BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) is the lead institution in a multi-site study of genetic factors in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in African-Americans. With a five-year $4.4 million grant from the National Institute of Arthritis, Musculoskeletal, and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), one of the National Institutes of Health, the consortium will perform the first large-scale genetic analysis of African-American RA patients.
RA is the most common form of inflammatory arthritis among African-Americans. Its cause is unknown, but both genetic and environmental factors are involved. There is evidence that genetic variants associated with RA differ by race and ethnicity.
The study will analyze 3,200 African-Americans, looking throughout the human genome to see which specific genetic regions confer susceptibility to RA. While large-scale RA studies have been conducted among people of European and Asian ancestry, this is the first study in African-Americans.
"We will use this genetic information to gain new insights into the cause of RA in African-Americans," said, S. Louis Bridges Jr., M.D., Ph.D., director of the UAB Division of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology and principal investigator of the study. "We also will be looking at genetic factors that affect damage of joints and osteoporosis in African-Americans with RA, as well as genetic factors that turn on or off expression of genes in blood cells from these subjects."
Bridges says the multi-site study is uniquely positioned to gather and analyze this information, building on collaborations already in place through the NIH-sponsored CLEAR Registry (Consortium for the Longitudinal Evaluation of African-Americans with Early Rheumatoid Arthritis), which Bridges directs, and other data-collection efforts. Bridges says key collaborators are Richard Myers, Ph.D, and Devin Absher, Ph.D, of the Huntsville-based HudsonAlpha Institute of Biotechnology, which will perform genetic testing and collaborate with data analysis.
"We believe this work will provide advances in clinical rheumatology, improve diagnostic strategies and develop targeted therapies for RA in African-Americans," Bridges said.
Participating sites are UAB; HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology; Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Georgia, Inc.; John Hopkins University; Little Rock Diagnostic Clinic; Medical College of Georgia; University of Mississippi Medical Center; Louisiana State University Medical Center; Howard University College of Medicine; Wake Forest University; Brigham and Women's Hospital; University of Nebraska; and University of Chicago.
About the UAB Division of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology
The UAB Division of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology is internationally recognized and dedicated to pursuing new knowledge and translating research findings into more effective diagnosis and treatment of patients with rheumatic diseases.