Sunshine vitamin D holds the key to beat childhood asthma, North Staffs scientists claim

Written by NSCCNovember 24, 2017
Research , Wade Conference Centre

A North Staffordshire research team hopes to prove spending time in the sunshine is the key to improving childhood asthma.

The experts, led by consultant paediatrician Dr Will Carroll, believe many asthma attacks in children can be linked to a deficiency in vitamin D – a substance produced by the body when it is exposed to sunlight.

Their preliminary research has found asthmatic youngsters are hospitalised more often in less sunny parts of the country.

Controlled trials

Dr Carroll now hopes to prove that giving children vitamin D supplements will cause asthma complications to fall, in a study part-funded with a £19,884 grant from the North Staffordshire Medical Institute.

He said: “We know from the analysis that in regions of the UK that are more sunny they have lower rates of childhood asthma.

“But between October and February each year, the sun doesn’t get high enough in the sky in the UK to produce vitamin D anyway, so we have to rely on supplementation in those months.

“Previous studies have shown that small doses of vitamin D can reduce asthma exacerbations in children.”

The team, based at Keele University, plans to start with a small study in which asthmatic children will be given either vitamin D or a placebo and the progress of their asthma will be monitored.

They will use this to help them design a much larger controlled trial to take place in several locations around the country.

Dr Carroll, an expert in paediatric lung disease, added: “The purpose of the programme is to show that it’s more effective to give vitamin D to children than a placebo.

“The vitamin D available now is colourless and odourless, so that helps us to do our research. What we’re hoping to find is that it reduces asthma exacerbations in children.”

Health advice

If the programme proves a success, it could mean dramatic changes to the official health advice around taking children out in the sun.

At the moment, parents are advised to cover kids up as much as possible and use high-factor sunscreen to prevent the risk of burns, heatstroke and ultimately skin cancer.

But if vitamin D is important for respiratory health doctors may start advising that children spend short periods outdoors without sun protection.

He said: “If you cover yourself in sun cream you don’t get vitamin D because you need to have exposure to UVB rays.

“Nearly all children in the UK have insufficient levels of vitamin D. We’re designed as human beings to be semi-clothed and to live outside, we’re not meant to be indoor creatures.”

There are currently 5.4million people living with asthma in the UK – one of the highest rates in Europe – including 1.1million children.

The lung condition killed 1,468 people in 2015 and costs the NHS an average of £1billion a year.

The North Staffordshire Medical Institute is a charity funded by public donations that provides grants for vital medical research in the Staffordshire area.

By Meg Jorsh

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Heart surgery safer thanks to £250,000 North Staffs research project

Written by NSCCNovember 10, 2017
Research , Wade Conference Centre

By Meg Jorsh

North Staffordshire scientists are making heart surgery safer with a groundbreaking £250,000 study.

The research team, led by Professor Mamas Mamas, hopes to revolutionise the way patient health records are used by the NHS to prevent complications after coronary stent procedures.

Patients often have a stent – a short wire-mesh tube – inserted to treat angina or following a heart attack. It works by stretching open a narrowed or blocked artery.

Although a common procedure, it carries a small risk of complications ranging from bruising to heart attacks, strokes and even death.

Prof. Mamas and his team hope to cut this risk even further by analysing millions of records to identify the patients who experience the best outcomes and those with greatest chance of their operation going wrong.

He explained: “It’s a programme of work and my ultimate aim is that we use this data to more efficiently in a way that provides insight for the whole patient journey rather than just the short time they’re in hospital.

“Ultimately it’s about getting the right outcomes, getting the right procedures to the patient in the safest manner.”

Using ‘big data’

The massive study, which started in 2011, was funded in part with a £249,983 grant from the North Staffordshire Medical Institute.

It involves millions of local, national and international records, which makes the data exceptionally accurate compared to an average-sized medical trial.

Prof Mamas said: “We’ve looked at the procedure to see if there is an optimal way of doing it, which may be related to drugs or how you actually perform the operation.

“The other thing that it’s told us is how commonly complications occur. If you’re looking at a rare outcome it’s very difficult to study that in a randomised trial – getting three complications in a thousand cases wouldn’t tell you very much.

“If you have half a million patients you can get a lot more information.”

The Professor of Cardiology, based at Keele University, has already used the data to give each UK doctor performing the procedure a safety rating, which is available for patients to view online.

His team now hopes to provide a longer-term picture of surgery outcomes by combining the separate records held by hospitals and community-based services.

Their research has already shown that post-operative bleeding is far more common than previously recognised – affecting around one in five patients compared to the previous statistic of one in 20.

