Celebrating our BSRBR-RA sites

by Lizzy Allerton | 19 May 2025 | Healthcare professionals, Research, Rheumatoid Arthritis | 0 comments

2024 contributors

With 600+ registrations and over 9000 follow ups completed last year, we wanted to thank our sites and acknowledge the hard work of our NHS healthcare professional colleagues. We are grateful to them for their diligence in providing the data that contributes to the ongoing success of the study.

THANK YOU!

We sent out certificates of participation to 89 sites who contributed data in 2024. The data that they have provided in the past, and the data they continue to give, is crucial to the continuing analysis and ongoing monitoring of the long-term safety of biologic therapies.

NHS sites from all across the UK contribute data to BSRBR-RA.

What the data has told us so far

Patients moving to a biosimilar from an originator drug do just as well compared to those who stay on the originator (Kearsley Fleet et al, 2024)
No evidence that TNFi therapy increases the risk of a new cancer compared to non-biologic DMARDs (Mercer et al, 2015)
The overall risk of infections does not increase depending on how many different biologics a patient has tried (Lauper et al, 2024)
Absolute risk of serious infections in TNFi compared to non-biologic DMARDs is one additional infection per 100 patients treated per year (Galloway et al, 2011)

What do we still want to find out?

Long-term data on JAKi therapy – we need more JAKi data to allow us to better understand the safety of these therapies.
Patient-reported outcomes and quality of life data – collection of follow-up data from patients electronically, in addition to data from NHS sites, will enhance our understanding of the quality of life of our study participants living with rheumatoid arthritis.
Continue to monitor the impact of longer term life events, such as cancer and death, by linkage with other national registers.

How can you help?

NHS sites can continue to register patients (BSRBR-RA Eligibility Checker). With more participants, and more follow-ups, sites can continue to provide follow up data, providing details of biologic therapy changes, adverse events and DAS28s.

We recognise the valuable contribution of all our NHS healthcare professionals.

How can we support you?

We can

Provide posters for clinics to encourage patients to enquire about joining the registers.
Provide posters and information for sites to share with wider colleagues who may be able to help with recruitment.
Send stamps to use with outreach consent.
Give talks to teams, showing the impact of the data that has been collected so far.
Give bespoke training sessions to rheumatology teams and/or the wider multi-disciplinary teams involved in patient care.