The severity of pulmonary non-tuberculous mycobacterial disease
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Investigating the severity of pulmonary non-tuberculous mycobacterial disease
IRAS ID
264375
Contact name
Pushpsen Joshi
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Joint Research Office
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
Z6364106/2019/11/59, medical research in line with UCL’s Data Protection Policy
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 4 months, 31 days
Research summary
Summary of Research
Pulmonary nontuberculous mycobacterial disease (pNTM) is a challenging disease which is becoming increasingly prevalent, particularly in the elderly. Some patients appear to spontaneously clear infection while others are clinically stable without treatment over long periods of time. It would be of considerable clinical value, therefore, to identify correlates of significant lung damage (which together with symptoms is probably the main indication for starting treatment). This will hopefully allow us to monitor disease regularly without the need for serial CT scans, which involve radiation.We also seek to improve understanding of lung damage in patients with NTM infection by identifying immunological correlates of pathological damage. We will look at specific hypotheses relating to the immune response (focusing on cells called neutrophils and antibodies) and also look in an unbiased way at all the genes which are more or less active in patients with different amounts of lung damage. From this work, we hope to be able to identify potential 'host-directed therapies' targeting the immune system, which may represent an effective and better tolerated treatment option than current drugs.
We will collect demographic and clinical data from patients with pNTM infection as per standard care, as well as additional questionnaires and biological samples (sputum, blood, urine) which will be for research purposes only. These will be collected at recruitment if chest CT was performed within previous 3 months, otherwise data and samples will be collected at the time of the next CT scan.
Patients will be managed as determined by their clinician and the outcome at 6 months (required specific treatment or clinically stable off treatment) will be determined. During follow-up (up to 18 months), if any patient undergoes repeat CT scan for clinical purposes we will invite them to provide new biological samples.
Summary of Results
We have found some differences between the patients and healthy controls in terms of the behavior of the cells and we found a strong correlation between some of the lab results and the CT findings. Further analysis is ongoing and we will publish it.REC name
London - Chelsea Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
20/PR/0118
Date of REC Opinion
21 Oct 2020
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion