A Message from the Board of Directors

　

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) has been known as a common and incurable disease from the time of Hippocrates, and treatments were mainly concerned with alleviating symptoms such as chronic pain. Nowadays, however, RA can be intensively treated. Medical progress in recent years has led to the introduction of new therapeutic agents that leave minimal damage to the joints. Despite this progress, people are not obtaining enough information about the disease. Consequently, there are still many patients suffering from advanced joint damage, having been unable to receive sufficient treatment from physicians specializing in rheumatology at an early stage of RA.
Hoping to reduce the number of such patients as much as possible, a group of medical professionals mainly from five institutes specializing in rheumatology in Gunma Prefecture established the Gunma Rheumatoid Arthritis Network (GRN) as a research organization on July 1, 2012.
The primary objectives of the network are to promote awareness of RA and provide information about the disease in Gunma Prefecture and the bordering districts of northern Saitama Prefecture, as well as to facilitate collaboration between participating institutes and publicize the results of their clinical studies. Although the organization has only recently started and is still relatively small, we hope to expand widely in the near future as we work to improve medical examinations and treatment of RA and related diseases while providing information to patients in Gunma Prefecture and the northern part of Saitama Prefecture.

Koichi Okamura and Yukio Yonemoto
Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Gunma University Graduate School of Medicine
Gunma Rheumatoid Arthritis Network, Board of Directors