New scientist profile: Dr. Sibel Aydin aims to personalize care for inflammatory arthritis

April 28, 2022

Rheumatologist Dr. Sibel Aydin wants to help her patients with inflammatory arthritis return to their regular activities by giving them treatments to reduce pain and protect their joints. Unfortunately, this disease comes in many different flavours, and patients often need to try several treatments and wait months before finding the treatment that works best for them.

To get the treatment right on the first try, Dr. Aydin is investigating the many different presentations of the disease and the best way to treat each one. She’s involved in several multidisciplinary clinical trials and multi-centre registries, and is helping create international treatment guidelines for psoriatic arthritis.

One of her focuses is using imaging technology like ultrasound and functional MRI to understand pain mechanisms and exactly which joints, tendons or ligaments are affected by the disease. Only 30-40% of rheumatologists use ultrasound for arthritis diagnosis, often due to lack of training and the high cost of the machines. Dr. Aydin’s team is testing whether cheaper handheld ultrasound tools will work just as well.

Dr. Aydin was recently appointed as an associate scientist in the Clinical Epidemiology Program at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. She is a rheumatologist at The Ottawa Hospital and associate professor at the University of Ottawa.

“People with inflammatory arthritis are frequently diagnosed between the ages 20 and 50 and live with this disease for the rest of their lives. We want to do everything we can to improve their quality of life,” says Dr. Aydin.