Researchers at Queen’s University Belfast have designed a new bandage treatment, known as a scaffold, to treat diabetic foot ulcers, which is cost-effective while improving patient outcomes. Produced by 3D bioprinting, the scaffolds slowly release antibiotics over a four-week period to effectively treat the wound.
Diabetes, a lifelong condition that causes a person’s blood sugar level to become too high, is among the top ten causes of deaths worldwide.
Diabetic foot ulcer (DFU), is a serious complication of diabetes, affecting approximately 25% of diabetic patients. When identified, over 50% are already infected and over 70% of cases result in lower limb amputation.
The treatment strategy required for the effective healing of DFU is a complex process that requires several combined therapeutic approaches. As a result, there is a significant clinical and economic burden associated in treating DFU. These treatments are often unsuccessful, which leads to lower-limb amputation.
This new research demonstrates outcomes with significant implications for patient quality of life, as well as decreasing the costs and clinical burden in treating DFU.
Recent research has focused on drug-loaded scaffolds to treat DFU. The scaffold structure is a novel carrier for cell and drug delivery that enhances wound healing.
The research, published in Springer Link, will be presented by Professor Lamprou at the Controlled Release Society (CRS) Workshop Italy (7 – 9 October).
Professor Dimitrios Lamprou, a Professor of Biofabrication and Advanced Manufacturing at Queen’s School of Pharmacy and corresponding author, explains: “These scaffolds are like windows that enable doctors to monitor the healing constantly. This avoids needing to remove them constantly, which can provoke infection and delay the healing process.
“The ‘frame’ has an antibiotic that helps to ‘kill’ the bacteria infection, and the ‘glass’ that can be prepared by collagen/sodium alginate can contain a growth factor to encourage cell growth. The scaffold has two molecular layers that both play an important role in healing the wound.”
Lead author Ms Katie Glover, from the Queen’s School of Pharmacy, concludes: “Using bioprinting technology, we have developed a scaffold with suitable mechanical properties to treat the wound, which can be easily modified to the size of the wound.
“This provides a low-cost alternative to current DFU treatments, which could revolutionise DFU treatment, improving patient outcomes while reducing the economic burden caused by rapidly increasing patient demand as the number of people with diabetes continues to increase every year.”
Researchers at Queen’s University Belfast have uncovered a key process that contributes to vision loss and blindness in people with diabetes. The findings could lead to new treatments that can be used before any irreversible vision loss has occurred.
Diabetic retinopathy is a common complication of diabetes and occurs when high blood sugar levels damage the cells at the back of the eye, known as the retina. There are no current treatments that prevent the advancement of diabetic retinopathy from its early to late stages, beyond the careful management of diabetes itself. As a result, a significant proportion of people with diabetes still progress to the vision-threatening complications of the disease.
As the number of people with diabetes continues to increase globally, there is an urgent need for new treatment strategies, particularly those that target the early stages of the disease to prevent vision loss.
The retina demands a high oxygen and nutrient supply to function properly. This is met by an elaborate network of blood vessels that maintain a constant flow of blood even during daily fluctuations in blood and eye pressure. The ability of the blood vessels to maintain blood flow at a steady level is called blood flow autoregulation. The disruption of this process is one of the earliest effects of diabetes in the retina.
The breakthrough made by researchers at Queen’s University Belfast pinpoints the cause of these early changes to the retina.
The study, published in the US journal JCI Insight, has discovered that the loss of blood flow autoregulation during diabetes is caused by the disruption of a protein called TRPV2. Furthermore, they show that disruption of blood flow autoregulation even in the absence of diabetes causes damage closely resembling that seen in diabetic retinopathy.
The research team are hopeful that these findings will be used to inform the development of new treatments that preserve vision in people with diabetes.
Professor Tim Curtis, Deputy Director at the Wellcome-Wolfson Institute for Experimental Medicine at Queen’s and corresponding author, explains: “We are excited about the new insights that this study provides, which explain how the retina is damaged during the early stages of diabetes.
