shanmugam on Twitter (@VickiShanmugam).
Episodes
New episodes will be available twice a month on Tuesdays.
Episode 18 – Less Is More
Episode 17 – Location, Location, Location
Episode 16 – SSc Pulmonary Hypertension
Episode 15 – Uric Acid: How Low Can You Go
Episode 14 – RheumMadness
Browse previous episodes in the ACR Journals on Air archive.
Episode Show Notes
Caring for older adults who suffer from rheumatic disease comes with it the need to manage multimorbidity, polypharmacy, and geriatric syndromes. Often, shifting priorities for those suffering with rheumatic musculoskeletal diseases (RMDs) is needed, sometimes leading to a prescribing cascade. The practice of ‘deprescribing’, an approach to optimize medication use to deliver a more ‘goal-concordant’ type of care was the focus of Dr. Una Makris and Dr. Jiha Lee’s latest research, Optimizing Medication Use in Older Adults With Rheumatic Musculoskeletal Diseases: Deprescribing as an Approach When Less May Be More. When caring for older adults with RMDs, it very well may be that less is more.


Related Links:
Don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe!
In a study recently published in ACR Open Rheumatology, Geographic Variation in Disease Burden and Mismatch in Care of Patients With Rheumatoid Arthritis in the United States, first author Sharon Dowell, MD, set out to understand some of the factors associated with regional variation of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in the United States. Dr. Dowell presents her study’s findings and conclusions. Tracy Johansson, MS, member of the RISE registry team, joins us to discuss how RISE attempts to close these gaps. Together, both of our guests help us to understand how geographic location contributes to a disproportionate level of care for those with RA and what we can do about it.


Related Links:
Don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe!
Pulmonary hypertension (PH), being a serious complication of systemic sclerosis (SSc), develops late in the course of SSc and carries with it a poor prognosis. With the median survival of about 3 years, new evidence suggests that early diagnosis and treatment can significantly improve survival. Joining us this week is Christopher P. Denton, PhD, FRCP, senior author of Dynamic Prediction of Pulmonary Hypertension in Systemic Sclerosis Using Landmark Analysis, published in Arthritis & Rheumatology. Dr. Denton’s latest study explores the prediction of short-term risk for PH using serial pulmonary function tests (PFTs).

Related Links:
Don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe!
In this episode, we are joined by Joshua Baker, MD, MSCE, first author of a paper recently published in Arthritis & Rheumatology, Associations Between Low Serum Urate, Body Composition, and Mortality. Dr. Baker, recognizing the controversy in whether low serum urate or uric acid (UA) level contribute to adverse outcomes, set out to evaluate the relation between low serum UA levels and sarcopenia, to assess whether sarcopenia confounds associations between these low levels and mortality.

Related Links:
Don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe!
When rheumatology concepts battle it out in a team bracket tournament, you get RheumMadness—A place for everyone who is crazy about rheumatology to connect, collaborate and compete, in an online learning experience, created by David Leverenz, MD. His body of work, RheumMadness: Creating an Online Community of Inquiry, featured in this episode, analyzes participant engagement and the presence of the online community of inquiry within its first year. Dr. Leverenz is an educator and rheumatologist at Duke University, and has a growing body of work in medical education. He recently completed a Clinician Scholar Educator Award from the Rheumatology Research Foundation to create Rheum Madness.

Related Links:
Don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe!