Deeper Dive
Rheumatoid arthritis and gouty arthritis are inflammatory joint diseases that affect nearly 250 million people worldwide. Together, they exact disability, reduced quality of life, and increased mortality as well as hundreds of billions of dollars in annual medical and economic tolls. Current therapies for preventing these diseases are suboptimal and often induce serious adverse events. By analyzing multiple diverse nationwide health insurance databases of hundreds of millions of people, I discovered that haloperidol, a drug that is approved for the treatment of mental disorders, reduced the risk of both rheumatoid arthritis and gouty arthritis. I also identified a new molecular receptor that binds haloperidol and enables it to suppress inflammation inside cells. This precise molecular target and biological mechanism of action of this drug are what enabled it to reduce the risk of these arthritides. My studies suggest that haloperidol could be repurposed for two major diseases that cause disability in hundreds of millions of people across the world.
My work has the potential to affect millions of people’s lives as it could result in a novel way to prevent or treat debilitating forms of arthritis that cause so much pain and suffering around the world.