“By identifying TRPV2 as a key protein involved in diabetes-related vision loss, we have a new target and opportunity to develop treatments that halt the advancement of diabetic retinopathy.”
The study was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and the Department for the Economy Postgraduate Studentship scheme.
New research has revealed that basking sharks overwintering in tropical waters off Africa experience cooler temperatures than those remaining in the Uk and Ireland.
The research, published in Environmental Biology of Fishes, provides evidence to challenge previous assumptions that their disappearance from Irish coastal waters was linked to their search for warmer waters.
The research team equipped four basking sharks with pop-off archival satellite tags off Malin Head, County Donegal to record water temperature, depth and location over a six-month period.
Basking sharks are a regular visitor to Ireland’s shores in summer months. It has been widely believed that basking sharks prefer the warmer waters and that their seasonal disappearance is linked to falling water temperatures.
Through the tracking devices, the research team discovered that two of the sharks travelled vast distances to the subtropical and tropical waters off Africa whilst the others remained in Irish coastal waters throughout the winter.
The sharks off the coast of Africa experienced colder temperatures on a daily basis than the sharks that resided in Ireland, suggesting that they didn’t move south simply in search of warmer conditions.
The cooler temperatures experienced off Africa resulted from the sharks diving each day to depths of up to 600m, most likely in search of prey.
Dr Emmett Johnston, Lead Author from the School of Biological Sciences at Queen’s University Belfast, said: “Our findings challenge the idea of temperature as the main reason for winter dispersal from Ireland.
“Likewise, further evidence of individual basking sharks occupying Irish coastal waters year-round has significant implications for national and European conservation efforts. Now we know that basking sharks are foraging at these depths, it shows that these habitats should be considered alongside coastal hotspots in future conservation efforts.”
Dr Jonathan Houghton, Co-author from Queen’s, added: “This study tempts us to think about basking sharks as an oceanic species that aggregates in coastal hotspots for several months of the year (most likely for reproduction), rather than a coastal species that reluctantly heads out into the ocean when decreasing water temperatures force them to.”
Co-author, Dr Paul Mensink from Western University, added: “Our findings highlight the need to understand the role of deep, offshore foraging habitats for a species so commonly sighted just a few metres from our shores.”
The international team will continue to monitor basking sharks as part of the EUSeaMonitor project to help inform and develop a collective conservation strategy for wide ranging species that have inhabited our waters for millennia.
Researchers at Queen’s University Belfast have been interviewing people across the region to try to crack the puzzle of why some people recycle and others don’t.
The experts carried out 18 in-depth interviews with people living in Northern Ireland during Autumn 2019.
The findings suggest that some of the reasons that people aren’t recycling plastics are being so busy they don’t get round to recycling, they aren’t clear on what can be recycled, and they can’t see the impact that their recycling could have on the environment.
The study was part of a larger interdisciplinary grant ‘Advancing Creative Circular Economies for Plastics via Technological-Social Transitions (ACCEPT Transitions)’ led by Professor David Rooney from the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Queen’s. The researchers are also involved in the ‘Clear on Plastics’ campaign, which is being run by the sustainability not-for-profit organisation WRAP.
Dr Emma Berry from the School of Psychology at Queen’s co-led the project alongside Professor Martin Dempster and Dr Debbie Roy. She explains: “In Northern Ireland, people recycle twice as much as they did 15 years ago and 10 per cent of this is plastic.
“For many people, recycling has become part of their everyday routine – we have the bins and collection service, so it’s much easier to do now. Most of us also know its ‘good’ for the environment, so we try to follow the guidelines on putting recyclable products in the right bins. However, while most people recycle, some households do not, so it’s important to understand why this might be.”
Following the research, the experts say there are three common barriers to recycling in Northern Ireland. Firstly, some people felt that with such busy lifestyles, family life, and competing priorities, recycling was often simply at the bottom of the daily agenda – it did not feature in their long list of important day-to-day tasks.
