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Meet a Fellow

Dr Rui Moco - Portugal

I’m a medical doctor from Portugal, presently in the 3rd year of training in Internal Medicine. Internal Medicine is a broad speciality that cares about patients with multiorganic diseases including cardiovascular, pulmonary, endocrine and autoimmune conditions among others. Like in other medical areas, to adequately treat these patients is necessary not only to have a good theoretical support but also a good clinical practice. The latter can only be achieved through the direct contact with patients – they are the ones who “teach” us how to properly deal with them.

That is why I came to the Louise Coote Lupus Unit, a world renowned one, devoted to the management of Lupus and other autoimmune conditions, including Hughes’ syndrome. This Unit has already demonstrated an important ability to diagnose and manage these conditions but also to do the indispensable research work that allows the discovering of different faces of these not yet fully understood disturbances of the immune system.

The research projects that I’ve been working on are: the assessment of “sticky-blood antibodies” in the outcome of Vasculitis patients (similarly to what have already been done for patients with Lupus); the impact of a new drug called Rituximab in some autoimmune diseases including Lupus and Hughes’ syndrome; the description of several cases of Coeliac disease, a condition that only rarely is diagnosed in patients with Lupus and finally a study that includes 100 patients with Multiple Sclerosis-like features (30 of them having Lupus) and aims to find characteristics that may help to do the distinction between the two conditions.

It is mainly through the publication of scientific articles in a wide variety of journals and magazines that the indispensable spread of information is done throughout the world. Also one can not forget that contact with all the staff within the Unit is a most valuable experience that it is hard to forget. That’s why I am truly grateful to be here learning from you all, doctors, nurses and patients.

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