Trial Information

Pharmacogenomics of Anti-TNF Treatment in Patients With Rheumatoid Arthritis

Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is a severe inflammatory disease and genetic factors are known to
play an important role in its pathogenesis. Genetic factors are also involved in determining
the prognosis of RA. Identifying the genetic factors that predispose to mild or aggressive
RA is not easy and up to now only a few of these factors -like certain HLA-DR species- are
known.

The Rheumatology department of the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre (RUNMC) has
collected a unique inception cohort of over 500 patients with RA, that have been followed
from an early stage of disease for up to 10 years with detailed measurements of disease
activity, joint damage and other characteristics of disease progression.

In this project we use this patient group to study polymorphisms in a large battery of genes
for their effect on RA disease activity/progression.