SPARCC

Summary

Spondyloarthritis (SpA) causes a significant amount of pain and disability to those who live with the disease. Though significant advances have been made in the treatment of SpA, a cure is not yet available, as the exact cause of the disease is not known.

The main goal of this study is to gather information that may help us to understand the genetic basis of the disease, to better measure disease severity, activity, progression and disability factors, and to improve the care for SpA patients. Achieving these goals may help in the development of more cost-effective treatments and treatment programs that may lead to better patient quality of life, with earlier detection of disease, and ultimately a better prognosis for patients with SpA.

However, a limiting factor in identifying the genes that cause disease is the large number of patients with the disease required to do these types of studies. Any single doctor’s office, clinic or hospital does not have enough patients to conduct these investigations alone. A multi-centre collaboration of rheumatologists and investigators from across Canada has therefore joined collectively as a team to “pool their resources”. This team will recruit a large number of patients diagnosed with the Spondyloarthritis and its related diseases, in order to help in the identification of genes that may cause the disease and/or influence its expression and severity.