Dr. David Felson is Evans Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Boston University. For his arthritis research, he has received both the OARSI Clinical Research Award and an OARSI Lifetime Achievement Award and was the first ever recipient of the American College of Rheumatology clinical research award. He has won the Howley Prize from the Arthritis Foundation twice, most recently in 2020.
His major research contributions have been in osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. In osteoarthritis, he founded the Framingham Heart Study Osteoarthritis Study and cofounded the Multicenter Osteoarthritis (MOST Study). He pioneered studies showing that obesity caused knee osteoarthritis and that weight loss prevented it. He also introduced MRI into large scale studies and his group showed that synovitis and bone marrow lesions, injury lesions to bone deep to cartilage, were major sources of pain. As a consequence, these structures may become targets of treatment. He has led placebo controlled trials in OA, participated in OA treatment guidelines committees and currently leads the Arthritis Foundation’s OA Clinical Trial Network.
In rheumatoid arthritis, Dr. Felson developed the first core set of outcomes, then led the first joint American College and European League committee to define outcomes in RA trials The recommended outcome, the ACR20, has been adopted by all regulatory agencies and is the major criterion used to approve drugs in RA.
In addition, Dr. Felson has trained many of the leading clinical researchers in rheumatology both in the US and around the world and has seen patients on an active basis for over 30 years.