Grant: Team Grant: Health Challenges in Chronic Inflammation Initiative - (Full Appl)

Thanks to better treatment, people with inflammatory diseases of the skin, joint or bowel are now more likely to die from complications of the disease than the disease itself. The complications appear to be similar across the diseases, suggesting that low grade ongoing inflammation may be the culprit. The diseases we will study affect over 5 million Canadians. They include psoriasis (a skin disease); rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and lupus-like diseases, ankylosing spondylitis, gout and osteoarthritis (joint diseases); and Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis (bowel diseases). We focus on complications that occur in a greater frequency than would be expected by chance, including heart attacks, strokes, blood clots in the legs and lungs, severe infections, hip fractures, selected cancers, diabetes, and chronic lung disease. We will do the following: 1. Find out how common these complications are and their true impact on individuals, including the financial costs. 2. Find out whether inflammation is in fact the cause of the complications and whether there are other factors that can either increase the risk of the complications or eliminate them. More than 500,000 Canadians (1 in 10 of those affected) will be studied. 3. Develop patient-centred approaches to reduce or eliminate the frequency and consequences of the complications. With prompt diagnosis and more knowledge, prevention is possible; five million Canadians could live better, longer lives and money will be saved by not treating complications that do not occur. Our team of over 30 scientists and patients have been working for a decade on identifying the complications and doing test runs that show this is doable. Four patients have been involved in every step of the study design. They have surveyed another 636 patients to assist in making sure the questions asked are truly relevant to all Canadians with these diseases. This research has the potential to save lives.