The College of Medicine and Health at the University of Exeter is working to improve our understanding of Meniere's disease. Meniere's disease is a poorly understood condition of the inner ear, characterised by attacks of vertigo, tinnitus and aural fullness. It is an unpredictable condition and the attacks can often be debilitating, rendering patients incapacitated for up to 24 hours at a time. There is currently no cure for Meniere's and self-management and trigger identification is therefore recommended. It is hypothesised that there are a number of triggers for Meniere's attacks, including the weather, allergens, dietary factors and stress. However, until recently the majority of triggers were based on anecdotal evidence. In conjunction with clinicians and patients we have developed the Meniere's Monitor to enable patients to more effectively self-manage their condition and provide research data for trigger identification.

project aims

Overall, the aims of the Meniere's Monitor project are:

1. To understand if environmental factors such as weather, allergens, pollution and behavioural factors such as stress and diet associate with Meniere's attacks

2. To understand how the different treatments influence attack prevalence

3. To understand if the Meniere's Monitor is a useful clinical tool for monitoring Meniere's

support

To ensure the website and app remain up to date costs £1,500 per annum and in order to allow us to respond to user feedback and alter the questions within the app costs £2,400 per annum. Whilst the project has received support from the University of Exeter, we need to raise additional funds to allow the app to continue to be available and to enable us to continue to engage with our users. We have therefore set up this appeal which is looking for donations of any size.

Where the money will go

All donations, of any size, are greatly appreciated and collectively can make a massive difference.

For example:

• £100 would allow us to survey participants

• £360 would cover the costs of web hosting for a year

• £500 would cover the addition of a blog feature

• £1,000 would ensure the app remained up to date on Apple and Android

• £2,400 would enable additional questions to be added to tailor the research based on user feedback

• £42,000 could fund a three-year PhD studentship that would allow us to analyse in detail the environmental factors that influence Meniere's

Find us here

To find out more about us, you can visit our website.

Help us succeed!

You don’t need to give money to help us succeed! Please share this project with anyone you think would support us – on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, by email, telephone, in a chat over a coffee or on your blog.

And we know we said you don’t need to give money to help us, but we’d love it if you did! Please sponsor us and help us help improve our understanding of a debilitating condition.

thank you!