San Diego

The UC San Diego School of Medicine received $2.5 million to fund a research center to study arthritis and other chronic musculoskeletal diseases in hopes of developing better treatments, officials said Tuesday.

The National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases awarded the money to UCSD in August, UCSD spokeswoman Denine Denlinger said. UCSD, however, just released word of the grant on Tuesday.

At the UCSD center, one of 14 such facilities nationwide, doctors will launch a variety of studies, attempting to devise treatments for debilitating diseases such as osteoporosis, lupus, and back pain--disorders that affect nearly every family, Denlinger said.

Dr. Dennis Carson, a UCSD professor of medicine, will direct the center, called the Multipurpose Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Diseases Center.

In recent months, the center has started several studies, including evaluating the financial costs associated with arthritis, developing treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, and devising a behavior modification therapy for fibromyalgia, a muscular-pain disease that afflicts women from 30 to 50 years of age.