Katie Tinkler was forced to give up her job as a fitness instructor because of debilitating pain and fatigue caused by severe lupus. The 50-year-old from Guildford in Surrey , who is married to Simon and has three children, Isabelle, 24, Evie, 20, and Zac, 18, has now been offered the chance of remission through CAR T-cell therapy on the NHS. The therapy works by genetically modifying cells to enable the body’s own immune system to recognise and attack problem cells, in this case those that are driving lupus inflammation.
“I was diagnosed with lupus when I was 20,” she told the PA news agency. “I started to get extreme joint pain and, in the first few years, that was my main symptom – like excruciating,” she said. “It was very painful.
My hands were so painful I couldn’t hold the steering wheel.” Next came extreme fatigue and continuing joint pain, followed by antiphospholipid syndrome, which causes blood clots and other health problems, as well as focal myositis (inflammation of skeletal muscle) and kidney disease. Mrs Tinkler’s main drug regime for lupus has been steroids but recently she has needed more immunosuppressants and other drugs.
“My general health and wellbeing and immune system have been going downhill,” she said, and she has spent three of the last 18 months in hospital. Despite all this, Mrs Tinkler, who says she has a wardrobe full of sparkly shoes and clothes, is determined to remain positive. “The way I deal with it is I just get o.