We are pleased to announce that recent work carried out by the Jury Lab at University College London, on how patients with lupus feel about the role of diet and their disease management, has now been published in the journal ‘Lupus‘. 

Below, is a short summary report from the George Robinson about their research;

The reason that we in the Jury Group decided to conduct the survey, which was shared via social media, was due to the recent evidence from both our own work and that of others, suggesting that defects in the way fat levels in the blood are controlled could be related to disease symptoms in lupus patients. In the future, this may open the possibility for dietary changes to be suggested as a means of controlling disease symptoms. The role of diet in disease is an unanswered question and using this survey our aim was to identify whether patients are interested in this research area and to learn from their experience.

The survey was available online on Survey Monkey for three weeks in May 2018 and 300 responses were received with the help of promotion by both charities and lab groups through social media; LUPUS UK played a huge part in this. Following our analysis of the survey responses we found three key discoveries: 

– First, the majority of patients thought it was important for themselves and their doctors to know how diet can influence lupus and that they would be interested in trying diet as a therapeutic option; despite this we found that very few doctors (25%) had discussed diet with their patients.

– Second, 36% of patients reported that they had never been on a diet; however, of those that had, many felt that it had improved their lupus symptoms.

– Finally, this survey confirmed it is possible to obtain fast, cost-effective patient opinion online through social media promotion that provides a template for future studies.

The Jury Lab would like to thank all patients who took the time to carry out the survey. The full publication of this data can be found HERE.

More work will now be carried out by the Jury Lab to investigate more specific information regarding the improvement of the symptoms associated with lupus through dietary modification. We will keep you updated!

To learn more about the role diet can have in lupus, please take a look at the LUPUS UK booklet, ‘LUPUS and Healthy Eating’.

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