Professor van der Heijde is member of the department of rheumatology. She has an appointment of 0.2 fte, completely dedicated to research. Since 2007, she has also been affiliated to the Diakonhjemmet Hospital in Oslo, Norway as senior researcher and since 2014 she is visiting professor at the University of Oslo. Professor van der Heijde received the Gosling award for her thesis. She also received the prestigious Carol Nachman Award for her scientific contributions to rheumatology in 2011, a doctorate honoris causa from the University of Ghent in Belgium in 2012, and the Jan van Breemen medal in 2017. She is an honorary member of EULAR. In 2019 she gave the Hasinger Lecture in Berlin, Germany.

More information about Désirée van der Heijde

Professor van der Heijde is member of the department of rheumatology. She has an appointment of 0.2 fte, completely dedicated to research. Since 2007, she has also been affiliated to the Diakonhjemmet Hospital in Oslo, Norway as senior researcher and since 2014 she is visiting professor at the University of Oslo. Professor van der Heijde received the Gosling award for her thesis. She also received the prestigious Carol Nachman Award for her scientific contributions to rheumatology in 2011, a doctorate honoris causa from the University of Ghent in Belgium in 2012, and the Jan van Breemen medal in 2017. She is an honorary member of EULAR. In 2019 she gave the Hasinger Lecture in Berlin, Germany.

Rheumatology

All research activities are focused around the central theme of ‘outcome assessment’. This includes assessment of disease activity (inflammation) as well as the consequence of the disease (structural damage, health related quality of life). These assessments include clinical and patient reported outcome measures and imaging. The main diseases that are topic of research are inflammatory rheumatic diseases with a focus on rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis and spondyloarthritis. Imaging modalities that are being used include MRI (several modalities), plain radiography and CT scan. As part of her thesis, the Disease Activity Score (DAS) for rheumatoid arthritis was developed, which is now worldwide implemented in the assessment of rheumatoid arthritis in research and in the clinic. Also, the radiographic scoring method ‘modified Sharp-van der Heijde’ for the assessment of damage in joints of hands and feet was developed during the research for her thesis and is now the leading scoring method, also used for registration of new drugs by authorities such as FDA and EMA. Many other outcome measures have been developed and validated under her responsibility. Examples are the RAQol and ASQol (quality of life questionnaire for RA and ankylosing spondylitis); the ASAS health index (impact measure for axial spondyloarthritis); MASES (Maastricht Ankylosing Spondylitis Enthesitis Score); ASDAS (Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Score), the CTSS (CT syndesmophyte score) and the CT-Facet Joint score. In addition, an active role was taken in the validation of existing outcome measures; examples are the mSASSS (modified Stoke Ankylosing Spondylitis Spinal Score); various scoring methods for MRI in axial Spondyloarthriis; Spinal mobility measures such as the Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Mobility Index. The availability of these validated outcome measures made it possible to investigate the relationship between various aspects of the disease such as the relationship between disease activity (inflammation) and damage (visible on radiographs or MRI); between disease activity and physical function/quality of life and between damage and physical function/quality of life. This was done successfully for both rheumatoid arthritis and axial spondyloarthritis.

Academic career

Désirée van der Heijde obtained her medical degree in 1986 from the Catholic University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. In the period from October 1986 to January 1991 research was performed in clinical rheumatology resulting in the thesis entitled: 'Disease activity and outcome in rheumatoid arthritis. A methodological study'. The PhD degree was obtained on the 8th of March 1991 at the university of Nijmegen. She became a Board-Certified Rheumatologist in 1993. Following a 1-year appointment in Sweden in 1993, she joined the Department of Rheumatology at the University Hospital Maastricht from 1994 until 2007. On March 8, 2002 she held her inaugural lecture entitled ‘Meten is weten’ at the University of Maastricht.  In 2007 she took up her current position as Professor of Rheumatology in particular outcome research at the Leiden University Medical Center. Since 2007, she has also been affiliated to the Diakonhjemmet Hospital in Oslo, Norway. She is visiting professor at the University of Oslo since 2024. The Lancet published in 2018 a summary of her career.

Prizes and honourable appointments

For her thesis, she received the Gosling award. She was awarded the prestigious Carol Nachman Award for her scientific contributions to rheumatology in 2011, a doctorate honoris causa from the University of Ghent in Belgium in 2012, and the Jan van Breemen medal from the Dutch Society of Rheumatology in 2017. She is an honorary member of EULAR. Since 2014 she received each year the Thomson Reuters/Clarivate ‘Highly Cited Researcher’ certificate for multiple highly cited papers that rank in the top 1% for that year in the category clinical medicine.

Publications