Posted 4 years ago by Wales Gene Park
The UK GCA Consortium is a study which aims to find out more about the causes of giant cell arteritis (GCA, sometimes called temporal arteritis) and polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR). We would also like to find out how to predict how severely a person with one of these conditions will be affected. We hope that the findings of this research will help other patients with this condition in the future by leading to the development of better treatments for this disease, with fewer side-effects than the steroid treatment that is currently standard. Certain variations in the “genetic code” are known to occur naturally within the population. Previous studies have suggested that combinations of certain genes might make someone more likely to develop GCA and PMR, or be more severely affected than others, or respond to treatment in a certain way. If this is true, these findings may give clues as to...