Article by Debbie Kinsey, Health Information, Policy, & Research Manager
SLEuro is a conference for researchers and healthcare professionals across Europe to come together and share the latest research, treatment, and support for people with lupus. Although it’s mainly for professionals, people living with lupus are also able to attend, which is quite unusual for medical conference and a real strength of the event. Lupus Europe, an organisation which brings together patient organisations from across Europe, were also involved in organising the conference and running some sessions, which helped to ensure the voice of people living with lupus was strong throughout.
I had the real pleasure of attending the conference on behalf of Lupus UK to learn about the latest developments and meet with researchers, as well as getting to see lots of research funded by Lupus UK be presented in talks or posters!
What’s particularly great about these conferences, is seeing how many people are working towards improving the lives of people living with lupus, and how much progress is being made. There’s a lot of hard work and a lot of hope! It’s difficult to choose highlights from so much, but a few:
- Hot-off-the-presses trial results for potential new treatments (including one which is about to go through the appraisal process in England and Wales).
- Fascinating work investigating the causes of lupus generally and the causes and treatment of specific symptoms.
- Lots of talks which included the importance of understanding the lived experience of people with lupus, and some great talks about health inequalities.
- Taking part in “fishbowl” sessions. These are when experts debate a particular topic, but they leave an empty seat in their circle. The audience sits around them and anyone can sit in the empty seat to ask a question or give their opinion. It’s a great opportunity to get actively involved in discussions, and every fishbowl at this conference included patients as well as researchers and healthcare professionals. And, importantly, everyone’s view was equally valued.
An additional highlight was two fantastic early-career researchers winning the Lupus Europe Abstract Award for their work, which was funded by Lupus UK! Congratulations to Maria Pisliakova and Nidhi Rege, as well as Anisur Rahman who led the project.
Lupus Europe volunteers who attended the conference recorded some videos with researchers talking about their work. They recently held a webinar which shared lots of these videos, along with some reflections of their own experiences, which is a great way to hear about some of the fantastic work presented at the conference and get a feel for what it was like. You can watch a recording on YouTube below:
The next European Lupus Meeting will be in Athens in 2028. We’re already looking forward to it!