Unique opportunity to get your arthritis worries addressed

Despite the fact that millions of Australians are affected by arthritis, there’s still much we don’t know about the condition.

While we know sufferers often suffer severe pain and even disfigurement, there are still unanswered questions that have left many in the dark about  living with arthritis, as well as the possibility of a cure.

This is no small issue: almost 4 million Australians live with arthritis – a number that’s expected to blow out to 7 million by 2050 – and another 6.3 million have low bone density, a related condition.

Now, a public seminar offers people rare opportunity to ask doctors and arthritis experts questions about the condition and have them answered in a thorough, thoughtful way.

In a bid to open up the conversation about the common but poorly understood condition, the Queensland University of Technology is hosting a public seminar on Saturday 18 March, where anyone can come along and listen to experts talk about the latest innovations in this area. The seminar, which is part of of QUT’s Real World Health series, will be held in Brisbane and broadcast live online so people around the country can tune in and take part.

The most pressing issues in arthritis research is the need to develop an early-diagnosis test, and to find a cure for the condition. Professor Yin Xiao from the QUT Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation is working on just that.

“At present there’s no single test which will early diagnose or a drug that cure osteoarthritis,” he told Starts at 60. “In particular, our research interests include identifying risk factors of osteoarthritis, evaluating new ways of early diagnostics through improved imaging methods, and working towards designing and testing new treatments that help to repair osteoarthritis joints.”

At the seminar, speakers will be addressing key questions, including:

• What makes some people a higher risk for developing arthritis?
• Is arthritis in your genes?
• Can you halt arthritis’ progression, or reverse it? 
• Will arthritis ever be a thing of the past?

The experts will open the floor to the public to pose questions, and those who can’t attend in person can email questions through ahead of time then watch the seminar via a live stream online from home.

If you’d like to submit a question about arthritis, you can do by emailing [email protected] before Saturday.

Do you suffer from arthritis? Do you have questions you’d like answered?