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A new treatment being developed for bowel disease could also help relieve the suffering of arthritis patients, experts believe.
The as yet unnamed drug will become the first to be tested at Wales’ only arthritis treatment research centre – called CREATE – which has been designed to develop new treatments to stop inflammatory arthritis.
Based at Cardiff University’s School of Medicine, the first trial is expected to involve about 50 patients from across South Wales.
Professor Ernest Choy, professor of rheumatology at Cardiff University, said: “The aim is to develop novel and more effective treatments for patients with inflammatory arthritis.
“Unlike the more common forms like osteoarthritis, patients with these forms of inflammatory arthritis – rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis – have much higher rates of mortality because the inflammation can spread through the body.
“As a result they have more complicated and severe disease and survival rates subsequently decrease compared to the general population.
“These are aggressive conditions and we know that a key factor in improving outcomes is to keep the inflammation to a minimum.
“Over the last 20 years there have been some new and effective treatments which have improved the condition significantly.
“But the number of patients who get to persistent remission remains low – at less than 30%. Our aim is to try and develop new treatments which are more effective and put more patients into remission.”
The new centre – the Arthritis Research UK Experimental Arthritis Treatment Centre (Create) – which has been backed with £115,000 of start-up funding from Arthritis Research UK over the next three years and additional funding from National Institute for Social Care and Health Research (NISCHR) and Cardiff University, will also develop new laboratory tests that will determine the most appropriate therapies for individual patients.
One of the first pieces of work for the new centre will be to examine whether a new and unlicensed treatment for inflammatory bowel disease will also be effective for patients with rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis – experts are hopeful the treatment will be effective in addressing the inflammatory response and symptoms in arthritic patients.
Prof Choy added: “For the last few years, the opportunity for patients in Wales to get access to innovative treatments has been rather limited. Having this centre will open up the opportunities for better treatment.
“And it will also allow us to look across the horizon and see whether there are treatment examples from other diseases that could help arthritis.”
Source: walesonline
The as yet unnamed drug will become the first to be tested at Wales’ only arthritis treatment research centre – called CREATE – which has been designed to develop new treatments to stop inflammatory arthritis.
Based at Cardiff University’s School of Medicine, the first trial is expected to involve about 50 patients from across South Wales.
Professor Ernest Choy, professor of rheumatology at Cardiff University, said: “The aim is to develop novel and more effective treatments for patients with inflammatory arthritis.
“Unlike the more common forms like osteoarthritis, patients with these forms of inflammatory arthritis – rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis – have much higher rates of mortality because the inflammation can spread through the body.
“As a result they have more complicated and severe disease and survival rates subsequently decrease compared to the general population.
“These are aggressive conditions and we know that a key factor in improving outcomes is to keep the inflammation to a minimum.
“Over the last 20 years there have been some new and effective treatments which have improved the condition significantly.
“But the number of patients who get to persistent remission remains low – at less than 30%. Our aim is to try and develop new treatments which are more effective and put more patients into remission.”
The new centre – the Arthritis Research UK Experimental Arthritis Treatment Centre (Create) – which has been backed with £115,000 of start-up funding from Arthritis Research UK over the next three years and additional funding from National Institute for Social Care and Health Research (NISCHR) and Cardiff University, will also develop new laboratory tests that will determine the most appropriate therapies for individual patients.
One of the first pieces of work for the new centre will be to examine whether a new and unlicensed treatment for inflammatory bowel disease will also be effective for patients with rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis – experts are hopeful the treatment will be effective in addressing the inflammatory response and symptoms in arthritic patients.
Prof Choy added: “For the last few years, the opportunity for patients in Wales to get access to innovative treatments has been rather limited. Having this centre will open up the opportunities for better treatment.
“And it will also allow us to look across the horizon and see whether there are treatment examples from other diseases that could help arthritis.”
Source: walesonline
