This group is intended as a support group and a research resource for medical professionals, patients and families who wish to learn more about a little known lethal, yet treatable, blood disorder that causes hypercoagulation.

Please be aware that many doctors still talk about this disease as "Only a clotting disorder". This plays down the severe risks the disease brings from hypercoagulability (increased risk of clotting). Antiphospholipid Syndrome clotting events will cause strokes, heart attacks, pulmonary emboli, deep vein thrombosis, gangrene and even death. No one organ is safe with cases being classed as Catastrophic APS involving multiple organ failure. This disease kills!

This disease is known under many names and combinations of initials (APS, APLS, Catastrophic APS, Primary and secondary APS, Sero-Negative APS, Sticky Blood, as one of the connective tissue diseases and also by the non-descriptive name of Hughes Syndrome after one of the group of doctors who first described the disease).

Early signs of this disease are often diagnosed as many different disorders before being correctly diagnosed. This inability to correctly diagnose is not due to any form of medical inefficiency. Although first described over 100 years ago it has only being recognised as a specific condition in the last 25 years, and it's ability to mimic the symptoms of a number of well known and documented diseases still makes it hard to distinguish and diagnose.

If you are looking for in depth information on Systemic Antiphospholipid Antibody Syndrome (APS, APLS, Catastrophic APS, Primary and secondary APS, Sero-Negative APS, connective tissue disease, Hughes Syndrome ) and all the associated diseases then I suggest a search using the large search engines using a combination of the names I have mentioned above and the other diseases, which are: Lupus (systemic Lupus Erythematosus, SLE), Behcet's Syndrome, Sjogren's Syndrome, Vasculitis, Reynaud