Causes and Consequences of Pain and Fatigue in Osteoarthritis – New Emerging Team (NET)

People with osteoarthritis (OA) have told us that pain and fatigue have the greatest effect on the quality of their lives but are too often told that these complaints are a normal part of aging – that is, that they are just getting old! We believe this leads to major confusion and frustration among people with OA, and their health care practitioners, around how best to deal with these complaints, and is likely a barrier to research directed at understanding what causes these complaints, and how they might be relieved.

To address these gaps, we have assembled a diverse team of researchers, clinicians, and people with OA, with common interests and experience in pain, fatigue/sleep, mental health, aging and OA. This research program aims to find out how the common symptoms of OA, including pain, fatigue, mood and sleep quality impact the person living with OA physically, psychologically and socially.

Our objectives are to:

increase our understanding of the experiences of OA pain and fatigue
increase our understanding and knowledge about the causes, consequences and time course of pain in OA
explore the inter-relationships among pain, fatigue, and mental health (in particular depression and anxiety) and how these relate to other factors such as coping behaviours, access to care, family support, activity limitation, and use of treatments for OA (medications, exercise, etc.)
evaluate the contribution to pain and fatigue arising from unrecognized and untreated mental health disorders (depression and anxiety)
develop and promote an integrated research agenda among a diverse group of established, new, and emerging multidisciplinary investigators, consumers and clinicians

This research program is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Canadian Arthritis Network (CAN) as a New Emerging Team (NET) research grant.

ACREU Investigators/Collaborators: Dr. Gillian Hawker (PI), Dr. Elizabeth Badley, Dr. Monique Gignac, Dr. Nizar Mahomed,Dr. Aileen Davis