Sigma Plus
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Assessment of wearable sensors during experimental human influenza infection (Sigma Plus)
IRAS ID
269042
Contact name
Christopher Chiu
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Imperial College London
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Influenza (‘flu’) is one of the most common causes of severe lung infection. Seasonal flu affects between 10 and 46% of the population each year and causes around 12 deaths in every 100,000 people infected. Furthermore, new strains of flu viruses emerge unpredictably every few years, causing pandemics that spread rapidly across the world. Since currently available antiviral drugs and vaccines cannot prevent these outbreaks, it is essential to be able to identify flu infections at an early stage to enable rapid treatment of individuals and implementation of public health measures.
The aim of this project is to test whether wearable sensor devices that measure oxygen levels, heart rate and electrical signals from the heart can diagnose and predict influenza infection. To achieve this, we will recruit healthy volunteers and inoculate them with a flu virus, after which they will be observed in hospital while they develop a cold. Each volunteer will be given a number of devices that they will wear before and during infection. In addition, they will have blood and nasal samples taken to examine the way their immune system responds to infection. The resulting data will be analysed to see if the sensors can be used to detect the onset of infection and these will be compared with measures of the immune response. Ultimately, we anticipate that sensor data from commonly available devices may be useful in rapidly detecting when someone is about to develop flu infection, so that they can quickly be treated and outbreaks may be identified at an early stage.
REC name
London - Fulham Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/LO/1441
Date of REC Opinion
18 Oct 2019
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion