Juvenile Arthritis Research at #BSR21

We were honoured to have two of our abstracts accepted for the BSR conference, both based on the COVID-19 European Patient Registry that we managed throughout 2020.

The first highlighted that the level of anxiety amongst UK adult participants with rheumatic, autoimmune and autoinflammatory conditions is associated with the number of reported cases of COVID-19. Whilst many people experienced anxiety over the past year due to the pandemic and its impacts on their lives and families, that anxiety increased as the number of cases increased, and reduced as cases reduced. In addition, higher levels of anxiety were associated with greater risk-reducing behaviours. This was presented as a poster in the 'COVID-19 Science' portfolio.

The second was a presentation by Dr Stephanie Shoop-Worrall, from the University of Manchester, who used computer learning techniques to find the patterns of anxiety over time amongst participants in the study. She found that the 'trajectories of anxiety' split into four groups - Persistently extremely high anxiety (which started very high and did not reduce); persistently high anxiety (which started high and did not reduced); high anxiety that moderately improved, and moderate anxiety that improved. Dr Shoop-Worrall's presentation was included in the 'Oral Abstracts: Registers' session.

Both abstracts and their poster/presentation can be seen on catch-up on the #BSR21 platform until 30 July for registered attendees:

Poster : Worry about COVID-19 amongst adult rheumatology patients in the UK is associated with the number of cases, and drives risk-reducing behaviours

Presentation: Trajectories of Anxiety in Children, Young People and Adults with Rheumatic Diseases in the Wake of COVID-19: Results from the COVID-19 European Patient Registry