Dame Margaret Turner-Warwick obituary
When Margaret Turner-Warwick, who has died aged 92, entered the field of respiratory medicine in the 1950s, it was a time of great change. Effective treatment for tuberculosis had recently been introduced, and the adverse effects of cigarette smoking on the lung were beginning to be appreciated.
The focus of academic research had been limited to understanding and measuring lung function, but with her colleagues Jack Pepys and Deborah Doniach, Margaret expanded it to include the immunology of the lung, and particularly of the fibrosing lung diseases. She showed that they were associated with autoimmune diseases, rheumatoid arthritis, systemic sclerosis and the severe form of lupus known as systemic lupus erythematosus, and she demonstrated the presence of relevant auto-antibodies in the blood.
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