
Monday 14 April 2025
Why do my joints hurt and will anything help them?
By Philip Conaghan

Joint pain and arthritis affect over 10% of our population, with increasing frequency as we get older. There are over 200 different types of arthritis, joint and bone conditions but these are generally classified into 2 types: mechanical problems, related to how we use our bodies and with symptoms that are worse at the end of the day or after periods of disuse, and inflammatory diseases which tend to give hours of early morning joint stiffness. Advances in drug therapies have been revolutionary in helping inflammatory arthritis in the last 20 years. For the common joint problems, we are only just starting to understand where the joint pain comes from. Prof Conaghan will provide an overview of arthritis with a special focus on mechanical problems like osteoarthritis and what we can all do to reduce joint pain.
Speaker: Philip Conaghan MBBS PhD FRACP FRCP, is Director of the NIHR Leeds Biomedical Research Centre and until recently was also Director of the Leeds Institute of Rheumatic and Musculoskeletal Medicine at the University of Leeds, UK. He is a practising rheumatologist at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS trust. His translational and clinical trial research programme focuses on understanding the causes of, and developing effective therapies for, common joint problems. He co-leads a number of international initiatives and has co-authored over 700 publications as original research papers, reviews and book chapters. He has received multiple international research awards.
Venue: The New Headingley Club, 56 St Michaels Road, LS6 3BG
Time: Room opens 7:30, talk begins promptly at 7:45pm
Entry: Donation please for room hire and expenses: £4 at the door

Café Scientifique Headingley is a programme run under the auspices of the Headingley Development Trust
– see http://headingleydevelopmenttrust.org.uk
Our next online meeting will be:Our next online meeting will be:Monday 25th January at 7.30
“The Promise of Gravitational Waves” by Sue Bowle