Assess vasculitis quality of life with OUI’s clinical tools
16th October 2024
Vasculitis is a complex and unpredictable disease, primarily caused by inflammation of the blood vessels.
This inflammation most often results from autoimmune disorders such as lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and scleroderma, but it can also arise from secondary causes like infections, medications, and environmental factors. It requires robust tools to assess its progression, treatment effectiveness, and impact on patients’ quality of life. Clinical Outcome Assessments (COAs) are essential in this process, combining clinician-based evaluations like disease activity scores and damage indices with patient-reported outcome measures (PROs). This comprehensive approach ensures research and care are aligned with both clinical data and patient experiences, improving clinical trials and treatment outcomes.
Oxford University Innovation’s (OUI) Clinical Outcomes team offers a suite of COAs tailored for vasculitis:
- Birmingham Vasculitis Activity Score (BVAS): This gold-standard tool assesses disease activity across various organ systems, providing a reliable measure for use in clinical trials and studies. It helps predict long-term outcomes like relapse and mortality.
- Vasculitis Damage Index (VDI): While BVAS measures active disease, the VDI evaluates irreversible damage caused by vasculitis or its treatments, offering insights into long-term patient prognosis and quality of life.
- AAV-PRO: A disease-specific PRO measure for ANCA-associated vasculitis and used to assess the health-related quality of life and disease burden experienced by patients.
- GCA-PRO: Measure the symptoms and impact on health-related quality of life in patients with Giant Cell arteritis.
- Steroid PRO: This tool tracks the impact of glucocorticoids – commonly used drugs in vasculitis treatment on patients – monitor these adverse effects in real-time, providing clinicians with valuable data to guide treatment decisions, optimise steroid use, and reduce the risk of side effects.
These COAs provide a comprehensive view of disease burden, improving both clinical care and research for vasculitis patients.
The Clinical Outcomes team are dedicated to supporting those wishing to use our COA instruments in all forms of research and clinical use. If you have any questions related to our COA Library or would like to find out more about how you can obtain a licence to use them within your study, you can contact the Clinical Outcomes team via healthoutcomes@innovation.ox.ac.uk.
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