Trace Element Abundance and Renal Disease
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Trace Element Abundance and Renal Disease
IRAS ID
178424
Contact name
Jennifer M McKinley
Contact email
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 11 months, 30 days
Research summary
The risk to human health associated with elevated concentrations of potentially toxic elements (PTE) in soils has been the focus of research for a number of years. This research aims to investigate the relationship between elevated trace elements in soils, stream sediments and stream water and the prevalence of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) and childhood type 1 diabetes (T1D). The research will use a combination of datasets including the UK Renal Registry Report (UKRR) on patients with renal diseases requiring treatment including Renal Replacement Therapy (RRT), the Northern Ireland Childhood Diabetes Register, the geochemical dataset for Northern Ireland provided by the Tellus Survey, Geological Survey of Northern Ireland (GSNI) and results of bioaccessibility testing of PTEs from soil samples which were obtained using the Unified Barge Method (UBM) in collaboration with the British Geological Survey. Previous studies indicate that a potential cause of observed large variability in prevalence of CKD and T1D, where the cause cannot be explained by known factors, may be associated with underlying environmental factors such as geographic variation in elevated occurrences of PTEs. The proposal of exploring the relationship between soil constituents with CKD is arguably well suited to Northern Ireland, as an area with traditionally little movement of people thus providing greater potential for prolonged exposure within one area. Exploratory data analysis, multivariate analyses and compositional data analysis are used to examine the soil, stream sediments and stream water geochemistry data for a range of key elements including arsenic, lead, cadmium and mercury identified from a review of previous renal disease literature. Cluster analysis to detect areas of low or high incidences of CKD and T1D that are significantly correlated in space and multivariate techniques will be used to examine locally varying relationship between elevated concentrations of PTEs and the prevalence of CKD and T1D.
REC name
East Midlands - Derby Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/EM/0366
Date of REC Opinion
10 Aug 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion