Research Highlight of the Year
Research Highlight of the Year 2025 sponsored by Circle Health Group
Welcome to the voting page for Research Highlight of the Year 2025! This was your chance to celebrate the outstanding work that’s made a real impact over the past year.
We shortlisted six incredible highlights, and you chose the one that stood out the most.
We hope you’ve enjoyed exploring each highlight and reading more about them to help you decide who deserved to win. If you haven’t yet, please take a moment learn more.
A word from our sponsor:
"Circle Health Group are delighted to sponsor the RHOTY award, supporting further research into arthritis, a condition Circle Health Group supports thousands of patients with yearly at each of its 54 hospitals nationwide."
"Circle Health Group is proud that 80% of adults in the UK live within 60 minutes of one of their facilities and have over 750 specialist orthopaedic consultants that can see patients for an initial appointment in as little as 48 hours. They provide, assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and surgery for orthopaedic conditions, with state-of-the-art imaging and expert physiotherapy."
"Circle Health Group sees over 2 million patients a year across multiple specialities and has won numerous awards for its quality of care."
The six research projects on our shortlist
Researching how socioeconomic inequalities can impact musculoskeletal pain and primary care.
Find out moreUsing immune cell health to track disease activity in Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis.
Find out moreUsing genes from nearly 2 million people to better understand the biology of osteoarthritis.
Find out moreDeveloping an osteoarthritis peer mentoring programme with and for people facing socioeconomic disadvantage.
Find out moreInvestigating how sex differences play a role in the immune system.
Find out moreInvestigating how changes in immune cells called dendritic cells can help us understand what remission in rheumatoid arthritis really looks like.
Find out moreVoting is now closed.
Thank you for helping us recognise and celebrate excellence in Arthritis UK funded research.
Thank you for voting!
Find out about the winner in our News.
Key research insights
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Exploring the link between joint injury and osteoarthritis
Our research is looking at the association between joint injury and the risk of developing osteoarthritis.
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Juvenile idiopathic arthritis - Validating targets and defining clinical outcomes in enthesitis related arthritis
Learn more about identifying new treatments and understanding the long-term effects of enthesitis related arthritis.
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Osteoarthritis - Using osteoarthritis genetics to restore healthy joint cartilage
Learn about our research which is using the latest discoveries from the arcOGEN study to reveal how osteoarthritis DNA changes can improve treatments.
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Could artificial intelligence help us detect and predict osteoarthritis?
Could we use artificial intelligent (AI) to detect osteoarthritis earlier and understand how it develops? This is exactly what we hope to achieve with our latest research fellowship together with Orthopaedic Research UK (ORUK).
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Osteoarthritis - The role of gender, menopause and sex hormones in hand osteoarthritis
Learn about our research into understanding the impact that gender, menopause and sex hormones have on the duration and severity of hand osteoarthritis.
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Rheumatoid arthritis - Investigating how bacteria disrupts the immune system
Learn about our research into whether mouth and gut bacteria can trick the immune system to attack the body’s own tissues, causing rheumatoid arthritis.