Dr. Jonathan Kay MD

Jonathan Kay, MD, is Professor of Medicine and Population and Quantitative Health Sciences and holds the Timothy S. and Elaine L. Peterson Chair in Rheumatology at the UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester, where he directs clinical research in the Division of Rheumatology and is Associate Director of the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP)-funded MD/PhD Program. His clinical appointment is as a Physician at UMass Memorial Medical Center, also in Worcester. He received his medical degree from the University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco, California. He then completed an internship and residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and fellowships in rheumatology and immunology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.

Dr. Kay is a Fellow of the American College of Rheumatology and of the American College of Physicians. In 2018, he received the Distinguished Service Award from the American College of Rheumatology and he was awarded honorary membership in EULAR. He is an ad hoc reviewer for many journals.

Dr. Kay’s clinical interests span the spectrum of rheumatic diseases, with special interest in rheumatoid arthritis, spondyloarthropathies, and other forms of inflammatory arthritis. He was a member of the group that developed the 2010 ACR/EULAR Diagnostic and Classification Criteria for Rheumatoid Arthritis. He chaired the Rheumatology Working Group and was a member of the Internal Medicine and Musculoskeletal Topic Advisory Groups for the World Health Organization in its Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-11.

Over the past decade, his clinical research has focused on clinical aspects of inflammatory arthritis and, over the previous three decades, on nephrogenic systemic fibrosis (formerly known as nephrogenic fibrosing dermopathy), β2-microglobulin amyloidosis, and other rheumatologic problems of patients with chronic kidney disease. Over the past decade, he has also been involved in the development of biosimilars to treat rheumatic diseases. Dr. Kay has been a principal investigator on over 60 clinical trials of novel therapies for rheumatoid arthritis, axial spondyloarthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, gout, and osteoarthritis. He lectures internationally and is the author of more than 270 publications and book chapters.