But that is exactly what happened for Otago Medical School pathology postdoctoral fellow Dr Estelle Peyroux.
"One day I had bought something at Mitre 10 and was in the carpark leaving, when I saw a car full of some 20-something adults trying to transport an oversized item in their small vehicle.
"I approached them and offered to transport it for them and ended up driving with one of them, and discovered that their partner had recently been diagnosed with axSpA [axial spondyloarthritis]."
It was what inspired her to start researching the disease, and she recently received $72,796 in funding from Arthritis New Zealand to begin a study on the condition in young adults.
The inflammatory condition is a type of arthritis that affects the joints in the chest, spine and pelvis.
People with axSpA often have back pain before the age of 45, and may even have stiffness and debilitating pain as teens or young adults.
Dr Peyroux said it was estimated 0.5% of New Zealanders had axSpA, but worldwide rates ranged from 0.3% to 1.4%.
"Many people quietly deal with the condition and you only hear about it when my research is brought up in conversation.
"I mean, axial spondyloarthritis — it’s a bit of a mouthful."
She has been researching the disease for more than a decade and her upcoming research project aimed to follow up on "interesting and promising" findings from her PhD study.
She planned to investigate vital cellular processes that contributed to the progression of the disease, focusing on understanding how abnormalities at a cellular level drove immune dysfunction for those living with the condition.
"The goal of this research is to follow up some interesting findings observed in patients who had a higher disease activity —
i.e. those who are not getting the optimal benefit of the current treatments.
"We would like to delve deeper into the mechanism underlying the differences we observed in immune cells, with the anticipation of identifying new therapeutic targets in those pathways."
At present, treatment options for axSpA are limited and primarily consist of a combination of anti-inflammatory drugs, physiotherapy and immune-suppressing drugs.
She believed the identification of new inflammatory pathways could reduce cellular stress and down-regulate inflammatory signalling pathways which could, in turn, lead to repurposing existing therapies or expanding the range of treatment options for those affected by axSpA.
"I anticipate that I will work on this for two years," she said.