Secondly, people felt that with the enormous range of products and materials available in shops, it can also be tricky to know which products can be recycled and in which bin. Likewise, it is not always clear how to recycle some products if they are made up of multiple materials, such as a cardboard sleeve on a plastic yogurt pot, which need to be separated.
The final common barrier reported was that individuals feel that it’s often difficult to see the impact that small actions such as recycling at home or while out and about, can have on the environment, making small efforts feel pointless.
Dr Bronagh Millar from the Polymer Processing Centre at Queen’s was also involved in the project. She says: “Based on our findings, it’s understandable why many people find recycling baffling. The good news is that recycling does not have to be difficult and time consuming and small efforts do make a difference to our local environment and society.
“Taking small actions like recycling at home, not only helps reduce the amount of waste in local landfill and which gets washed up on beaches, but it is also helping our local economy because recycling supports the generation of local industries and jobs. Old and used packaging isn’t waste, it’s material that can be reformed and used to make more of the same packaging or something different.”
An interesting example of this is Cherry Pipes – a company that manufactures the land drainage pipes that are found in new housing developments, road construction, sports stadia and beyond all made from 100 per cent recycled plastic.
Recycling at home supports this business and the jobs created there and it will also continue to support economic growth as new businesses are formed and flourish in the sector.
Dr Millar adds: “Recycling at home is the best place to start and it’s where most waste comes from – in fact almost 90 per cent of all waste collected in 2019/2020 came from households!
“It’s easy to think that as one individual or family, your recycling won’t make a difference when you feel like loads of other people and companies are not recycling. But if every individual household just increased its recycling even a little bit, it would make a huge difference over time.”
Expert tips to make recycling easier at home:
Place a second bin or a ‘bag for life’ beside your general waste bin (this not only makes recycling easier, but it helps remind you/others in your household to recycle).
Use visual and automatic reminders to give you a nudge to recycle e.g., daily/weekly phone reminders and post-its/signs on or around your indoor bins.
Likewise, create visual reminders of what goes where (visit www.recyclenow.com/local-recycling to find out what you can recycle in your area, or check out your local authority website.
When you aren’t sure about whether certain packages can be recycled, look for the on-pack recycling label which is usually on the bottom or sides of packages and tells us what plastics most local authorities accept. As a rule of thumb, tins/cans, cardboard, and most hard plastics can be recycled.
– Morrisons aims to be the first supermarket to develop a seaweed supplement for beef cattle using seaweed sourced by UK fishermen –
– Early findings indicate that UK seaweed reduces methane emissions and is preferable to imported red seaweed tested in other studies –
– Morrisons is funding a PhD project at Queen’s University Belfast as part of the three-year trial –
Morrisons is working with Queen’s University Belfast on a three-year trial looking at the use of seaweed from the UK in helping to reduce methane production in cattle.
The innovative research programme is being led by Professor Sharon Huws and Dr Katerina Theodoridou of the Institute for Global Food Security (IGFS) at the university and is testing indigenous seaweed from the Irish and UK coastlines.
The aim is to evaluate the nutritional value of seaweed and assess its potential to reduce methane emissions, improve animal health, and enhance meat and milk quality.
The research is yet to be published, but early signs are promising and indicate that seaweed from the North and Irish Seas is not only effective in reducing methane, but potentially preferable to the imported red seaweed tested in other studies which contains the ozone-destructive compound bromoform.
Scientific research earlier this year found that cows belched out 82 per cent less methane after putting a small amount of red seaweed in their feed. Indigenous UK sourced seaweed contains active compounds called phlorotannins which are safe and often found in red wine and red berries. Phlorotannins are also anti-bacterial and improve immunity and so have additional health benefits for cows.
Working with its beef farmers, Morrisons will take the learnings out of the lab and put them to practice in the fields. It plans to work with UK fishermen who already supply its stores, to source seaweed which would then be converted into a supplement.
Morrisons is funding and supporting the programme and a PhD research project at IGFS. A significant part of this is providing access for a PhD student to manage trials in methane reduction on commercial partner farms.
