Empowering People through Informed Choices in Rheumatoid Arthritis (EPIC-RA)

 

This is a study is being conducted by researchers at the University of Manchester and is part of the larger programme of work within MATURA investigating predictors of response to RA treatments.

The aim of this study is to see if we can develop a better understanding of people with RAs’ views of taking their arthritis medicines and also how they feel about having tests in the future that may predict whether those medicines will work before they start the treatment.

We hope that this initial piece of work will lead on to a full scale patient survey to find out more about RA patients views on having tests and where the vision for MATURA and the development of these potentially predictive tests for treatments for RA is leading.

The first part of the research involves 2-3 focus groups of people with RA (up to 6 people per group). They will be led in a discussion about future testing for medicines for RA, how they feel about the tests, how confident the tests would have to be, any risks associated with the test. This will be analysed and used to create a questionnaire that we would put to the larger RA community to get solid feedback about MATURAs’ direction.

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Progress to date:

• Birmingham focus group (x3), London focus group (x5) and Manchester Focus group (x5).
• Last focus group (Manchester 7th October).
• Results published November 2016., see:
  

  Rheumatoid arthritis patient perceptions on the value of predictive testing for treatments: a qualitative study
  Kumar, K., Peters, S. & Barton, A. 8 Nov 2016 In : BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders. 17, 1, 460

  DOI: 10.1186/s12891-016-1319-x