Standing Committee on Epidemiology and Health Services Research

Current Activities

The standing committee has a number of major activities under various stages of progress.

Recently completed activities

Task force on Measurement of Workplace Psychological Exposures
The role of occupational exposures leading to increased risk of regional pain syndromes is clear as is the importance of considering both workplace mechanical and psychological factors. There is little agreement on what psychological and psychosocial factors should be measured in the workplace and what are the most appropriate instruments to achieve this. The task force reviewed the available data and its recommendations are published in the Annals of Rheumatic Diseases (Evaluation of work-related psychosocial factors and regional musculoskeletal pain: results from a EULAR Task Force.
Ann Rheum Dis. 2008 Aug 22. [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 18723563

Working party on Ethical Issues in Multinational data collection
Under the chairmanship of Professor Angela Zink, a workshop was held in collaboration with AUTOCURE to determine the ethical and legal issues surrounding the use and transfer of clinical data in relation to multinational epidemiological studies. The report from the meeting has been published in the Annals of Rheumatic Diseases: (Zink A, Silman AJ; Ethical and legal constraints on data sharing between countries in multinational epidemiological studies in Europe report from a joint workshop of the European League Against Rheumatism standing committee on epidemiology with the "AutoCure" project. Ann Rheum Dis. 2008 Jul;67(7):1041-3.)

Ongoing Activities

Joint ACR/EULAR Task force on new Criteria for Rheumatoid Arthritis
This task force is a joint EULAR/ACR and is specifically designed to develop criteria to be applied to patients with new onset synovitis to identify that subset who are considered to either have or be capable of evolving into chronic and or erosive disease. Such criteria can then be used for amongst other purposes for clinical trials of disease modifying therapy. The first phase of the work is almost complete and involved the analysis of 8 European early arthritis cohorts to identify the factors that rheumatologists use to reach that discrimination. This work under the leadership of Dr Daniel Aletaha should be presented at EULAR in Copenhagen. The second phase planned for early 2009 is a consensus exercise of European and north American Rheumatologists to moderate the statistical results into acceptable criteria, and a final validation phase in both new onset and established cohorts.

Task force on Standards for National Drug Surveillance Registers
This task force has been established to agree on standards for national and regional registers aiming to follow up patients treated with novel therapies. There is increasing activity in several countries in this area, and the aim of the task force is to produce agreed recommendations for quality standards which can be used in discussing the values of registers with other stakeholders such as industry and regulators, as well as providing the potential to undertake joint analyses of key questions of public health interest.

Database of data on musculoskeletal disorders in Europe
As past of an initiative jointly funded by the European Union (leader Professor Tony Woolf) and in linkage with a World Bank initiative (leader Dr Lynn March) we are developing a repository of data of the incidence, prevalence, impact and health service resources utilised in relation to the major musculoskeletal  disorders in Europe. This is a major task and one that will require ongoing activity to maintain its currency. The plan is that once completed the data will be available on the EULAR website.

Joint ACR/EULAR task force on criteria for early inflammatory arthritis
As past of the joint initiatives between ACR and EULAR, a joint task force is planned to develop in 2009, criteria that should be adopted by primary care and other generalists who are the initial source of care seeking by patients with new onset arthritis to identify the appropriate criteria for referral for specialist opinion.