Research Priorities in Gout: The Patient Perspective

Abstract

To the Editor: Gout is the most common inflammatory arthritis in adults1. PubMed publications for gout increased 3-fold from 181 in 2000 to 552 in 2012, indicating an increased interest in gout. The thinking is evolving on how to set the future research agenda for gout. The creation of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), a public-private partnership for funding clinical and patient-oriented research in the United States (www.pcori.org/research-we-support/priorities-agenda/), is an example of this change. PCORI recommends the involvement of patients at every stage of the research activity, including the selection of the research question. Outcome Measures in Rheumatology Clinical Trials (OMERACT), an international consortium of researchers and methodologists, pioneered active patient involvement in the development of disease outcome measures more than a decade ago (www.omeract.org). Including all the involved parties in the research is the way of the future, yet patient participation in prioritizing and conducting research is limited. To our knowledge, there are no studies of patient input into research-agenda setting for gout. Therefore, we aimed to perform a qualitative study and asked patients with gout what research should be done on that topic. Patients of our community-based outpatient clinic who had an International Classification of Diseases , ninth revision, common modification code for gout (274.xx) during 2011–2012 were invited to … Address correspondence to Dr. Singh, University of Alabama, Faculty Office Tower 805B, 510 20th Street S, Birmingham, Alabama 35294, USA. E-mail: Jasvinder.md{at}gmail.com