Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a long-term autoimmune disorder that primarily affects joints. It typically results in warm, swollen, and painful joints. Pain and stiffness often worsen following rest. Most commonly, the wrist and hands are involved, with the same joints typically involved on both sides of the body. The disease may also affect other parts of the body, including skin, eyes, lungs, heart, nerves and blood. This may result in a low red blood cell count, inflammation around the lungs, and inflammation around the heart. Fever and low energy may also be present. Often, symptoms come on gradually over weeks to months.
The National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) is one of the institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health, an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Rheumatoid factor (RF) is the autoantibody that was first found in rheumatoid arthritis. It is defined as an antibody against the Fc portion of IgG and different RFs can recognize different parts of the IgG-Fc. RF and IgG join to form immune complexes that contribute to the disease process.
Sir Ravinder Nath Maini is an Indian-born British rheumatologist and academic who is an emeritus professor at Imperial College London. He led the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology.
Tadamitsu Kishimoto is a Japanese immunologist known for research on IgM and cytokines, most famously, interleukin 6.
Mixed connective tissue disease, commonly abbreviated as MCTD, is an autoimmune disease characterized by the presence of elevated blood levels of a specific autoantibody, now called anti-U1 ribonucleoprotein (RNP) together with a mix of symptoms of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), scleroderma, and polymyositis. The idea behind the "mixed" disease is that this specific autoantibody is also present in other autoimmune diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus, polymyositis, scleroderma, etc. MCTD was characterized as an individual disease in 1972 by Sharp et al., and the term was introduced by Leroy in 1980.
HLA class II histocompatibility antigen, DRB1 beta chain is a protein that in humans is encoded by the HLA-DRB1 gene. DRB1 encodes the most prevalent beta subunit of HLA-DR. DRB1 alleles, especially those encoding amino acid sequence changes at positions 11 and 13, are associated risk of rheumatoid arthritis.
HLA-DR1 (DR1) is a HLA-DR serotype that recognizes the DRB1*01 gene products. It has been observed to be common among centenarians.
The Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research is given annually by Johnson & Johnson to honor the work of an active scientist in academia, industry or a scientific institute in the field of biomedical research. It was established in 2004 and perpetuates the memory of Paul Janssen, the founder of Janssen Pharmaceutica, a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary.
Sir Marc Feldmann,, is an Australian-educated British immunologist. He is a professor at the University of Oxford and a Senior Research Fellow at Somerville College, Oxford.
Matthew H. Liang is a physician specializing in social rheumatology, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Professor of Health Policy and Management at Harvard School of Public Health, and the Director of Special Projects of the Robert B. Brigham Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Diseases Clinical Research Center which he founded. At the Brigham and Women's Hospital he is Medical Director of Rehabilitation Services. He is a founding faculty of the Division of General Internal Medicine and Primary Care at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and a founding faculty of the Clinical Effectiveness Program at the Harvard School of Public Health and is a Study Director in the Veterans Administration Cooperative Studies Program.
B K Thelma commonly known as Bittianda Kuttapa Thelma is a professor in the Department of Genetics at the University of Delhi, South Campus, New Delhi, India. She is the Principal investigator and Co-ordinator of the Centre of excellence on Genomes Sciences and Predictive Medicine funded by the Govt. of India. She is also the Co-ordinator of a major project on newborn screening for inborn errors of metabolism in Delhi state which aims to demonstrate the feasibility of mandatory screening of newborns in the country and to generate epidemiological data for the testable IEMs in the genetically distinct Indian population, for the first time.
Narinder Kumar Mehra is an Indian immunologist, head of the department of transplant immunology and immunogenetics of the SRL Limited, Gurgaon. He is a former dean of research and holds the ICMR Dr. C.G. Pandit National Chair at AIIMS. An elected fellow of the International Medical Sciences Academy, The World Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy and National Academy of Sciences, India, Mehra is known for his research on histocompatibility and immunogenetics. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Medical Sciences in 1992. He received the Chevalier of the National Order of Merit from François Mitterrand in 2003.
Gary S. Firestein is an American rheumatologist, professor, and founding director of the Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute (ACTRI) at the University of California San Diego and Senior Associate Vice Chancellor for Health Sciences at University of California, San Diego.
Paul-Peter Tak is an immunologist and academic specialising in the fields of rheumatology and immunology. In addition to academic research, he served as an executive of several pharmaceutical companies.
Lars Klareskog is a Swedish physician, immunologist, and rheumatologist, known for research into the genetics of autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
Michelle Leech FRACP is the Deputy Dean of Medicine at Monash University and an academic clinician-scientist. Leech oversees the delivery of the Monash medical program and maintains an active research profile and clinical practice as a rheumatologist.
Soumya Raychaudhuri is a Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School, and an Institute Member at Broad Institute. He is the JS Coblyn and MB Brenner Distinguished Chair in Rheumatology/Immunology and a practicing rheumatologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He is the Director for the Center for Data Sciences at Brigham and Harvard. In addition, he serves as a Visiting Professor in Genetics at the University of Manchester. His research focuses on human genetics and computational genomics to understand immune-mediated diseases.
Lindsey A. Criswell is an American rheumatologist and physician-scientist. She is director of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. Criswell was vice chancellor of research at University of California, San Francisco where she held the Jean S. Engleman Distinguished Professorship in Rheumatology.
Oscar Segurado is a medical researcher and academician. He holds a tenured professorship of Immunology at the University of León, Spain. Segurado has conducted research in the domains of Rheumatology and Immunology. His scientific work focuses on Rheumatoid arthritis.
