We have rooms available in Horton Halls, our university-managed housing facility. Learn more and apply now.
Learn more about our key research areas and our research objectives.
We are building a positive research culture at St George's where researchers feel empowered to do their best work and develop their career.
We're putting £5.8 million of Office for Students funding towards improving facilities and equipment for our students.
Deep brain stimulation has revealed that a specific type of brain wave activity is associated with levels of anxiety in people living with Parkinson’s disease.
Your gift to St George’s will inspire our students, our research, and our community, and ultimately impact the patients who will benefit from the care and expertise of our graduates around the world.
Enjoy stories of impact and support from generous donations.
Professor Nidhi Sofat works on the causes of pain and inflammation in musculoskeletal diseases using a bench-to-bedside experimental approach.
Musculoskeletal conditions are a major cause of pain and disability worldwide. In conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis, pain is a major symptom. Pain can be triggered by local damage to the joint, which is caused by molecules produced in the body including prostaglandins and cytokines. The human response of pain and inflammation is often an early warning system to prevent further damage and harm. However, in arthritis, several molecular pathways are switched on continuously, which causes symptoms. A major question in arthritis is how to switch off these pain and inflammation pathways.
Professor Sofat and her group have established the importance of different characteristics of pain in arthritis using a variety of techniques including sensory testing and imaging of the joint by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Her group has shown how the brain is activated during arthritis pain (in collaboration with Professor Franklyn Howe). Professor Sofat’s group have tested drugs to combat pain in arthritis patients from her rheumatology clinics which target pain sensitisation.
As well as carrying out clinical studies, Professor Sofat’s group investigates how different parts of the joint trigger pain and inflammation. Her group performed the first gene expression study of bone marrow lesions in arthritis. Ultimately, a better understanding of the mechanisms inducing pain and inflammation could be used to develop improved diagnostic tools and treatments for arthritis.
Kuttapitiya A, Assi L, Laing K, Hing CB, Mitchell P, Whitley G, Harrison A, Howe FA, Ejindu V, Heron C, Sofat N. Microarray analysis of bone marrow lesions in osteoarthritis demonstrates upregulation of genes implicated in osteochondral turnover, neurogenesis and inflammation. Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, 2017; 76(10): 1764-1773.
Fuggle NR, Smith TO, Kaul A, Sofat N. Hand to Mouth: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Association between Rheumatoid Arthritis and Periodontitis. Front Immunol 2016; 7: 80; doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2016.00080
Browser does not support script.