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According to a paper, JAK inhibitors, which doctors have used to treat patients with arthritis despite concerns about the effectiveness of such drugs, actually do work quite well. In a multicenter, retrospective study Japanese researchers found that the drugs resulted in impressive remission rates in patients, most of whom choose to continue such treatment. Rheumatoid arthritis is a common autoimmune disease. The use of biological disease-modifying drugs enables patients to enjoy the achievement of low disease activity and remission. But clinics must administer such drugs through subcutaneous or intravenous routes, which is unpleasant for patients. Recently scientists have developed Janus...

....Researchers from the GenOMICC consortium compared the 2,700 ICU patients’ genetic information with samples from healthy volunteers from other studies. They discovered key differences in these five genes: IFNAR2, TYK2, OAS1, DPP9, and CCR. They “partially explain why some people become severely sick with Covid-19, while others are not affected.” “Our findings reveal that critical illness in Covid-19 is related to at least two biological mechanisms: innate antiviral defenses, which are known to be important early in disease (IFNAR2 and OAS genes), and host-driven inflammatory lung injury, which is a key mechanism of late, life-threatening COVID-19 (DPP9, TYK2, and CCR2),”...