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The National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) Consortium for the Longitudinal Evaluation of African-Americans with Early Rheumatoid Arthritis (CLEAR)

The Consortium for the Longitudinal Evaluation of African-Americans with Early Rheumatoid Arthritis (CLEAR) Registry and Repository, supported by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), was established in 2000 to provide a resource for the scientific community to explore genetic and non-genetic factors affecting rheumatoid arthritis (RA) occurrence and outcomes in African Americans. The long term objective is a database and a repository of 1,100 RA and 550 matched healthy African-American subjects.

This CLEAR Registry and Repository has two arms: a longitudinal arm for subjects with early RA (enrollment from 2000 to 2005) and a cross-sectional arm for subjects with any disease duration (enrollment from 2006 to 2012). CLEAR has two components: a database and a repository. The database contains extensive demographic, socioeconomic, clinical and radiographic (radiographs of hands and feet) information and bone mineral density data from DEXA scans. The repository contains genomic DNA, plasma and serum on most of the participants. Participants in CLEAR II had RNA isolated from peripheral blood cells.