Morris tells of her struggle to beat rare disease

Education Secretary Estelle Morris has revealed how she once suffered from a life-threatening syndrome that can cause migraines and memory loss.

She disclosed to campaigners at a charity launch in London how she was lucky enough to be diagnosed by doctors at an early stage with Hughes syndrome, an auto-immune disease that until recently was barely known about.

The disease, which used to be known as 'sticky blood' syndrome, can cause a host of problems such as multiple miscarriages, deep vein thrombosis, memory loss, stroke and speech difficulties.

Many sufferers spend years trying to find out what is wrong with them and are often misdiagnosed with Alzheimer's disease or even multiple sclerosis. Some patients end up in wheelchairs and suffer a daunting number of symptoms such as extreme fatigue, migraine and partial deafness.

But it is thought that Morris, 50, a Cabinet Minister who taught in Manchester for years, was fortunate in having her symptoms spotted relatively quickly, so that the condition did not progress to serious illness.

Once a patient has been diagnosed with the condition, doctors keep a close eye on the blood, monitoring the level to make sure that it falls within a normal thickness. Medications such as warfarin, which thins the blood, can be used to keep the condition under control.

Morris spoke of her gratitude to Dr Graham Hughes, a physician at the Rayne Institute in St Thomas's Hospital, who established that the syndrome existed, and then went on to develop a cheap diagnostic blood test that has been used to help thousands of patients.

She spoke of her own experience at the launch of the charity's Hughes Awareness Week, which has coincided with the publication of a new book on the subject by Triona Holden.

A spokesman for Morris said yesterday that she did not want to talk about the condition. 'She made the speech in a private capacity and would prefer it to remain that way.'