Eye health

Children, as well as adults, can develop arthritis. In children, this is referred to as Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA).

For unknown reasons, children with arthritis also often develop uveitis, a painful inflammation of the eye. For some patients, the disease does not respond to current treatments, causing loss of sight in the affected eye(s).

Currently, treatment strategies are set up to supress soluble inflammatory proteins, or mediators, and focus on white blood cells (called T-cells). However, new data from Dr Elizabeth Rosser at University College London reveals that B-cells in the blood of JIA-uveitis patients are different to JIA patients that do not have the eye disease. Dr Rosser and her team will build on this data to investigate whether B-cells can be found in the eyes of JIA-uveitis patients, and how this affects their therapy responses.

This could help doctors to identify which patients could benefit from various treatments, to prevent vision loss. As part of this project, the team will also set up a bank of blood, eye and tear samples from children with JIA-uveitis and other forms of the eye inflammatory disorder. This will enable future researchers to further investigate immune responses to eye inflammation, improving outcomes for children with serious and blinding eye diseases.