The Arthritis Foundation is now in its fifth year of the NARAC project, a multi-institutional effort to collect information and samples from 1,000 families in which two or more siblings have RA to learn more about the genetic aspects of the disease.
Funding this multi-million dollar project is a collaborative effort of the Arthritis Foundation and the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). The Arthritis Foundation has invested $1 million to this project over a five-year period, while NIH is investing $5.5 million.
The national center for NARAC (800-382-4827; narac@ nshs.edu) led by Peter Gregersen, MD, at North Shore University Hospital in New York, involves the participation of 10 other university medical centers nationwide, as well as investigators in the intramural program at the National Institutes of Health.
Last year, the first major "screen" of the genome was conducted using an initial set of 300 affected sibling pairs. This work revealed that several regions on chromosomes 1 and 18, as well as a number of other chromosomes, are likely to contain genes involved in RA.
According to Dr. Gregersen, a second genome screen has recently been completed on another set of 300 NARAC families, and the results appear to confirm many of the original findings. "These results are encouraging, but we are all impressed with the complexity of this problem," says Dr. Gregersen. "As the world's largest family resource for studying the genetics of RA, NARAC has begun to yield important insights about genetic factors that contribute to this disease."
