FIDELIO researchers go to Liverpool to present their results on diabetes and bone health

by Michael Baldwin

The annual congress of the European Calcified Tissue Society (ECTS) is one of the main European conferences for bone disease, with around 1000 researchers, clinicians and other healthcare professionals attending each year.

The ECTS congress has been a regular highlight of the FIDELIO calendar, with fellows sharing their preliminary results in posters and oral presentations, and networking with other PhD students and researchers in the bone field. During the pandemic the whole congress was done online, but since 2022 it has been held in-person again, first in Helsinki in 2022, and in Liverpool, UK during April 21^st -25^th 2023.

Fidelio group in Sheffield

This time at ECTS, FIDELIO organized a special Open Forum session, co-chaired by Martina Rauner and Morten Frost, to present the project and its results. Around 70 people attended. Presentations were given by Annika Kvist, Fernando Rivadeneira, Souad Daamouch, Matthias Walle, Sofie Dragoun Kolibová and Sara Delon, covering microRNAs, animal experiments, epidemiological studies, and computational analyses.

It became clear in the session that diabetic bone disease remains a serious problem in healthcare and that the contributions of FIDELIO are increasing our understanding of the links between diabetes and bone health. Questions such as how best to identify patients at risk for fracture, whether bone also becomes insulin-resistant, and what pathways can be targeted to ameliorate diabetic bone disease remain pressing issues to be solved in future research.

FIDELIO Open Forum, presentation given by Sofie Kolibova 

FIDELIO deputy coordinator Martina Rauner was very pleased the event.  “ECTS congress is a great opportunity to share and discuss our results with opinion leaders in the field of bone health. We are grateful to ECTS for this opportunity of a dedicated Open Forum session”.

Also at ECTS, FIDELIO results were highlighted in a plenary talk by Prof Nicola Napoli, and several fellows had their own oral or poster presentations in the main congress. Awards were received by fellows Mohamad Nasser, Ankita Duseja and Samuel Ghatan.

After the ECTS congress, FIDELIO partners and fellows stayed in the UK for their annual meeting, hosted by FIDELIO partner The University of Sheffield. All in all, a very busy but productive trip to the UK!