RESEARCH - Advancing personalized medicine in RA

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Advancing Personalized Medicine In Rheumatoid Arthritis

Article Date: 26 Oct 2009 - 0:00 PDT

The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) is spearheading an

effort to create a national database and repository to enable

researchers to identify predictors of effectiveness of various

treatments for rheumatoid arthritis (RA). RA is the most common type

of inflammatory arthritis. Many effective medications exist, but they

vary greatly in cost and side effects, and there is no way to predict

which drug will work best on an individual.

A two-year, $3.3 million Grand Opportunity (GO) grant from the

National Institute of Arthritis, Musculoskeletal, and Skin Diseases

(NIAMS) and funds from the national office and the Alabama chapter of

the Arthritis Foundation will establish the Treatment Efficacy and

Toxicity in Rheumatoid Arthritis Database and Repository (TETRAD). Led

by UAB with 10 participating sites, TETRAD will create a large,

sustainable database of treatment-response data and a repository of

accompanying samples of DNA and blood cells from RA patients starting

treatment with different drugs.

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Read the entire article here:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/168627.php

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