Following a delay due to the impacts of COVID, the OPTIMISE trial is now open to recruitment!
Psoriatic arthritis develops in ~15% of people with psoriasis and affects around 150,000 people in the UK. Patients that do not respond to standard arthritis drugs are typically prescribed one of two different types of biologic drugs to treat their arthritis, anti-TNF or IL-17 blockers. Doctors do not currently know how to predict in advance which drug will be the best for each patient. OPTIMISE aims to take the guess work out of treating psoriatic arthritis by testing if high levels of a type of blood cell called Th17 cells predicts how well a patient will respond to each drug. This is approach could ensure that patients receive their best drug first, ensuring their disease is controlled quickly improving quality of life.
Our first recruiting centre is Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust – thank you to the team there for being a participating site. The central trials team will be working hard to get as many sites open as possible in January – watch this space!