ARP Keynote to Consider Approaches to Treatment Beyond Conventional Medicine

An array of lifestyle practices and interventions can help improve quality of life and outcomes for people living with rheumatic disease. In the ARP Keynote, Sarah Patterson, MD, will give an overview of the science behind how nutrition, physical activity, and mind-body medicine can help ameliorate symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).

“This is an exciting opportunity to bring lifestyle medicine and integrative health into the fold of the way that mainstream rheumatologists and biomedical researchers think about rheumatic diseases,” said Dr. Patterson, Assistant Professor at the University of California, San Francisco (Rheumatologist and Research Faculty in the Division of Rheumatology and at the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Health). “This is the beginning of a future in which we’re doing more work to better define the lifestyle practices and integrative treatment approaches that are truly effective and safe for improving outcomes in our patients with rheumatic conditions.”

Her lecture, “Lifestyle Medicine: Improving Quality of Life While Living with a Rheumatic Condition,” will be on Tuesday, Nov. 14, at 7:30 a.m. PT in Room 6A–B of the San Diego Convention Center. The session will be livestreamed and available on demand within 24 hours for registered ACR Convergence 2023 participants.

“This is an area of rheumatology practice that is critically important to people who live with rheumatic conditions,” Dr. Patterson said. “It’s one of the most common questions that we get from our patients as rheumatologists: What can people who have these diseases do in their own lives to improve their quality of life and symptoms?”

Even though disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) are available for the treatment of RA and lupus and their use results in dramatically improved outcomes, these therapies still come with notable limitations and don’t always control symptoms.

“A lot of them come with some pretty significant side effects or are poorly tolerated by patients, especially prednisone, which we often end up having to use in combination with DMARDs,” Dr. Patterson explained. “So, anything that can be done as an adjuvant treatment for managing these diseases is worthwhile to consider, and there is data showing that things like nutrition, sleep, physical activity, and stress management have a big impact on symptoms like fatigue that often persist despite treatment with the best medicines currently available,” Dr. Patterson said.

The data and insights presented in the session will apply to clinical and health services researchers who study rheumatic diseases, providers caring for patients with these conditions, and patients who want to learn about the evidence supporting different lifestyle practices as they relate to rheumatic diseases.