Research and BSPAR

BSPAR members are very active in lots of different areas of research in paediatric rheumatology. Research activities cover clinical research, basic science and education and clinical trials. Much of this work involves collaboration with between centres in the UK and increasingly internationally with Europe and North America.

There has been great progress in the management for children with rheumatic disease and much of this success comes from strong research teams and collaboration between units. However there are lots of questions that still need to be answered, such as how to choose the very best treatment path for each child, how to decide when it is safe to stop treatment when a child improves, and what are the long term effects of both the medicines and other treatments as well as the diseases themselves.

The Research subcommittee of BSPAR meets regularly, at BSPAR meetings and at the annual BSPAR Research day to share information on research progress and update on results. You can find more about these activities here, as well as a full list of details on current projects and studies in the members area under 'Research'.

The Research subcommittee of BSPAR also works closely with the MCRN/arc Paediatric Rheumatology Clinical Studies Group (CSG). You can find more about the Paediatric Rheumatology CSG on this website. For new and young members of the Paediatric Rheumatology community, there is a unique opportunity to do a year of funded research provided by the ARC Barbara Ansell Fellowship. You can find more information about the Ansell scheme here , or at http://www.arc-research.org.uk