Research
Multimorbidity in Arthritis and persistent musculoskeletal Pain (MAP) Study
The MAP Study explores the presence and experience of multimorbidity in people with persistent musculoskeletal pain or rheumatoid arthritis and looks at how the presence of multiple health conditions affects people’s capacity to manage. Please note the study ended in January 2022, scientific publications are ongoing and will be added to these pages once they are published.
FUNDING: VERSUS ARTHRITIS Grant Referent: 21970
Project summary
Our study seeks to explore the presence and experience of multimorbidity (having two or more long term conditions) in people with persistent musculoskeletal pain and explore how the presence of a number of health conditions affects people’s capacity to manage. As musculoskeletal pain incorporates a wide range of conditions, we will also study these issues in more detail in people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), the commonest and best studied inflammatory arthritis.
We will undertake three pieces of related work to look at the general experience of people with persistent musculoskeletal pain as well as those with RA. The first two pieces of work involve statistical analysis of two existing sets of data (UK Biobank and the Scottish Early Rheumatoid Arthritis (SERA) cohorts) to examine what and how many conditions people with persistent musculoskeletal pain or RA have and how this impacts on quality of life and health-related outcomes such as mortality and hospitalisations; we will also explore whether patient factors like deprivation and age have an effect on the results.
The third piece of work involves interviewing people living with persistent musculoskeletal pain or RA and HCPs to explore their experiences of living with and managing persistent musculoskeletal pain or RA and multimorbidity. We are particularly interested in the "treatment burden" otherwise known as the workload of self-management that people experience and what influences their capacity to deal with any given level of treatment burden.
Our findings will help us to develop new ways of managing and tailoring treatments for people living with persistent musculoskeletal pain or RA and multimorbidity that will minimise their level of treatment burden and maximise their capacity to self-manage.
Our team
Principal investigator
- Dr Barbara Nicholl University of Glasgow @BarbNicholl
Co-investigators
- Professor Frances Mair University of Glasgow @FrancesMair
- Dr Sara Macdonald University of Glasgow
- Dr Bhautesh Jani University of Glasgow @BhauteshJani
- Professor Colin McCowan, University of St Andrews
- Dr Stefan Siebert University of Glasgow @StefanSiebert1
Researchers
- Dr Susan Browne University of Glasgow
- Dr Yvonne Cunningham University of Glasgow
- Karen Wood, University of Glasgow
- Dr Guy Rughani University of Glasgow
Students
- Jordan Canning, University of Glasgow
Administrative support
- Ms Karen Penman University of Glasgow
Our publications
- BMJ Open article - Patterns of multimorbidity and their effects on adverts outcomes in rheumatoid arthritis: a study of 5658 UK Biobank participants
- Journal of Multimorbidity and Comorbidity Journal - Prevalence of chronic pain in LTCs and multimorbidity: A cross- sectional study using UK Biobank
- International Association for the Study of Pain - Chronic pain and Covid-19 hospitalisation and mortality: a UK Biobank cohort study
Our presentations
- The MAP Study
Professor Frances Mair
Pain Challenge Award Workshop, Versus Arthritis, London, 31 Jan 2019 - Chronic MSK Pain with all cause mortality
Dr Ross McQueenie
IHW Away Day 2019 - Multimorbidity - the importance of treatment burden and the relevance for those with IMIDs
Professor Frances Mair
IMID Summit, London, May 2019 - MAP Study: protocol for a mixed method study
Dr Susan Browne
Annual Scientific Meeting of the Society for Academic Primary care, University of Exeter, 3-5 July 2019 - Chronic MSK pain and its association with all-cause mortality:
Dr Ross McQueenie
Annual Scientific Meeting of the Society for Academic Primary care, University of Exeter, 3-5 July 2019 - Mortality in rheumatoid arthritis: a study of 5658 UK Biobank participants
Dr Ross McQueenie
Annual Scientific Meeting of the Society for Academic Primary Care, University of Exeter, 3-5 July 2019 - The MAP Study: the experience of healthcare professionals
Professor Frances Mair
AAAPC Annual Conference, August 2021 - Experiences of care during the Covid-19 pandemic among people with Rheumatoid Arthritis & MSK Pain
Karen Wood
ADEGS, January 2022
Our Information videos
- Qualitative approach by Yvonne Cunningham
- Multimorbidity by Bhautesh Jani
- Persistent pain by Barbara Nicholl
- Treatment burden by Frances Mair
Our newsletter
To find out more about what the team has been up to recently, download our newsletter:
Contact us
Susan Browne susan.browne@glasgow.ac.uk
