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Rheum Dis Clin North Am 2022 Aug 5;48(3):679-689. Epub 2022 Jul 5.

Medicine Service, VA Medical Center, 700 19th Street South, Birmingham, AL 35233, USA; Department of Medicine at the School of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 510 20th Street South, Birmingham, AL 35294-0022, USA; Department of Epidemiology, University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health, 1665 University Boulevard, Ryals Public Health Building, Birmingham, AL 35294-0022, USA. Electronic address:

Rheumatoid arthritis is the most common autoimmune, destructive, inflammatory arthritis in adults. Effective treatments include oral conventional synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs; eg, methotrexate), injectable biologic DMARDs, and targeted synthetic DMARDs (oral). Key recommendations are to start effective treatment immediately with DMARDs to reduce disability; use effective doses of methotrexate (oral or subcutaneous) with folic acid as the initial treatment; rapidly escalate treatment with various DMARDs, if methotrexate alone is not effective in controlling rheumatoid arthritis; and aim for a treat-to-target strategy with a goal of low disease activity or remission by frequently monitoring disease activity and escalating treatment. Read More

Emerg Med Clin North Am 2022 Aug 9;40(3):503-518. Epub 2022 Jul 9.

Critical Care, Department of Pharmacy, Cooper University Healthcare, 1 Cooper Plaza, Camden, NJ 08103, USA.

Pneumonia is a lower respiratory tract infection caused by the inability to clear pathogens from the lower airway and alveoli. Cytokines and local inflammatory markers are released, causing further damage to the lungs through the accumulation of white blood cells and fluid congestion, leading to pus in the parenchyma. The Infectious Diseases Society of America defines pneumonia as the presence of new lung infiltrate with other clinical evidence supporting infection, including new fever, purulent sputum, leukocytosis, and decline in oxygenation. Read More

Sci Total Environ 2022 Aug 8:157925. Epub 2022 Aug 8.

School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China.

The global outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has strongly affected human lives. The restrictions taken to slow down the spread of the virus impact socio-economic activities and the environment. A comprehensive review of these COVID-19 impacts on the ocean-human system is lacking. Read More

Sci Total Environ 2022 Aug 8:157924. Epub 2022 Aug 8.

Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, University of Windsor, Windsor, ON N9B 3P4, Canada. Electronic address:

Invasive dreissenid mussels have reengineered many freshwater ecosystems in North America and Europe. However, few studies have directly linked their filter feeding activity with ecological effects except in laboratory tests or small-scale field enclosures. We investigated in situ grazing on lake seston by dreissenid mussels (mainly quagga mussel Dreissena rostriformis bugensis) using a 'control volume' approach in the nearshore of eastern Lake Erie in 2016. Read More

PLoS Genet 2022 Aug 11;18(8):e1010303. Epub 2022 Aug 11.

Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavior Genetics, Department of Psychiatry, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, United States of America.

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have successfully identified common variants associated with BMI. However, the stability of aggregate genetic variation influencing BMI from midlife and beyond is unknown. By analysing 165,717 men and 193,073 women from the UKBiobank, we performed BMI GWAS on six independent five-year age intervals between 40 and 72 years. Read More