Introduction to the Conference Report of the ACR

Dear Reader,

With over 16,000 attendees from more than 110 countries, the ACR Annual Meeting remains the number one congress for rheumatology worldwide. Travelers from around the world know generally to expect mild weather if the meeting is in California and colder weather if further north. The 2019 ACR congress took place in the Deep South at Atlanta, Georgia where the delegates were taken by surprise by a few days of icy artic weather. However, this in no way detracted from an excellent meeting. If you want to look back on the conference or find out what you missed, this peer-reviewed report contains several highlights presented at the meeting.

The expanding data on JAK inhibitors in rheumatoid arthritis keeps showing promise, with the concept of monotherapy gaining more and more traction. Therapeutic advances have also been made in vasculitis and SLE, disorders not usually taking centre stage. As clinicians recognise the importance of listening to the patient’s voice, this meeting showed an increased focus on patient-reported outcomes including pain and fatigue.

Hopefully, many of the things we have highlighted including therapy developments and how we will evaluate patients in the coming years will be foreshadowed in this publication. We hope you enjoy the report!

Medicom Medical Publishers



Posted on 4 February 2020