EULAR Awards celebrate student doctor’s research

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It’s been an exciting year for Student Doctor Maria Hanif, completing her intercalated year on the Clinical Sciences MRes programme, and receiving the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) 2024 Abstract Award in the category of 'Undergraduate Abstract Award.’  

“My supervisor and I decided to submit an abstract to the European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology (EULAR) 2024 Congress to highlight part of my research project we had been conducting during my intercalation. 

My abstract was accepted for oral presentation at the congress, which we were all very happy about.  

After this acceptance, I received an email a few weeks later explaining I had been awarded the Undergraduate Abstract Award for EULAR 2024, which was a lovely surprise as I had not applied for any prizes! EULAR’s awards body assesses all accepted abstracts for awards so I was very grateful mine was chosen. 

My abstract was looking at the factors associated with damage in Childhood-onset Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (cSLE), which resulted in some interesting findings.  

We found that methylprednisolone exposure was associated with damage in all patients so there may need to be a potential review of paediatric-dosage regimens. We also found disease activity was associated with damage in all patients except for those with low disease activity, suggesting keeping patients in a low disease state using target treatment approaches could also reduce a patient’s damage risk.  

I really enjoyed attending EULAR. It was my first time going to an international congress, this year hosted in Vienna which is an amazing city.  

I had the opportunity to present my work and discuss current on-going research with both adult and paediatric Rheumatologists from across the globe.  

I also had the opportunity to meet with individuals who worked in Patient Public Involvement, looking at what was important to patients in the research we are conducting and getting the patient perspective on how processes can be improved.  

I have really enjoyed my intercalating year and have had the opportunity to learn so much about research skills, the paediatric-rheumatology speciality overall and other competencies such as lab and business skills.  

My highlights have been attending the EULAR Congress and seeing how my research could lead to positive changes for patients through potential suggestions for clinician’s management plans.  

One of the challenges this year was learning how to write code to conduct the analysis plan, which was out of my comfort zone but with the help of our team and practice this was overcome.   

I would like to thank my supervisor Dr Eve Smith for taking me on for my intercalated degree, Ms Chandni Sarker who helped with the data analysis, Professor Michael Beresford for his expert guidance, EULAR for the Undergraduate Award, the Alder Hey EATC and Wolfson Foundation for their support and to all the patients and their families for allowing this research to be possible. 

Discover More: 

  • Passionate about research? Take a look at the MRes options available to you at the University of Liverpool, including Biomedical Sciences and Translational Medicine MRes, on the Research Masters options page (link). 
  • Find out more about intercalation options (link) at the School of Medicine