Kaleb Michaud, PhD, was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis as a toddler. As an adult, his career led to rheumatology research and a mission to promote shared decision-making to enable patients with rheumatic disease to achieve their personal goals.

Biobanks with both genetic data and clinical data from electronic health records on millions of patients have enabled researchers to study the relationship between genotypes and phenotypes. Katherine Liao, MD, MPH, will discuss how to leverage hospital-based biobanks and machine learning for personalized medicine for patients with rheumatic disease.

PAN is a syndrome rather than a single disease, explains Tadej Avcin, MD, PhD. He will discuss registry data and treatment recommendations for children with this rare condition. Clinical features and imaging of PAN also will be discussed. Newly recognized monogenic disease forms mimic PAN but are not the same disease.

Many of the pathways that influence COVID-19 outcomes are strongly associated with autoimmune disease. “There will be numerous lessons learned from COVID-19 that will apply to improving our understanding of various rheumatic diseases,” said session co-moderator Alfred Kim, MD, PhD.

Identification of individual mechanisms that play a clear role in driving joint disease has proven challenging for researchers. Experts including Christopher Ritchlin, MD, MPH, will explore recent work that describes key biologic processes, including perturbations in immune and stromal cells and the microbiome.

No current technology can comprehensively measure bone quality, so clinicians must be attuned to the various tools available to gauge each component — bone density, accumulated microscopic damage, bone turnover, and the quality of collagen or mineral crystal size — individually. In his Monday lecture, Bobo Tanner, MD, summarized current tools for assessing bone health…

Hanna Kim, MD, MS, and Stacy Ardoin, MD, MSc, reviewed significant contributions to the literature in pediatric rheumatology made in the past year, including new data on mental health in young patients living with rheumatic disease. Investigators have found that the risk of psychiatric disorders is higher in patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis than in…

In the second of three plenary sessions, experts including Bryant England, MD, PhD, addressed emerging research on the effects of sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibition in lupus; T cell differentiation in lupus; the protective effects of gut microbiome transplantation; TNF inhibition in rheumatoid arthritis and interstitial lung disease; methotrexate dosing in rheumatoid arthritis; and TMP-SMX prophylaxis…

Puja Mehta, MD, MBBS, offered reasoning and practical steps to recognize testimonial injustice, create inclusive cultures, and develop potential actions for eliminating bias, both as individuals and as organizations.

Experts including Alvin F. Wells, MD, PhD, FACR, FACP, discussed health disparities, drivers of those disparities, and creative ways to overcome them to create better outcomes for patients with rheumatic disease.