Cows produce methane via microbes in their stomachs as they digest fibrous food in a process similar to fermentation. Methane is a major greenhouse gas.
It does not last as long as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere but is more than 30 times as effective in trapping heat.
UK agriculture currently accounts for 10 per cent of all UK greenhouse gas emissions. Within this, beef farming is the most carbon intensive – generating 45 per cent of carbon emissions for only five per cent of products sold. Nearly half of this is down to methane produced by cattle.
Professor Sharon Huws, Professor of Animal Science and Microbiology of IGFS and who is leading the research programme at Queen’s University Belfast, said: “We are excited to publish our lab research in due course. This is showing that, of several UK seaweeds tested in the lab, at least one is indicating a reduction in methane production.
“The next step will be to trial the effective seaweeds as nutritional supplements for cows and this will be managed by a Morrisons-funded PhD student. This is a truly innovative partnership between a retailer and researchers.
“The involvement of Morrisons means that effective methane reduction can be rolled out to Morrisons farmers’ herds of beef cows, and the seaweed needed can be sourced through its relationships with fisheries.”
Sophie Throup, Head of Agriculture at Morrisons, said: “As British farming’s biggest customer, we’re very mindful of our role in supporting and inspiring the farmers we work with to help them achieve goals in sustainable farming.
“With our own livestock experts and direct relationships with farmers we’re able to make changes quickly.
“By supporting this PhD studentship and wider research we are trialling this natural approach to reducing the environmental emissions caused by burps and flatulence from cows – as well as improving the quality of beef products.”
Morrisons has already embarked on a programme to be completely supplied by net zero carbon British farms by 2030, five years ahead of the market. Over the next nine years, Morrisons is working with its 3,000 farmers and growers to produce affordable net zero carbon meat, poultry, fruit and vegetables.
As part of the programme, Morrisons will also work with universities, farming and countryside organisations and carbon experts.
In 2020 Morrisons set a business target to be net zero by 2040 and set an ambition to be net zero within its UK agriculture supply chain from the farmers who supply Morrisons directly by 2030.
IGFS at Queen’s University is at the forefront of international research into reducing GHG emissions from food systems, including providing science to help UK farmers move towards a zero-carbon model, in line with the UK’s overall ambition of carbon neutrality by 2050.
As Cop26 continues to debate methane – with the US And EU having pledged to reduce agricultural methane outputs from ruminant livestock by upwards of 30% by 2030 – scientists at the Institute for Global Food Security (IGFS) at Queen’s University Belfast are to feed seaweed to farm animals in a bid to slash methane by at least 30%.
Seaweed has long been hailed a ‘superfood’ for humans but adding it to animal feed to reduce methane gas released into the atmosphere by ruminants’ burping and flatulence is a relatively new idea. Early laboratory research at IGFS has shown promising results using native Irish and UK seaweeds.
Previous research in Australia and the USA generated headline results – up to 80% reductions in methane emissions from cattle given supplements from a red seaweed variety. These red seaweeds grow abundantly in warmer climates; however, they also contain high levels of bromoform – known to be damaging to the ozone layer. Seaweed indigenous to the UK and Ireland tends to be brown or green and does not contain bromoform.
UK and Irish seaweeds are also rich in active compounds called phlorotannins, found in red wine and berries, which are anti-bacterial and improve immunity so could have additional health benefits for animals.
Now the IGFS science is moving into the field, with trials on UK farms about to begin, using seaweed sourced from the Irish and North Seas as a feed supplement for cattle.
One 3-year project is in partnership with the UK supermarket Morrisons and its network of British beef farmers who will facilitate farm trials. The project also includes the Agrifood and Biosciences Institute (AFBI), in Northern Ireland, as a partner.
A second project sees IGFS and AFBI join a €2million, international project – led by Irish agency An Teagasc – to monitor the effects of seaweed in the diet of pasture-based livestock. Seaweed will be added to grass-based silage on farm trials involving dairy cows in NI from early 2022.
