Boost for arthritis research

Arthritis research has received a substantial boost with the allocation of £450,000 by the Health Research Board and the Arthritis Foundation of Ireland. The funding will support four new research projects.

Arthritis is a common disease in Ireland with one in seven Irish people suffering from the disease, causing a lifetime struggle with pain and the possibility of severe disability. The new projects will help to search for a cure for the disease.

Two of these projects will be carried out in the Department of Rheumatology at St. Vincent’s Hospital. One of the projects will investigate the role of a special protein in the development of inflammatory arthritis. The second project will analyse tissue from patients with Psoriatic Arthritis, a form of arthritis associated with the skin disease psoriasis.

The possibilities of developing new treatments for rheumatoid arthritis will be explored at Trinity College in collaboration with St James's Hospital, Dublin. New technologies will allow better understanding of how arthritis is caused by an in-depth study of proteins and nucleic acids that are implicated in rheumatoid arthritis.

Current treatments for arthritis work better in some patients than in others. A team of scientists in Cork will investigate how genetics influences an individual’s response to different drugs, so those patients most susceptible to treatment can be identified.

[Posted: Sun 27/08/2000]