MissLidia Nigrelli

I am a Research Postgraduate in the Faculty of Medicine and I work in the Osteoarthritis Research Group (PI: Dr Fiona E. Watt). My PhD is focused on investigating the hormonal factors that underlies the excess female risk for developing painful osteoarthritis and it is funded by the Pain Relief Foundation Professor John Miles Studentship.

Before starting my PhD, I worked as a Research Assitant at University College London on studies focused on understand the factors that affect ageing, and a COVID-19 study that was set up during the pandemic to understand more about long-COVID and recovery after a COVID-19 infection. I then joined the Osteoarthritis Research Group at Imperial College London as a Research Assitant, where I am now also undertaking my PhD.

Our research group aims to establish risk factors that are associated with the progression of osteoarthritis in high-risk groups such as individuals who have had a clinically significant knee injury. During my time as a Research Assitant, I was part of a multi-disciplinary team based at the Imperial College London NHS Healthcare Trust where I worked with study participants to collect biological samples for our Osteoarthritis Biobank. This work enables us to investigate genetic predisposition to post-traumatic osteoarthritis and in the future to find new biomarkers relevant to knee joint injury, early osteoarthritis and clinical outcomes.

Now, my work is focused on reducing the evidence gap in understanding why women are more prone to developing osteoarthritis and will use exisiting longitudinal datasets to carry out this research.