Restitution Enhancement in Arthritis and Chronic Heart disease

Many diseases share common pathways through which they cause damage. This is particularly true of diseases which result from inappropriate or uncontrolled immune system activity and tissue damage in a process known as inflammation. Rheumatoid arthritis is an inflammatory disease that affects millions of people worldwide with varying severity. In some people, the disease improves either spontaneously or following only simple initial treatment while in others, disease persists and worsens leading to disability. Myocardial fibrosis, resulting from inflammation and ineffective healing responses, can lead to reduced heart function and death after an initial heart attack has been treated. In some people these diseases improve, either spontaneously or after initial treatment, while in others, disease persists and worsens. In this project, a team of medical doctors and scientists from Canada, Finland and the United States have come together to study patients early in disease so we can identify the clinical features as well as the cells and chemicals in the body that cause or allow the inflammation to get better in some patients with either heart disease or arthritis. This information can then be used to help doctors identify, very early, those patients who need, or don't need, more extensive or aggressive treatment. The information on cells and chemicals will allow us to identify the pathways we need to modify in order to potentially prevent ongoing damaging inflammation in more patients. Using this information, we will work together to begin to examine ways to better treat and prevent these and other inflammatory diseases. This may involve the modified use of existing drugs or the development and testing of new drugs to cure or reduce the impact of these diseases.