Melanie Sloan

Who they are

Sloan is a researcher in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge, and is also affiliated with Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia. Her team surveyed 6,607 adults whose autoimmune or inflammatory rheumatic disease was confirmed in clinical correspondence, between December 2024 and March 2025, and published the results in eClinicalMedicine on 12 October 2026.

Among women, 43 per cent reported a psychiatric misdiagnosis, against 33 per cent of men, and the most common interval from first symptoms to diagnosis was one to two years for women and under three months for men. Diseases with visible signs or clearer blood markers had lower rates of psychological misattribution. The authors list their limits: misdiagnoses were self-reported, the sample may favour worse experiences, no response rate could be calculated, and they describe the work as exploratory.

Key papers

Sloan, M., Taylor, S., Cox, B., Naidu, K. K., Modi, R., Diment, W., Tayabali, S., Piper, M., Brimicombe, J., Kaul, A., & D'Cruz, D. (2026). "Sex and disease differences in patients' diagnostic experiences in autoimmune diseases: an international cross-sectional study." eClinicalMedicine, 104259. doi:10.1016/j.eclinm.2026.104259.

Key ideas

See Diagnostic Delay and Hysteria.

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