NEWSLETTERS

INTERNATIONAL IgA NEPHROPATHY NETWORK

Newsletter – April 2003

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

Welcome to the renewed website of the International IgA Nephropathy Network.

The Network has now been in existence for two years – but before that for many years it was the informal collective of people who called themselves the IgA Club.

Our primary purpose is to share information about IgA nephropathy – its possible causes, its natural history, and how it might be treated or prevented.

We welcome anyone who is concerned with IgA nephropathy to join the Network – including patients, careers, clinical health professionals, and scientists.

Steering Committee
The Network remains an informal and friendly group but as we increase in size we have developed some formal structures. We now have a Steering Committee – and you can find details about the committee elsewhere on the website.

John Feehally (Leicester, UK) - Convenor, E-mail address: jf27@le.ac.uk
Rosanna Coppo (Torino, Italy) – Secretary/Treasurer E-mail address: nefrologia@oirmsantanna.piemonte.it
François Berthoux (St. Etienne, France) E-mail address: francois.berthoux@univ-st-etienne.fr
Bruce Julian (Birmingham AL, USA) E-mail address: bjulian@nrtc.dom.uab.edu
John Knight (Wycombe, UK) E-mail address: jknight@prdgb.jnj.com
Renato Monteiro (Paris, France) E-mail address: monteiro@bichat.inserm.fr
Yasuhiko Tomino (Tokyo, Japan) E-mail address: jin-01@med.juntendo.ac.jp


Website (www.igan-world.org)
The website has become our main way of informing you of the Networks’ activities. We have recently refreshed the website through the hard work of Rosanna Coppo, our Secretary-Treasurer, with the professional expertise of Francesca Trebelli. We hope you will find the website informative and easy to navigate.
Those of you familiar with our previous website will recognise the direct link to PubMed to search published research on IgA nephropathy, the information for patients and careers and information on current clinical trials.
We hope you will also find useful the details about IgA nephropathy research groups around the world. This section will steadily expand and we want it to be an incentive for researchers to strengthen friendships and collaboration around the world.

Membership
We warmly invite you to become a member of the Network, so we can keep you in closer touch by e-mail with all our activities.
We ask you for a single membership payment of $20 (€20 or £13). This is a single payment not an annual subscription, but we are sure you will understand we must meet some administrative costs.
We apologise that at present we do not have facilities for credit card payments, but details of payment procedure are shown at www.igan-world.org/join.htm

Scientific Meetings
The Network’s principal activity has been a series of scientific meetings which go back more than 20 years. Details of the previous meetings and their programmes are shown at www.igan-world.org/meetings.htm

We are pleased to say that we already have exciting plans for further meetings up to the end of this decade.

• In particular we are looking forward to our next gathering, the 10th International Congress on IgA Nephropathy in St. Etienne, France, 26th -27th March 2004. An excellent programme is being prepared by a Scientific Committee chaired by the local organiser, François Berthoux. Go to www.igan-world.org/2004meeting.htm

• Future congresses are also being planned in Japan 2006, Italy 2008 and Finland 2010.

• The Network has also been given the opportunity to plan and lead a symposium on IgA Nephropathy during the 41st Annual Congress of the European Renal Association- EDTA, Lisbon, 15-18 May 2004.
The programme for this symposium, entitled ‘What’s new in IgA nephropathy?’ will be posted here soon.

We welcome you all to the Network website, which we will be using to ensure you are up to date with the activities of the International IgA Nephropathy Network.

John Feehally
Convenor

Newsletter 2001