USPIO MRI in Arthritis
Research type
Research Study
Full title
USPIO MRI in Arthritis
IRAS ID
241820
Contact name
Lucy Kershaw
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Edinburgh
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 6 months, 1 days
Research summary
Summary of Research
Inflammatory arthritis is a disease that results in inflammation of the
lining of the joints, most often in the hands and feet. Treatment currently focuses on relieving pain and slowing down the disease, which tends to get worse over time. There are many drugs available, but finding the most appropriate treatment for each patient is challenging, and it is not clear exactly how some of the current treatments work. Finding a way to diagnose the disease early and monitor how well the drugs are working is important so that each patient can receive the best possible treatment.To find synovitis, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is used after the patient is injected with a ‘dye’ called a contrast agent. The contrast agent used currently contains gadolinium, but this does not show inflammation directly. We would like to use a contrast agent that contains iron (USPIO) which is thought to be a better way to find inflammation in the joint lining. This contrast agent has been used in other diseases and in animals with arthritis but has not yet been used in humans to show inflammation in joint linings.
We would like to collect images after injection of USPIO in patients who we know have inflammation in their wrist joints. To use this contrast agent, images collected before and after injection need to be compared. We do not know how long to wait after injection before taking the second set of images, so to answer this question we would like to collect images in before injection, at 24 hours and at 96 hours after injection in 5 patients. If the images reliably show inflammation in the wrist joints, we will know whether to image at 24 hours of 96 hours in a larger study in the future.
Summary of Results
This study aimed to use a contrast agent or 'dye' based on iron instead of the more commonly-used gadolinium to show inflammation in the wrist joints of patients with arthritis. We did not recruit all the patients we were hoping to due to the pandemic, but we were still able to draw some useful conclusions. Firstly, it is difficult to tell whether the contrast agent we see in the scans is truly showing us inflammation or whether it is still in the blood vessels in the surrounding tissue. It was clear that we should scan later than originally thought, when the contrast agent will have been cleared from the blood. Secondly, the scans showed few normal areas to compare to inflamed areas so in future studies we need to make sure that we have scans of people without arthritis as well. Thirdly, we need to have dedicated research fellows and/or research nurses to assist with recruitment.REC name
South East Scotland REC 01
REC reference
18/SS/0068
Date of REC Opinion
4 Jul 2018
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion