THE GARVAN INSTITUTE - Autoimmune Survey
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Did you know around 12% of Australians suffer from an autoimmune disease? And that over 80% of them are women?
Symptoms are often broad and overlapping with other disorders, which makes diagnoses tough.
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As a direct result, diagnostic journeys can be long and frustrating. Anecdotally, we are aware the self medication and self diagnosis are rife in the autoimmune community, and that this journey can impact (or be impacted by) mental health.
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Regrettably, this information hasn't reached the research community. This presents a real problem, as some of these factors can change the results of studies, which can make interpretation confusing, or even worse, wrong.
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The Garvan Institute thinks that needs to change. To do that, they have designed a survey to capture the experiences of the Australian Spoonie Community and they hope you will help them to gather this information - the more they can collate, the clearer any trends around medication, mental health and diagnosis will be. So please help them document our collective life stories and write them into the scientific literature, so patients can be treated more adequately.
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If you would like to help with this research and complete the survey, please click on the link below.
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The Garvan Institute is grateful for your support!
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22 July 2021