He added: “In the past this information wasn’t collected electronically. You wouldn’t have the whole of the UK’s collected data on a particular procedure, the computers simply weren’t there.

“The challenge that still remains is comingling the data. I can tell you what are the outcomes of these procedures in hospitals, but I can’t tell you what happens after patients are discharged, because it isn’t shared across the data sets.”

The North Staffordshire Medical Institute is a charity funded by public donations that provides grants for vital medical research in the Staffordshire area.

To find out about our world-class conference facilities, visit http://www.nsconferencecentre.co.uk

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Understanding Grief – an Interview with Linda Machin

Written by NSCCOctober 20, 2017
Research , Wade Conference Centre

Meg Jorsh speaks to bereavement theory pioneer Linda Machin about her groundbreaking research

Grief affects all of us at some point in our lives. When a loved one dies we may feel crushed, overwhelmed. Then it fades to a quiet pain that hides behind everything we do until we finally learn to live with it.

But for some of us, relief never comes. The waves of sadness continue to mount, so that everyday life seems tiny by comparison. For these people bereavement holds risks of its own – depression, anxiety disorders, substance misuse, sudden cardiac events and potentially suicide. They need professional help to adjust to their new way of living.

Unfortunately it can be hard to tell the difference between those treading water and those not waving, but drowning. It has been the life’s work of bereavement expert Dr Linda Machin to better understand the landscape of loss and the ways individuals grieve. Her pioneering research has helped countless professionals to understand grief and bereaved people to feel better understood.

“I think a lack of understanding can make grief longer-lasting than it needs to be,” says Dr Machin. “It can bubble along even worse for some people if they feel misunderstood and their care isn’t addressed appropriately.

“People who begin to grieve chronically can also become depressed and anxious, the ultimate potential risk is suicide. You only have to look at the media attention to Princes William and Harry and their comments about losing their mother to appreciate the long-lasting and persistent nature of grief. They were young people then but it can apply to people at any stage of their lives.”

Models of Bereavement

Dr Machin is best-known in her field as the creator of the Range of Response to Loss model and Adult Attitude to Grief scale. These psychological tools allow professionals to categorise a bereaved person’s  grief according to their levels of overwhelmed, controlled and resilient reactions. A more overwhelmed person may be so distressed they feel they can never be happy again, whereas a more controlled person may refuse to accept the reality of their loss. On the other hand, a resilient mourner may feel they are able to cope with their pain.

“The AAG scale is a kind of a triage system,” Dr Machin explains. “The interventions that are deemed appropriate are based on the scale. Some people who are very overwhelmed by their grief will need a very different intervention to someone who’s closed down on their grief but is still not coping.”

“NICE have produced guidance for bereavement intervention – the first group is one where people simply need signposting to practical advice and support from family and friends. The second is one where people do need some opportunity to talk about things that are troubling to them. Then the third are the group who are most vulnerable and are likely to need longer-term intervention by therapists.”

Further Research

The more recent development of the AAG scale to identify  vulnerability was funded by the North Staffordshire Medical Institute for research with two Marie Curie hospices (Hampstead and Belfast), the Dove Service bereavement support team in Stoke-on-Trent and the bereavement service of St Giles’ Hospital in Lichfield. It is now being used by a range of UK organisations including Marie Curie and Cruse Bereavement Care, as well as internationally by groups in Canada, Iceland, Portugal, Australia, Pakistan and the USA. Dr Machin is also working on a modified version for people affected by terminal illness.

“It’s  looking at the whole question of mental health and loneliness,” she says. “The ultimate aim is that this is a method that allows the practitioner to enhance their work with people as  they progress from end of life care  to bereavement.”

Dr Machin and her team, based at Keele University, received a £4,500 grant from the North Staffordshire Medical Institute in 2011.

For more information on the medical research charity or to make a donation, visit our website at https://nsmedicalinstitute.co.uk/. You can also like us on Facebook at @nsmedicalinstitute or follow us on Twitter at @nsccentre.

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Physics star Jim Al-Khalili is a quantum hit at the North Staffs Medical Institute

Written by NSCCOctober 6, 2017
Events , Wade Conference Centre

By Meg Jorsh

TV physicist Jim Al-Khalili revealed the baffling world of quantum biology in a talk at the North Staffordshire Medical Institute.

The BBC star – best known for his Radio 4 show The Life Scientific – joked if the insanely complex subject did not give his listeners a headache, he would not have been doing his job.

Professor Al-Khalili spoke to a sold-out audience of 150 at the medical research charity’s 48th annual Wade Lecture.

