Website launched to provide vasculitis information

The parents of a teenager who died from a rare disease have launched the first online resource for people living with the chronic illness.

Lauren Currie, of Kilmarnock, East Ayrshire, was 15 when she died from vasculitis in October 2010, a condition which was undiagnosed until her final visit to hospital.

She had been seen by doctors and consultants on various occasions with a number of health complaints in relation to her ears, nose and throat, and in her last days she began coughing excessively and was exhausted.

Doctors found blood in her lungs from haemorrhaged blood vessels and the damage caused proved fatal. Lauren suffered from a type of vasculitis known as Wegener’s granulomatosis, now called granulomatosis with polyangiitis.

It is just one variant of the disease, which causes an inflammation of blood vessels and can affect the function of an organ to which it supplies blood.

In the two-and-a-half years since their daughter, and only child, died, Grant and Adrienne Currie have worked to raise awareness about the disease with the public but also within the medical profession through the Lauren Currie Twilight Foundation (LCTF) website.

This week, they have launched the Patient Advice Centre to provide support and information to those affected by vasculitis.

Mr Currie, 42, said: “When we lost Lauren and returned home we started researching what our daughter had just died from and found very little information.

“Within a couple of days we decided to do something in her memory.”