BEACON
Research type
Research Study
Full title
British Early COPD Network cohort
IRAS ID
206796
Contact name
Wisia Wedzicha
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Imperial College London
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 0 months, 0 days
Research summary
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a major health problem in the UK and more widely, with up to 10% of the adult UK population affected. It is the end result of a susceptible person being exposed to a sufficient environmental trigger. This trigger is often cigarette smoke but pollution and occupational exposures are also important. However when COPD develops, the condition can cause distressing symptoms such as cough and breathlessness, a predisposition to chest infections called 'exacerbations', and the accelerated development of other diseases called 'co-morbidities', especially heart disease. All of this puts patients with COPD at risk of premature death and places a great financial burden on the NHS.
Most existing medical research has focused on patients with well-established COPD and poor lung function. Whilst this is important because such patients have lots of symptoms and problems, in some respects a better way of reducing health problems in the future would be to develop a strategy which focuses on patients with milder disease, and identifies which ones will go on to develop more severe problems and why these problems occur. Our research in this application is designed to investigate these issues.
The main objective of the Partnership is to study the very early stages of the development of COPD. We will do this by recruiting a novel cohort of smokers (age 30-45), in whom we will follow the trajectories of lung function decline to identify prospectively those at risk of excess decline. The applicants form a unique UK consortium of 8 academic centres with excellent high quality publication records and broad experience in mechanistic, translational, clinical and epidemiological studies in COPD with key capabilities including primary care.REC name
London - Riverside Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/LO/2041
Date of REC Opinion
25 Jan 2017
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion