PANDARUS
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The Physiological Ageing, Neurological Disability And Recovery for Understanding Stroke Study (PANDARUS)
IRAS ID
366647
Contact name
Nicholas Evans
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Cambridge
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 0 days
Research summary
Stroke is a leading cause of adult disability in the United Kingdom, putting a major burden on patients, carers, healthcare, and society. The number of strokes is predicted to rise over the coming decades as the global population ages. As such, understanding the impact on stroke from the key processes that accompany ageing – frailty, multiple medical problems, and disability – will be critical in order to inform clinical decision-making.
Frailty refers to the state where an individual is less able to withstand and recover from illness. Frailty is common in stroke: between one-in-four to three-in-four depending on the measurement used. Frailty is associated with poorer recovery and increased mortality in the early period after stroke, and a reduced response to treatments for reversing a stroke (clot-busting drugs and clot-retrieval procedures). Frailty - as a measure of biological age - consistently out-performs chronological age for predicting outcomes.
A key consideration is how best to measure frailty. One potential approach is to measure waste products within the skin ('advanced glycation end-products') that increase as an individual develops frailty. This can be measured quickly and non-invasively using a device called skin autofluorescence (SAF), which measures the light going through the skin to calculate the amount of waste products. This approach may provide a feasible tool to measure frailty acutely and help guide clinical decisions in time-pressured stroke cases.
Individuals admitted to hospital with a stroke will undergo SAF in the first 72 hours of their stroke admission. Otherwise the clinical care of the individuals remains unchanged. We will then test whether the SAF reading relates to clinical outcomes and hence could be used to improve clinical decision-making.
REC name
London - Queen Square Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
26/LO/0319
Date of REC Opinion
11 May 2026
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion