José Hernández-Rodríguez MD PhD

Senior Research Member
Research Group on Vasculitis at Hospital Clínic de Barcelona (HCB)-IDIBAPS

I began my medical and scientific career in the field of vasculitis by completing my residency in internal medicine in 1997. After I finished my doctoral thesis about giant-cell arteritis, I developed a post-doctoral fellowship with the mentoring of Dr. G Hoffman at the Center for Vasculitis Care and Research (Cleveland Clínic, Cleveland, Ohio, 2006-2008). I am a senior research member of the Research Group on Vasculitis at Hospital Clínic de Barcelona (HCB)-IDIBAPS since 1997, led by Dr. Maria C. Cid and considered an Emerging Research Group since 2009 and a Consolidated Research Group since 2014 by the AGAUR (Catalonian Government). In the field of vasculitis, I have participated as a co-investigator in several national competitive projects, as an author in numerous originals, reviews, and book chapters, and as an editor of books and clinical guidelines.

In addition to continuing assistance and research in vasculitis, since 2008 I coordinate the Clinical Unit of Autoinflammatory Diseases for adult patients at the Department of Autoimmune Diseases (HCB). The scientific contribution on autoinflammatory diseases in adult patients has been remarkable, and it has led us to collaborate with other research groups in different lines of research (eg, epigenetics, hyperinflammation in COVID-19) and in international coordinated projects (Eurofever and AIDA Network).

In the field of autoinflammatory diseases, I am the editor of two monographs on autoinflammatory diseases and a journal topic for Frontiers in Immunology, "Autoinflammatory diseases: from genes to the bedside." I am also the director of the online course "Expert in Autoinflammatory Diseases" (Editorial Panamericana), with 25 ECTS credits endorsed by the University of Barcelona.

I have also designed and coordinated a clinical trial with prednisone and colchicine in geriatric patients admitted with COVID-19 (FRAGILE-COLCOVID-19): "Treatment for Moderate/Severe COVID-19 in a Fragile and Vulnerable Population, Admitted to a Geriatric Hospital Unit or in a Transitional Care Center"(ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04492358). The results have been published in the journal Clinical Drug Investigation.

Our Department of Autoimmune Diseases in consortium with the Department of Pediatric Rheumatology of the Hospital Sant Joan de Déu (Barcelona) and the Department of Immunology (HCB) became in 2021 a reference center for autoinflammatory diseases, vasculitis, and other autoimmune diseases at European, Spanish, and Catalan level [at the “European Reference Network of the Rare primary Immunodeficiency, AuToinflammatory and Autoimmune diseases” (ERN-RITA - European Union); at the Spanish network “Centre, Service and Reference Unit (CSUR - Spanish Ministry of Health); and at the Catalonian “Network of Clinical Expert Units” (XUEC - Government of Catalonia)]. I act as co-coordinator of the autoinflammatory diseases unit on all three reference platforms. I also belong to the board of the founding members of the EULAR Study Group on Autoinflammatory Diseases, a EULAR study group established in April 2021, coordinated by Dr. Luca Cantarini (Unit of Rheumatology, University Hospital of Siena, Siena, Italy).