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Since the COVID-19 vaccine was authorized for use in the United States, people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and their doctors have had questions about whether the shots are as effective if they take common medications to control their disease.
People on immune-suppressing medications were excluded from the clinical trials. It has been unclear whether the vaccine behaves the same in someone on these drugs as it does in the healthy people studied in the trials.
Now, answers are starting to emerge, and it appears those concerns may have been warranted. A study published May 25 in the
Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases found that up to one-third of people taking methotrexate failed to achieve an adequate immune response to the shot.
By Morgan C. Fitzgerald
California has one of the weakest laws in place to protect patients against the onerous and potentially dangerous practice of step therapy, according to a new study published by the Global Healthy Living Foundation.
Step therapy, also known as a fail-first requirement, can be a profit-generating treatment protocol enforced by health insurance companies under which patients must fail medications in defined tiers before receiving approval to “step up” to the medications prescribed by their doctors.
Insurance companies promote this requirement under the guise of ensuring that patients receive the most effective and reasonably priced drugs when in reality this practice forces patients to compromise treatment decisions and blocks access to essential medications.