NIHR Newcastle BRC Translational Research Event

Location: David Shaw Lecture Theatre, Medical School
Time/Date: 10th January 2013, 09:00 - 18:00

The NIHR Newcastle Biomedical Research Centre presents:

Translational Research Event - "Chronic Disease - What's the point and are we missing it?"

10 January 2013, Newcastle University

Western populations are living to ever greater ages.  They are, however, increasingly experiencing chronic diseases which can have significant impact on peoples’ lives.  Complex impacts of chronic disease experienced over long periods of time, together with loss of function, present a real challenge both for patients and for health and social care systems.  They also represent, however, a unique opportunity for the pharmaceutical industry to develop novel paradigms for intervention.  The NIHR Newcastle Biomedical Research Centre has a particular interest in chronic disease, the complexity of the problems it gives rise to and the ways that it impacts on people’s lives. 

The traditional view of disease is to focus on the specific process features. This is particularly the case in chronic disease with a focus on, for example motor control in the Parkinson’s Disease patient and severity of liver injury in the Primary Biliary Cirrhosis patient.  It is increasingly clear, however, from work carried out in Newcastle, that many chronic diseases are associated with complex additional, often systemic problem sets which can, in many cases, be a significantly greater burden to patients than the primary disease features. Patient surveys in both the exemplar conditions of Parkinson’s Disease and Primary Biliary Cirrhosis typically identify fatigue and cognitive impairment as being bigger problems in the lives of patients than the more classical features, whilst frequently being neglected by physicians. Intriguingly, there is emerging evidence to suggest that many of these complex and functional features are identical in different disease processes, suggesting an underlying complex of chronic injury/inflammation associated clinical features.  This offers the tantalising prospect that common underpinning processes may be contributing to the complex phenotype and, potentially, that common therapies may be effective. 

The goal of this day is to explore the complexity of chronic disease and to address the question have we “missed the point” about the problems that chronic disease can potentially cause, and are we in danger of missing an opportunity to maximise the benefit across significant number of diseases by common approaches to therapy?

For details of the event, please download the flyer.

To register, please go to: http://forms.ncl.ac.uk/view.php?id=3991
  

For queries, please contact Miriam Lowes, NIHR Newcastle BRC Administrator by e-mail: miriam.lowes@ncl.ac.uk or telephone: 0191 248 1145

If you are unable to attend yourself, please would you send a colleague to attend on your behalf

Professor Patrick Chinnery
Director NIHR Biomedical Research Centre
Faculty of Medical Sciences
Newcastle University

Published: 13th December 2012