Highlights from Our Publications and Academic Collaborations

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     We have been busy over the last few years gathering, analyzing and presenting the data you have so generously given us. Here are a few highlights of our publications and collaborations with other academic and medical centers:

• We have been collaborating with researchers at the Harvard and MIT Broad Institute to analyze and classify your genetic data. With help from the BRASS data, researchers there have developed a new method, called EIGENSTRAT, to more accurately stratify populations—including our BRASS group—and better identify genetic associations with diseases.
  
• We recently presented data in two areas that might be of particular interest to you. Here’s a short synopsis of each:
  
  • Our program director Nancy Maher—whom many of you have met in clinic—presented data at the American College of Rheumatology Conference on the topic “Do differences in how patients and their doctors view overall disease activity lead to a change in medications?” She compared your general overall health rating from your questionnaire (how you feel on a 0-10 scale) with a similar rating given by your rheumatologist. She found that 70% of the time rheumatologists and patients agree about overall disease activity. Then looking at what motivates a change in medications, she found that when the rheumatologist rates disease activity higher than the patient or the patient had rheumatoid arthritis for less than 5 years or the patient reports high disease activity on the numerical scale, there was more likely to be a change in medication.
    
  • You may have heard that caffeine could interfere with your methotrexate. Among our patients who take methotrexate, this did not hold true. You may remember filling out information about food and drink consumption on your first questionnaire. We used that to divide you into three groups by the amount of caffeine you drink--low, medium and high. From the questions we ask you about how well you are able to do certain tasks, as well as blood tests for inflammation level such as C-reactive protein, we were able to determine how effectively your methotrexate is working. We found that there were no differences in the effectiveness of methotrexate across the three levels of caffeine intake. This research suggests that your response to methotrexate is not affected by how much coffee you drink and the medication continues to work effectively. This research was published in the Journal of Rheumatology.
    If you would like to learn more about these articles, send an email to questions@BRASSstudy.org.
    
    
• We will be presenting several abstracts at the annual American College of Rheumatology Conference—in Washington D.C. this year.

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