This year’s ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting formally started Saturday afternoon with the traditional ACR/ARHP Opening Lecture and Awards. ACR President Joan M. Von Feldt, MD, MSEd, opened the session with a look at what’s happening in the field and at the association.

Sunday morning’s Year in Review session brought together two experts who culled research published over the past year in clinical and basic science to selected studies they felt showed major trends and significant insights to the development and treatment of rheumatologic diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, and lupus.

In the past 50 years, only one new therapy has been approved for the treatment of lupus. Peter E. Lipsky, MD, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of AMPEL Bio-Solutions, Charlottesville, VA, works to change that.

For the past 20 years, investigator John D. Isaacs, MD, PhD, FRCP, Professor of Clinical Rheumatology at Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom, has focused his work on the potential of novel immunotherapies to treat rheumatoid arthritis — ranging from target identification to early and late-stage clinical trials.

The humanities come in many forms — literature, music, art, and nature, to name a few — and give perspective on what it means to be human. They are also rich in what they can offer patients and healthcare professionals, said ARHP keynote speaker Paulette C. Hahn, MD, on Sunday morning.

This year’s recipient of the Rheumatology Research Foundation Paul Klemperer, MD, Memorial Lectureship, Gary Firestein, MD, dedicated his lecture Sunday to an explanation of research into how the human genome, epigenome, and environmental factors lead to the development and progression of RA and how this research can improve therapy.

A Sunday afternoon clinical symposium described how the draft guideline, which has not yet been approved by the ACR, expands on the 2010 guideline to consider the fracture risk and treatment options among new patient populations and how the recommendations vary based on glucocorticoid dose.

The ACR is proud to promote the PANLAR Scholarship Program in which rheumatologists from Central and South America are provided funding to attend the ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting.

Rheum-Nados from Franciscan Alliance and Tram-a-dolls from Oregon Health & Science University qualified Sunday for the finals of this year’s Knowledge Bowl.

With the passage of the Sunshine Act, part of the Affordable Care Act, the requirements for disclosures regarding interactions between pharmaceutical and device companies and physicians have changed, and other websites as well now disseminate more information about providers.