About Us
St Thomas' Lupus Trust history
The Lupus unit at St Thomas' Hospital opened in 1985 and is now recognised throughout the world for its clinics, its teaching and its research. The history of the Lupus unit in fact goes back to 1971 when Dr Graham Hughes set up Europe's first specialised Lupus clinic in Hammersmith Hospital. Although at first considered rare, Lupus became increasingly recognised, so that when, in 1985 the team moved to St Thomas' Hospital in the centre of London, there was already a sizeable clinic. This clinic has continued to grow - there are now 5,000 patients on the register at the unit, making it almost certainly one of the largest in the world.
The activities of the Lupus unit are divided into Teaching, Research and Clinical work. In 1997 the Lupus clinic moved into a new purpose built unit, the Louise Coote Lupus Unit, named after one of our patients who died of the illness.
The dream had always been to have a unit where true experts can deal with the many different features of the disease. This dream has now become a reality - there are weekly Lupus pregnancy clinics, Hughes Syndrome clinics, Vasculitis clinics and nurse-led clinics, as well as rheumatologists, haematologists and obstetricians in attendance.
In parallel with this clinical work the unit runs an international postgraduate teaching programme, with doctors from all over the world spending time in the clinics and laboratories. The research unit is one of the most productive of its kind in Europe, with some thirty to forty peer reviewed papers on Lupus each year. The funding of research is not cheap. Running costs including test tubes, chemicals and so on are expensive and salaries even more so.
So in 1991 in a do-or-die decision we decided to set up our own charity, the St Thomas' Lupus Trust, aimed specifically to support lupus research at St Thomas'. Today, our charity pays the salaries of doctors and nurses in the unit and also research nurses and technicians as well as 100% of the running costs of the lupus research.
Interestingly, most patients think that the doctors and nurses helping them in the Lupus clinic and are paid for by the NHS. In fact of the team we pay for 2 doctors and 4 nurses. It could be argued that we shouldn't have to raise our own money to support NHS work! True - but without our efforts this world-class unit and the care of literally thousands of Lupus patients would not continue.
All of us working in the Lupus Unit are very proud of it. We are proud of the fact that all the money raised by our charity is ploughed back into the research and treatment of Lupus.
A BIG thank you to all of you who have supported the St Thomas' Lupus Trust, PLEASE continue to support us!