He told them: “If you haven’t got a headache then clearly you don’t understand quantum mechanics. If you think ‘maybe I’ve got it’ then you haven’t. It’s meant to be confusing.”

Prof Al-Khalili explained that the quantum theory of physics, when applied to biology, could potentially reveal how the atoms in animals and plants behave differently to those in inanimate objects.

But he admitted the new field – which looks at the behaviour of subatomic particles – was a controversial topic for many traditional biologists.

He added: “Quantum biology is still in its infancy; it’s still speculative. Quantum mechanics is weird and very sensitive, it’s hard to understand and biology is complicated enough as well.

“There’s still widespread scepticism among biologists, mainly surrounding the question of ‘so what?’

“It does seem that there are some mechanisms within living cells that need some help from the quantum world, but we don’t know how this happens.

“To observe quantum mechanics in the non-living world you need to cool things down to near-absolute zero in a vacuum and even then the quantum effects don’t last very long.

“Has nature hit upon shortcuts to give it an advantage? Can we learn from nature to develop new or more efficient quantum devices?”

Having wrapped up his hour-long presentation, the popular scientist stopped to sign autographs and take selfies with dozens of fans.

Prof. Al-Khalili, who was awarded an OBE in 2008, explained that respect for his audience was key to his success as a science broadcaster.

He said: “I’m of a generation when I first started doing science communication it was just becoming acceptable for science researchers to talk to the public. Before that you had to do one or the other.

“Richard Dawkins, brilliant though he is, once he wrote The Selfish Gene he was no longer seen as an academic. But people like me and like Professor Brian Cox, I still spend half my time at the University of Surrey, I still have PhD students, I still publish papers. It was still only my generation that it’s become acceptable to do both.

“Public engagement in science acknowledges that it has to be a two-way process. Part of that is acknowledging that the audience you talk to is no less clever than you, they’ve just not devoted their lives to studying this stuff.

“I couldn’t perform an operation – I can’t even do my own bank statements.”

The professor, who still spends half of his time teaching at the University of Surrey, later joined Institute members, staff and supporters for a formal dinner.

He decided to attend in part because he had never visited Stoke before.

“So far it’s been very pleasant,” he added. “If tonight is indicative of the good people of Stoke then it’s a lovely place.”

Institute bosses hope to welcome Professor Al-Khalili back in 2021 to speak at a series of talks planned for the Year of Culture.

The event on Thursday, October 5th, came just a week after the Institute’s annual awards evening, at which more than £100,000 was handed over to top local researchers.

The money will be used to fund groundbreaking studies into a range of health conditions, including childhood asthma and sleep apnoea, lung disease and brain injuries.

Experts in prostate and bladder cancer, bowel disease and health literacy will also profit from the funding injection.

The North Staffordshire Medical Institute, based on Hartshill Road, Stoke, is a medical charity funded by public donations and the revenue from its purpose-built conference facilities.

For more information about their work, visit https://nsmedicalinstitute.co.uk/, like them on Facebook @nsmedicalinstitute or follow them on Twitter @nsccentre.

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Success at the NSMI Research Awards Presentation Evening

Written by NSCCOctober 4, 2017
Events , Medical Awards , Wade Conference Centre

More than £100,000 was handed to top local researchers at the annual North Staffordshire Medical Institute awards evening.

The money will be used to fund groundbreaking studies into a range of health conditions, including childhood asthma and sleep apnoea, lung disease and brain injuries.

Experts in prostate and bladder cancer, bowel disease and health literacy will also profit from the charity’s funding injection.

Chairman Professor Shaughn O’Brien announced the projects that had made it through an exhaustive selection process at the Institute’s headquarters in Hartshill Road, Stoke-on-Trent.

He gave out the awards in front of invited guests including the cream of North Staffordshire’s scientific and medical community. Also present was Paul Williams, who is leading Stoke-on-Trent’s bid for UK City of Culture 2021.

Paediatrician Dr Will Carroll, based at the University Hospitals of the North Midlands (UHNM), was leading a study that received £19,244 to investigate the link between vitamin D deficiency and childhood asthma.

He believes it will show that children with healthy vitamin D levels are less likely to have asthma attacks.

He said: “As you know, vitamin D is the answer to everything and it’s as easy as going out into the sunshine. But to prove it we’re going to have to do a randomised controlled trial.”

His colleague Dr Martin Samuels, a fellow paediatrician, received £20,000 for his research into obstructive sleep apnoea in children.

He said: “We’re going to look at a very large database of several thousand studies to see if we can better find out how to make the diagnosis.

“There’s a lot of controversy about this at the moment and whether children need to have their tonsils and adenoids taken out.”

