Impact of breathing pattern on multiple breath washout outcomes v.1

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    Breathing pattern variability in Multiple Breath Washout test in pre-school children with Cystic Fibrosis: what does it tell us?

  • IRAS ID

    314948

  • Contact name

    Paul Aurora

  • Contact email

    p.aurora@ucl.ac.uk

  • Sponsor organisation

    UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health

  • Duration of Study in the UK

    5 years, 0 months, 1 days

  • Research summary

    This project will focus on the use of multiple breath washout (MBW), a specialist test used to measure lung function in children with Cystic Fibrosis (CF). The MBW test measures the 'Lung Clearance Index (LCI)' and other parameters that quantify ventilation inhomogeneity in the lung. Ventilation inhomogeneity is a term that describes unevenness of gas mixing and this is a sensitive indicator of early lung disease in CF. The test requires the patient to breathe normally through a mask or mouthpiece and therefore is feasible in the preschool age group.
    This specific project will investigate the variability in features of breathing pattern of individual MBW trials within a single test occasion and identify which features most significantly impact upon the end results. The anticipated outputs from this project will tell us more about how different breathing patterns affect how children’s lungs work and increase the confidence with which MBW results can be interpreted. It will also provide information about the impact of resting lung volume and different patterns of inspiration and expiration upon ventilation distribution in the lung. This will be relevant to our basic understanding of breathing in young children, as well as, clinical research utilising MBW in pre-school children with CF. The project will include MBW data from 5 individual data sets. Two sets of data will be obtained from MBW data collected historically as part of the LCFC studies where healthy control and CF children were tested (12/LO/1668 and 13/LO/0322). Data will also be obtained from MBW tests conducted as part of the ‘Cystic Fibrosis (CF) Anti-staphylococcal Antibiotic Prophylaxis (START)’ trial (16/NW/0629). Moreover, deidentified MBW data from clinical tests will be included. Finally, based on the findings from this study, a future study with healthy adult volunteers is planned to be submitted later on.

  • REC name

    North West - Greater Manchester West Research Ethics Committee

  • REC reference

    22/NW/0400

  • Date of REC Opinion

    16 Dec 2022

  • REC opinion

    Favourable Opinion