Ashish Mathew is a rheumatologist from India, currently pursuing a clinical research fellowship at the Psoriatic Arthritis (PsA) Program, University Health Network, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is also enrolled as a PhD fellow at the University of Copenhagen, COPECARE, Glostrup, Denmark, working on “MRI [magnetic resonance imaging] of enthesitis in psoriatic arthritis” under Prof. Mikkel Østergaard. His research focuses on the use of MRI in early diagnosis, outcome measurement, and monitoring of psoriatic arthritis and spondyloarthritis. He is also interested in development of clinical outcome measures in psoriatic arthritis. He was awarded the NPF fellowship in 2019 and PARTNER fellowship in PsA in 2020.
Dr Mathew completed his rheumatology training at the Christian Medical College, Vellore, India, and joined the department of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology in the same institution as a faculty member. Treatment of PsA in limited resource settings has been a major challenge in his clinical practice in India. A vast majority of patients are not able to afford targeted disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs for PsA, and the few who can are not able to maintain for long. He is in the process of developing a PsA cohort in India, in collaboration with the University of Leeds, UK, which should help us understand the treatment choices and the effect of conventional DMARDs in patients with PsA.
Dr Mathew is an active member of the Group for Research and Assessment of Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis (GRAPPA), being part of two committees, the outcome measures in rheumatology (OMERACT) imaging in arthritis working group, and the GRAPPA/OMERACT initiative, refining the core set of outcome measures for PsA.