The LRI finds many ways to educate Americans about the urgent need for innovative research to prevent, treat, and cure lupus. Along with this website, the Institute produces newsletters, press materials, fact sheets, brochures, scientist profiles, and other literature.

For recent LRI press releases, newsletter archives, and other reading material about lupus advances and discoveries around the world, see News.

One of LRI's most powerful tools for raising lupus awareness is through public service advertising (PSA) and education campaigns. The most recent campaign aims to spread awareness of lupus clinical trials and the need for patient volunteers to help find new treatments for lupus.

New Website Broadcasts Urgent Need
for Lupus Clinical Trials

Will Next Decade Be 'Golden Era' of
Lupus Drug Development?

No New FDA-Approved Drugs to Treat the Disease
in 40+ Years

May 21, 2007 (New York, NY) – The Lupus Research Institute and its National Coalition of state and local lupus organizations today announced the launch of www.LupusTrials.org, the official website for the new clinical trials campaign “Lupus Together: For Clinical Trials Today.”

The patient-friendly site is part of a year-long national initiative to educate the more than 1.5 million Americans with lupus—a chronic autoimmune disease for which there is no known cause, few medicines, and no cure—about the importance of participating in lupus clinical trials, and how to go about enrolling in one. 

The timing is critical, as promising new research findings spur drug developers to contemplate clinical research in lupus for the first time in decades.

Of the more than 15 clinical trials underway, many explore alternatives to the presently used drugs that are often as destructive—or even more so—than the disease itself. Currently approved therapies for lupus can weaken bones, destroy eyesight, cause uncontrollable appetite and mood swings, and sharply increase the risk for infection, diabetes and infertility, among other insidious and potentially life-threatening complications.

“Our patients need better treatment options,” explains Margaret Dowd, president of the Lupus Research Institute. “Now is the time for the next generation of lupus therapies. We have waited long enough.”

To spread awareness of the existence and promise of clinical trials, visitors to the new website will not only learn about the clinical trial process but can read first-hand accounts of others who have participated in trials and get strategies for locating a trial that is taking place close to them.

“Our hope is that the next 10 years will be the Golden Age for the development of new lupus drugs,” says leading lupus doctor Richard Furie, MD, chief of rheumatology at North Shore-LIJ Health System in New York. “Science is ready. But for success, the lupus community must band together.”
“We have the experts to conduct the trials. We have the Institute and others to get the word out. But to get results, we need lupus patients to show interest. This is for them. They need to do their part.”

Without enough study volunteers, trials cannot successfully determine the effectiveness of a treatment. This may discourage companies from exploring new drugs for lupus in the future.

To learn more about lupus clinical trials, log on to www.LupusTrials.org.

Read about the 2005 “Get into the Loop” national PSA campaign starring actor James Garner »