Deborah Symmons
Deborah Symmons is a graduate of the University of Birmingham Medical School. She completed her general professional training in medicine in the teaching hospitals of Birmingham. She gained her rheumatology training at the Hammersmith Hospital and Guy’s Hospital in London, the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton, and the University of Birmingham Teaching Hospitals. In 1988, she spent time at the Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, gaining experience in Epidemiology. She moved to the Arthritis Research Campaign Epidemiology Unit in Manchester in 1989. She was promoted to the Chair of Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Epidemiology at the University of Manchester in 2001. In October 2008 she was appointed as the Medical Director and Head of the Arthritis Research UK Epidemiology Unit. She also works as an Honorary Consultant Rheumatologist for the East Cheshire NHS Trust where she does general rheumatology clinics, paediatric rheumatology clinics and connective tissue disease clinics.
Her main research interest is in the clinical epidemiology of inflammatory arthritis (including rheumatoid arthritis). Her publications cover risk factors for the development of inflammatory arthritis, the incidence and prevalence of rheumatoid arthritis, and the outcome of inflammatory arthritis in particular with respect to disability, mortality, cardiovascular disease and malignancy. She is principal investigator on the Norfolk Arthritis Register, the BSR Biologics Register and a number of clinical trials in RA.
