Threads of Discovery – Seeking lived experience of maternal health

We will be hosting an in-person introductory meeting on Wednesday 22nd April for lived experience partners and researchers. Find out more below.

We look at the type of diabetes that develops during pregnancy (gestational diabetes). We want to see if the placenta in the womb plays a role in gestational diabetes developing and progressing to type 2 diabetes in the years after pregnancy. We believe that tiny blebs called extracellular vesicles break away from the placenta and travel to maternal organs during pregnancy. These blebs may influence the way fat cells interact with the hormone, insulin and cause them to make these fat cells less sensitive to glucose. This is important in the short term as it can result in pregnancy complications, such as gestational diabetes, and in the longer term can increase the risk of type 2 diabetes. 

This communication is part of a project funded by UCD STEM Challenge Fund called  “Threads of Discovery: Weaving Patients into Biomedical Research” driven by the Patient Voice in Health Research network in UCD Conway Institute. As part of this initiative, we are looking for partners with a lived experience of different disease areas to collaborate with researchers within UCD Conway Institute. 

We will be hosting an introductory meeting on Wednesday 22nd April for lived experience partners and researchers. This will be in person, and will be a day to get to know each other, to learn a bit about public and patient involvement (PPI), to set expectations, and to have a chat. 

We hope through this initiative that long-term partnerships will be established. However, if at the end of the day you think this isn’t for you, that is absolutely fine. You won’t be locked into something you don’t want to be involved in! This is all exploratory.