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Show Arthritis Clinic Might Be Located in Moah The University of Utah Medical Center is the new director of a S4.5 million national arthritis test program, and this may result in the establishment of self-help arthritis clinics in Moab. The center will direct 11 clinics testing new arthritis drugs under the study funded by the National Institute of Arthritis, Metabolism and Digestive Disease (NIAMDD) of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. John R. Ward, professor of internal medicine, .chief of the Arthritis Division and study director, said 20 million Americans suffer from arthritis arthri-tis and related rheumatic diseases and treatments concentrate con-centrate on symptoms such as pain and inflammation. "In rheumatoid arthritis we have no drug that will cure the disease, prevent its progress or even predictably control it, " he said. He said aspirin and 'cortisone derivatives can be helpful, but they don't alter the disease's course. "There are some promising experimental drugs available," avail-able," he said, "but some of these have significant toxicity and risk. What we need is large-scale, long-term studies to carefully define the risks and outline the precise situations situa-tions where such drugs would be valuable and should be used." Dr. Melville R. Klauber, chief of the Division of Biostatistics and study co- director, said the study's cooperative nature is important import-ant since it enlarges the pool of patients, creating more opportunities oppor-tunities to look at the disease's rare forms. The physicians expect as many as 10,000 patients will be included in various studies of the 5-year project. "As soon as the patient registry is operational we will begin our first drug trial with an experimental drug which has been studied in other countries in patients with severe rheumatoid rheum-atoid arthritis," Dr. Klauber said. "The drug seems promising for some patients who don't respond to conventional therapy, ther-apy, but it's very toxic. We need much more specific information on dosage, patient response, tolerance and safety, safe-ty, information that will give us a better insight into which patients can benefit from controlled use of the drug," he added. In addition to designing and coordinating drug studies, the U. of U. researchers will look at the natural history and epidemiology of rheumatic diseases. This aspect of the project is to find clues to causes, risk factors and prevention methods for arthritis. |