British researchers have announced a major research project aimed at finding biomarkers that could help indicate the best treatment approach for children with arthritis.
The study will be based at University College London Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, UK, and include collaborators at other UK institutions.
Over 5,000 children will be recruited into the study, which has nearly £5 million in funding from the Medical Research Council and the charity Arthritis Research UK.
Participants will be given a range of medical tests, including genetic tests, and followed for five years, to observe their outcomes. The researchers aim to create a simple test that can be given at diagnosis and direct health care staff to the optimum treatment for each patient.
Lead researcher, Professor Lucy Wedderburn, said: "Using a stratified medicine approach could be a gamechanger in childhood arthritis and its associated uveitis.
“A biomarker test could lead to methods for accurately predicting the right treatment for the right duration, halting the worsening of symptoms and leading to shorter time to remission. Nothing like that has been done before in this area of research."
The team explain that childhood arthritis and associated uveitis affects one in 1,000 under 16 year olds in the UK.
Professor Sir John Savill of the Medical Research Council commented: "Stratified medicine is reshaping the medical landscape by taking a patient-first approach that looks at how – and why – different groups of patients respond differently to therapies."
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