Specific respiratory infections as triggers of acute medical events
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Specific respiratory infections as triggers of acute medical events: time series analysis using LabBase and Hospital Episode Statistics data
IRAS ID
172981
Contact name
Charlotte Warren-Gash
Contact email
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
This study aims to investigate whether specific respiratory infections caused by viruses such as influenza or bacteria such as streptococcus pneumoniae trigger other medical events such as heart attack and stroke. If so, this has potential implications for their prevention and treatment using vaccines and anti-viral drugs or antibiotics. Previous research studies using primary care electronic health records have found that the risk of heart attack is higher in the days following consultation with a GP for acute respiratory infection. However primary care datasets contain little information on the specific virus which has caused the respiratory infection, which makes it difficult to tailor prevention and treatment to particular viruses. In this study we propose to use data from Hospital Episode Statistics on hospital admissions for heart attack, stroke and other medical events alongside data from Labbase – a dataset held by Public Health England (PHE) containing information on laboratory-confirmed respiratory infections. Using pseudonymised data UCL researchers will investigate a series of questions about triggering of acute medical events by respiratory infections.
REC name
Yorkshire & The Humber - Bradford Leeds Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/YH/0416
Date of REC Opinion
4 Sep 2015
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion