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Study Title:
Scottish Early Rheumatoid Arthritis (SERA) biobank from an inception cohort of patients with newly diagnosed rheumatoid arthritis.
Study Summary (including aims, timelines and funder):
The Scottish Early Rheumatoid Arthritis (SERA) study is an inception cohort of rheumatoid (RA) and undifferentiated arthritis (UA) patients that aims to provide a contemporary description of phenotype and outcome and facilitate discovery of phenotypic and prognostic biomarkers. Originally funded by the Chief Scientist Office and Pfizer, SERA is now closed to recruitment.
Study Outcome:
SERA was a population-wide inception cohort that recruited new onset rheumatoid arthritis patients (RA n=1173; Healthy Volunteers n=100) in a routine NHS setting. Clinical characteristics including therapeutics and disease activity parameters were recorded with a broad range of biobanked biological samples (>65,000 samples e.g. DNA, RNA, serum, plasma, urine).
Using the Community Health Index (CHI) number each participant is electronically linked to core NHS data services (Robertson Centre, Glasgow; Farr, Edinburgh) to track e.g. medical episodes, co-morbidities, death, community prescribing, in perpetuity.
In routine care, newly diagnosed RA/UA patients experience significant improvements in disease activity, functional ability and health-related quality of life but have high rates of multi-morbidity and declining employment rates. The co-existence of a multi-domain description of phenotype and a comprehensive biobank will facilitate multi-platform translational research to identify predictive markers of phenotype and prognosis.