Joshua Novack, MD: Characterizing Bone Microarchitecture with MRI in Patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

Poster Presenter: Joshua Novack, MD, PGY-3 Resident Physician in Internal Medicine at New York University Langone Health

Poster Title: Characterizing Bone Microarchitecture with MRI in Patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

Ignite Session 2C
Saturday, November 12 | 2:45–2:50 p.m. ET | South Philly Stage
All ACR Convergence 2022 poster presentations are available on demand to registered meeting participants through October 31, 2023.

What is your poster about?
Our project compared the bone mineral densities and bone microarchitecture characteristics of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) to those of patients with low bone density. We found that the SLE patients tended to have worse bone microarchitecture as measured by MRI to patients with known low bone density, despite having higher bone mineral densities. Bone microarchitecture tended to worsen with high inflammatory markers.

Why did you decide to investigate this topic?
We decided to investigate this topic because SLE patients have increased fracture risk over the general population, and these fractures can occur without having low bone mineral density on DEXA scans. We sought to determine if using MRI to characterize bone microarchitecture could show differences in the bones of lupus patients that are not visible on DEXA.

What are you working on next related to this research?
We are looking to use our existing MRI data to calculate other measurements of bone strength in order to better characterize bone health.

What excites you most about your work?
We are most excited that we have found a new tool to characterize bone health in lupus patients and hope this can be used to better determine risk for clinical outcomes such as fractures and could, down the line, provide data that could determine which patients could be candidates for medications to improve bone strength.