Dr Paul Campbell, a disease control expert from Keele University, collected £14,769 towards a study into public health literacy.

He said: “What we want to do is to identify people who have got low levels of health literacy within general practice. We want to find an algorithm to flag up to a GP that they may need to change their consultation.

“We’re going to look at a medical records data set and thankfully the medical institute have pump-primed us to do that.”

Researcher Dr Abigail Rutter received £18,000 towards a study into pleural effusion – known as ‘water on the lungs’ – which can be a symptom of a wide range of health problems. She plans to analyse the fluid using cutting-edge SIFT-MS technology.

She said: “We’re going to take the fluid and effectively ‘smell it’ and hopefully we will be able to make a non-invasive diagnosis from the results.”

Mark Kitchen, a urology lecturer at Keele University, received £4,200 towards designing a urine test for prostate and bladder cancers.

He said: “We’re effectively looking for non-invasive biomarkers for cancers.”

Awards of just almost £26,000 in total were announced for the winners of the Institute’s Firelighter Awards, held in collaboration with the Research and Development Department at UHNM.

Staff at the trust were invited to submit their research ideas to a Dragon’s Den-style panel of experts who would then award grants of up to £10,000 for the best projects.

Consultant gastroenterologist Adam Farmer collected the awards on behalf of the three winners – doctors Arun Kurup, Stuart Harrison and Jackie Mclennan.

He said: “We invited applications from across the trust and I’m pleased to say that we awarded three prizes for projects which we felt would have a direct clinical impact in the near future.”

Dr Kurup will be researching bowel disease, Dr Harrison traumatic brain injuries and Dr Mclennan nosebleeds.

The North Staffordshire Medical Institute is a medical charity funded by public donations and the revenue from its purpose-built conference facilities.

For more information about our work, visit https://nsmedicalinstitute.co.uk/, like us on Facebook @nsmedicalinstitute or follow us on Twitter @nsccentre.

 

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Safer cannabis use a myth, North Staffordshire research reveals

Written by NSCCSeptember 7, 2017
Research , Wade Conference Centre

The North Staffordshire Medical Institute supports research in a wide range of fields – including substance misuse. We spoke to expert Dr Roger Bloor about his study of cannabis vaporisers.


If you believed the manufacturers, you might think that vaporisers were a safe way of using cannabis.

The smoke-free inhalers are sold as a harmless way of getting high without lighting up. They do allow users to avoid some of the cancer-causing chemicals in cannabis smoke – but it comes at a price, according to research funded by the NSMI. The vaporiser fumes do not contain as much tar, hydrogen cyanide and nitrous oxide as would be produced by a cannabis ‘joint’. But they do contain toxic levels of ammonia, putting users at risk of serious lung disorders.

Lead researcher Roger Bloor, a former psychiatrist and addiction specialist, explains: “Cannabis, which is illegal in this country, is very widely used but carries risks from things like tar, which clogs up your lungs and can cause all sorts of health problems.

“Some people devised a way of using cannabis without smoking it by heating it up on an electronic plate and that reduces the risk. We investigated and we found that it does reduce the tar, but there’s a massive spike in the production of ammonia when you use these devices. The type of level whereby if you were running a factory, it would be shut down as a public health risk.”

Ammonia, which is commonly used in agriculture as fertiliser, is a poisonous chemical that can cause blindness, lung damage or death when inhaled at high concentration. Large quantities were detected in cannabis vapour produced in the labs at Keele University and analysed with cutting edge SIFT-MS
technology. The study looked at popular vaporiser brands available online, including the notorious Blue Meanie and Volcano models.

“We used standardised cannabis, where we knew what was in it, and we also had a license to have any seized drugs sent to us so we had street cannabis as well,” says Dr Bloor. “Street cannabis contains far more ammonia than the farmed cannabis usually used for research. This is because ammonia is found in the buds of the plant, which street cannabis is full of, rather than the leaves.”

The original research, funded by a grant of just £4,869 in 2004, went on to inspire several follow-up studies and an article in world-renowned journal Addiction. It is regularly cited as a warning to those considering buying a vaporiser as a ‘safe’ alternative to cannabis cigarettes. The devices, which cost from £35 to £350, are still widely available from specialist shops.

Dr Bloor said: “People recommend them, and they recommend things like water pipes, to take out the high tars. There’s a whole industry producing things to technically reduce the risk from cannabis which people are keen to use, but the research into them is not complete.”

Even if the devices could make smoking cannabis physically safe, they would not prevent the risk of psychiatric side effects. “The major risk of cannabis is that it can trigger schizophrenia,” he adds. “The strong stuff can be highly dangerous, but with the lower-powered stuff most people use the main risks are physical.”

