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Connection to Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Program: Arthritis: Controlling Joint Pain and Disability
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Andrew Schorr:

Thank you, sir. Let's take a quick call. I think it's Joanne in Anacortes. Joanne, welcome to Patient Power. You're on the air.

Caller:

Okay. The question that I have is would it be possible that arthritis could be a precursor of another disease such as Crohn's or colitis?

Dr. Dugowson:

Yes.

Andrew Schorr:

Okay. Let's take the answer. Go ahead.

Dr. Dugowson:

There is a condition of arthritis associated with inflammatory bowel disease such as Crohn's or regional enteritis, and most of the time the GI disease, the Crohn's shows up first, but it certainly can happen that the GI symptoms are minimal or not even noticeable and the arthritis is started. So the answer is yes, that certainly can happen.

Andrew Schorr:

And Dr. Dugowson there are a number of inflammatory conditions, Crohn's, colitis, psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, that have a common thread, right?

Dr. Dugowson:

Yes. These are autoimmune or inflammatory diseases that are systemic. More common ones such as Crohn's, arthritis would be lupus, which is probably second to rheumatoid arthritis, I guess maybe psoriatic arthritis as well. And these are not from wear and tear but an internal process where your body is actually damaging parts of your system. And those can affect your joints but also such as in lupus it can affect your kidney and many other places in the body.

Caller:

So it can be a precursor to these other things such colitis? Which way would you attack that disease of Crohn's then, from the arthritis side?

Dr. Dugowson:

Well, you know, in fact the medicines that are used for severe Crohn's are the same medicines that we would use for the Crohn's arthritis, and happily enough they tend to work very well for both. So I think that's the approach I'd take.

Caller:

Thank you very much.

Andrew Schorr:

Joanne, we're going to let you go. We wish you well.

Caller

Thank you.

Andrew Schorr:

And I wanted to give you a chance to make a plug, Dr. Dugowson. You're doing research in a lot of these areas. If somebody wants to participate in a research trial at the UW with you what do they do?

Dr. Dugowson:

Well, they would call our clinical study coordinator, and that number is area code 206-221-5196. And right now we're looking at studies in rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, so if you've been diagnosed with that condition and you're not doing well then that would be the number to call and our study coordinator.

Andrew Schorr:

Okay. We're going to be right back with some final comments from Dr. Dugowson as we continue an interesting show on arthritis on Andrew Schorr's Patient Power. We'll be right back.

Andrew Schorr:

Okay. Welcome back to Andrew Schorr's Patient Power. Thank you for joining us. We've been visiting with Dr. Carin Dugowson from the University of Washington. She's a top rheumatologist there. Hopefully we've been giving you some help. She mentioned the phone number to participate in clinical trials there, and I urge you to do it. For some people who know my story, as a leukemia survivor I think I'm here today because I was in a clinical trial. And it worked out that I did get tomorrow's medicine today. That could be for you. It's not always true, but certainly you help advance research.

Dr. Dugowson, though, if somebody says I need a good rheumatologist and I want to check out the UW how do they get in touch with your clinic? What do they do? Who do they call.

Dr. Dugowson:

Well, the clinic number is 206-598-4615. We encourage you to talk to your primary care doctor and get your records and a referral because that's the best way to do it. But the medical specialties clinic is a referral rheumatology clinic that hopes to solve your problems.

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