Summer 2025 (Volume 35, Number 2)

RheumJeopardy! 2025

By Philip A. Baer, MDCM, FRCPC, FACR

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Dr. Philip Baer, pictured with Dr. Elizabeth Hazel (Team Captain of the East), Dr. Timothy Kwok (Chair) and Dr. Audrea Chen (Team Captain of the West).

RheumJeopardy! was presented as a plenary session at the 2025 CRA ASM in Calgary for the tenth consecutive year, this time in a new timeslot before the Wednesday night opening reception. I hosted from the state-of-the-art TELUS conference centre. The 2025 event was live only, with all attendees participating in answering the questions. Seamless integration of the questions with the PheedLoop Go! meeting app, provided by the teams from BBBlanc and MKEM, prevented any technical issues. After the East team was victorious by 12,000 to 6,916 in the 2024 edition, the winning East captain, Dr. Timothy Kwok from Toronto, acted as Chair and scorekeeper. We maintained the traditional East versus West format, with Toronto the dividing line this year. Our team captains were Dr. Elizabeth Hazel, a rheumatologist and former Olympian from Montreal, and Dr. Audrea Chen, a pediatric rheumatologist from Edmonton, both members of the CRA ASM Program Committee. Dr. Chen sported an Edmonton Oilers jersey while Dr Hazel donned a Montreal Victoire jersey promoting the new PWHL.

As usual, only the members of the team whose captain had selected a question voted on the answer. Neither team captain exercised the option to overrule their team’s answer. The team captains decided the Final Jeopardy wagers and answered the Final Jeopardy question on their own.

The session again drew a large audience of enthusiastic participants, including rheumatologists, trainees, allied health professionals and industry and patient attendees. The practice question related to a newly discovered exoplanet with an atmosphere, which shared a name with one of the industry sponsors of the 2025 CRA ASM. The correct answer was planet Janssen.

Fifteen questions were selected in the main game. Categories included OA/Pediatric Rheumatology (several questions in that category were selected by Dr. Chen, but they proved to be those on OA, not the pediatric questions she may have been hoping for), Guidelines, Old Drugs-New Tricks, Sight Diagnoses, Potpourri, and one combining questions related to the Journal of Rheumatology and the CRA.

Questions were designed to be challenging, but the two teams managed well, answering most questions correctly. As usual, the $800 and $1,000 rows of questions were the most frequently chosen. Questions selected included those related to ACR-EULAR Boolean remission, graft versus host disease, the HIPPO pathway in cutaneous lupus, and the CRA JIA Uveitis guideline. Voters correctly identified the CRA AI scribe program offerings, nightmares as a symptom of CNS lupus, and dogs as being better for quality of life than cats in patients with rheumatic diseases. Questions that stumped the teams included rheumatologist personality traits identified in the interestingly named TRUMP-2 study in SLE, the results of a study of heated mittens for hand OA (no benefit), a sight diagnosis question on fibroblastic rheumatism, and the potential benefit of green light therapy in OA (a Top 10 Arthritis Society Canada research finding of 2024). Participants also knew which triple therapies were recommended in the new ACR lupus nephritis guidelines.

One of the “Old Drugs, New Tricks” questions related to tofacitinib for treatment of pretibial myxedema in hyperthyroidism. The audience felt tofacitinib was not an old drug, though it was first approved by the FDA in 2012 and Health Canada in 2014. Henceforth, that category will be renamed “Familiar Drugs, New Tricks.”

At the end of the main Jeopardy round, the score favoured East with 3,800 points over West with 3,400. The Final Jeopardy category was “Global Rheumatology Award Winners”. The question focused on which of 6 major international awards-granting bodies had the highest percentage of female award recipients. The choices included ACR, EULAR, PANLAR, and APLAR. The correct answer was EULAR, with 31% female winners between 1972 and 2023. The answer slide also revealed that the ACR gave out the most awards, followed by PANLAR and EULAR. The percentage of female winners rose from 12.5% before 1990 to 36% from 2021 onwards.

Team East and Team West both wagered everything they had on the Final Jeopardy question. Unfortunately, both team captains answered incorrectly, choosing PANLAR. That left the two teams tied with a final score of 0. This means we don’t know who will chair RheumJeopardy! in April 2026 in Halifax if the ASM Scientific Committee grants us a place on the agenda for an eleventh year. I am already preparing a question bank if we are renewed for another season.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the RheumJeopardy! session. Special thanks as well to Dr. Shelly Dunne, my colleague in Toronto, who took photographs and tracked the questions we used in 2025 to ensure they do not reappear in future editions of RheumJeopardy!

Philip A. Baer, MDCM, FRCPC, FACR
Editor-in-chief, CRAJ, Toronto, Ontario