To find out more about the research funded by the North Staffordshire Medical Institute, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. Please help us to support pioneering research projects by making a donation through the link to the right of this page.

 

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Institute chairman exhibits sculptures in London

Written by NSCCAugust 29, 2017
Events , Wade Conference Centre

Institute chairman Professor Shaughn O’Brien is set to show off one of his lesser-known talents at a major London art show.

The renowned obstetrician will unveil three of his sculptures at the Royal Society of Medicine in London as part of the Medical Art Society’s annual exhibition. His haunting figures and abstract works draw inspiration from his medical background.

Prof. O’Brien, who is Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Keele University Medical School, has dedicated Fridays to his artistic passion for the last three years. His works on display at the RSM include a bronze portrait of a young woman and a second bronze piece inspired by the Mozart opera La Finta Giardiniera.

He will also be showing a plaster model called ‘Imaginary Public Commission for Stoke-on-Trent Year of Culture 2021.’

The art show comes just a fortnight after Prof O’Brien addressed doctors from the country in a lecture at the RSM called Premenstrual Syndrome – All You Need To Know. It covered his latest research into the subject, new disorder classifications and treatment guidelines.

The Medical Art Society was formed in 1935 to celebrate the work of doctors who paint, draw and sculpt in their spare time. It’s annual exhibition took place this year in the RSM’s atrium from Monday, July 24th to Saturday, July 29th.

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Outgoing Chairman’s Comments

Written by centr@lFebruary 28, 2017
Blog , Wade Conference Centre
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NSMI Awards Ceremony

Written by Chris PlattNovember 4, 2013
Medical Awards , Wade Conference Centre

Research into Bladder Cancer, Cystic Fibrosis and Diabetes, and Blood Vessels in the brain

Success for Local Researchers was marked at an Awards Ceremony by the North Staffordshire Medical Institute.

The following received funds totalling £30,000.00 from the Chairman of the Medical Institute, Mr. Duncan Gough after the Institute’s Research Awards Committee had judged entries on scientific merit and usefulness to the people of North Staffordshire:

Prof. W. Farrell, Mr. L. Gommersall, Mr. C. Luscombe and Mr. M. Kitchen

Medical students Tamsin Walford and Simon Arch were presented with cash Prizes of £100 each from the Medical Institute’s Bicentenary Fund by Mr. Gough for the Best Dissertations in Years 2 and 4 at Keele University Medical School. The standards in both groups were of a high order and show that our local medical community is top class, and determined to tackle the challenges facing North Staffordshire patients. All were congratulated by the Chairman and Members of The Medical Institute.

Dr. C. Kelly and Dr. A. Harper 

Professor C. Roffe and Dr. F. Lally

 

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Medical Institute and Keele University Awards

Written by Chris PlattMarch 7, 2013
Wade Conference Centre

Staff and students from Keele attended a prize giving event at North Staffordshire Medical Institute to formally receive grant and performance awards.

Staff awards went to Dr Bernadette Bartlam, Dr Linda Machin and Professor Julius Sim who are developing work identifying vulnerability in grief. Their work touches on some of the most important issues in research being pursued with the Research Institutes for Social Sciences and Primary Care and Health Sciences.

People who are vulnerable in their grief (by whatever cause) are significant users of health and social care services. The effective identification of such individuals and the appropriate targeting of interventions and resources are crucial, therefore, to both high quality care and cost efficent services. This innovative research seeks to validate the Adult Attitude to Grief Scale, devised and developed by Dr Machin, as a measure providing evidence of such vulnerability. The importance of this work was acknowledged in the award of a development grant by NSMI of £4,500.

Dr Sue Sherman and Professor Michael Murray, RI for Social Sciences, with colleagues from University Hospital of North Staffordshire, were awarded £9,703 to “identify and promote best practice in communicating to patients the results of cervical screening history reviews following diagnosis of cervical cancer”.

Many women who develop cervical cancer will have had cervical smears. It is a national requirement that all women are offered the results of a complete review of their cervical screening history following a diagnosis of cervical cancer. However, up to 20% of patients can have incorrectly reported screening tests, which may have prevented the earlier detection and treatment of their cervical cancer. Despite the potential for these review meetings to cause distress or conversely to be an opportunity for transparency, this is the first research to be conducted exploring patient’ experiences.

Two medical students were also presented with awards: 2011/12 Year 2 Medical Institute Prize for Best Performance in the Summative Assessments Eleanor Johns; 2011/12 Year 4 Medical Institute Prize for Best Performance in the Year 4 OSCE Assessments Laura Davis.

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