Congratulations to Dr. Namrata Singh for being awarded the CLEAR Center Pilot and Feasibility Award!
The awarded project is titled “Multimorbidity Phenotypes in Rheumatoid Arthritis and Risk of Serious Infection and Hospitalization: Toward Multimorbidity-Informed Risk Stratification”.
More than 60% of people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) live with two or more chronic conditions, and serious infections are among the most consequential adverse outcomes of the disease. Earlier research identified three reproducible multimorbidity phenotypes in RA: cardiopulmonary, cardiometabolic, and mental health/chronic pain. Whether these phenotypes predict serious infection and hospitalization beyond medication exposure and traditional comorbidity indices has not been studied.
The first aim is to evaluate the association between these phenotypes and the 12-month risk of serious infection and all-cause hospitalization. The second aim is to develop and internally validate a multimorbidity-informed risk prediction model and measure how much it improves prediction compared with traditional approaches. Using existing insurance claims data, the study requires no prospective recruitment. Findings will inform a future R01 to externally validate the model and embed a risk calculator in the electronic health record to support clinical decisions.
Dr. Singh will lead the project with biostatistics support from the CLEAR Center Methodology Core. Dr. Singh is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Rheumatology at the University of Washington. She is a rheumatologist and physician-scientist whose research focuses on aging, multimorbidity, and long-term outcomes in inflammatory arthritis, particularly RA. She completed her medical degree at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, internal medicine residency at Mount Sinai Medical Center, rheumatology fellowship at Temple University Hospital, and a master’s degree in clinical investigation at the University of Iowa. Her prior work includes studies of frailty and serious infection risk in patients with RA treated with biologic and targeted synthetic DMARDs.