Dr Mikuls discusses the Veterans Administration Rheumatoid Arthritis (VARA) Registry, established at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, which contains more than 3500 patient records from 17 different sites around the country. 

Ted R. Mikuls, MD, MSPH, is a professor of medicine at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska.

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi, my name is Ted Mikuls. I'm a professor of medicine in the Division of Rheumatology and Immunology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska, where I also have a dual appointment with the Omaha VA Medical Center.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity of presenting a session about a registry that we developed almost 21 years ago, the VA Rheumatoid Arthritis Registry, which as it sounds, is a longitudinal cohort of U.S. veterans, all who have been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. We have grown into 17 enrolling sites across the country, and the VA registry has given us really a unique and amazing opportunity to study rheumatoid arthritis outcomes, particularly in this high-risk population of U.S. veterans.

Over the years, we've published extensively with the registry. The registry includes longitudinal disease activity measures, but also has really valuable links to administrative data that allows us to look at outcomes such as comorbid illness, interstitial lung disease, which has been a focus of our group, particularly Dr. Bryant England, who's at the Omaha VA for the last several years now.

The registry also has a biobank tied to it, and it has external data sets that include data sets such as the National Death Index, which allows us to code cause-specific mortality, and the Medicare data set, which allows us to account for care that our veterans receive outside the VA health system.

All in all, the registry has been just a wonderful resource for rheumatology research, and specifically research focused in rheumatoid arthritis and understanding what factors drive outcomes in our patients. So over the years, we've had many sites join these efforts, really from across the United States. As I mentioned, we have 17 currently active sites. We're always interested in hearing from others who might have interest in participating in the registry. And if there is interest, that's as easy as contacting me through an email, and we can talk about the opportunity and what that takes.