As well as assessing methane emissions of the beef and dairy cattle, these projects will assess the nutritional value of a variety of homegrown seaweeds, their effects on animal productivity and meat quality.
IGFS lead Sharon Huws, Professor of Animal Science and Microbiology within the School of Biological Sciences, said she expected the combined research to evidence a reduction in GHG emissions of at least 30%.
She said: “The science is there. It’s simply a matter of providing the necessary data and then implementing it. Using seaweed is a natural, sustainable way of reducing emissions and has great potential to be scaled up. There is no reason why we can’t be farming seaweed – this would also protect the biodiversity of our shorelines.
“If UK farmers are to meet a zero-carbon model, we really need to start putting this kind of research into practice. I hope IGFS and AFBI research can soon provide the necessary data and reassurance for governments to take forward.”
Agriculture accounts for around 10% of all UK GHG emissions. Within this, beef farming is the most carbon-intensive, with methane, which cows produce as they digest, a major component.
At a NI level, methane accounts for almost a quarter of GHG emissions, with 80% of that from agriculture.
The above projects form part of the Queen’s-AFBI Alliance – a strategic partnership between Queen’s University and AFBI to maximise science and innovation capacity in NI to meet global challenges, such as carbon-neutral farming.
Morrisons supermarket plans to be completely supplied by net-zero-carbon British farms by 2030. Sophie Throup, Head of Agriculture at Morrisons said: “As British farming’s biggest customer, we’re very mindful of our role in supporting and inspiring the farmers we work with to help them achieve goals in sustainable farming.
“By supporting this research at Queen’s and AFBI, we are trialling this natural approach to reducing environmental emissions and improving the quality of beef products.”
Researchers at Queen’s University Belfast have developed a new treatment to be used in combination with radiotherapy that could significantly improve treatment outcomes for men with locally advanced prostate cancer.
The treatment can make cancerous cells up to 30% more receptive to radiotherapy while simultaneously reducing adverse side effects that limit quality of life.
Radiotherapy is extensively used to treat various localised cancers including prostate cancer, offering the best chance for curative intervention. However, approximately 30% of prostate cancer patients experience treatment failure leading to disease progression.
The research team at Queen’s have developed a new nanomedicine comprised of tiny gold particles, coated in a small peptide called RALA. If these nanoparticles are present in tumour cells when treated with radiotherapy, they increase the cell killing potential of this conventional treatment, helping to reduce the risk of disease relapse. In the absence of radiation, the gold nanoparticles are not directly toxic, meaning that risk of treatment related toxicity is low.
Various groups around the world have reported that gold nanoparticles, or other high-atomic number elements, hold the potential to sensitise tumour cells to radiation treatment, but one key challenge has been delivering these particles in sufficient levels to the right regions within the tumour cells.
Combining the gold particles with RALA increases the efficiency of nanoparticle uptake, while also enabling the gold particles to be delivered to regions within the cells which are more sensitive to the effects of radiation damage.
The study, published in Nanobiotechnology, shows that through the new formulation, prostate cancer cells were rendered up to 30% more sensitive to the cell killing effects of the same radiotherapy used to treat patients.
Furthermore, in experiments investigating the magnitude of effect in small 3-dimentional models of prostate tumors called tumourspheres, the combination of radiation and RALA-gold nanoparticles completely suppressed tumoursphere growth.
Professor Helen McCarthy, from the School of Pharmacy at Queen’s University Belfast, explains: “The peptide enables the gold nanoparticles to be delivered more efficiently to the tumour cells. The gold then interacts with the radiotherapy, increasing the cell killing effect in a highly localised manner.”
The gold particles are up to three times more visible on standard medical imaging equipment. This means that if the nanoparticles are located within the tumour, they should help to improve the accuracy of radiotherapy delivery, reducing the risk of off-target damage to neighboring normal tissue such as the bladder or bowel.
The multi-disciplinary team have recently been awarded £376,000 from Prostate Cancer UK to evaluate the effectiveness of these implants at increasing the sensitivity of prostate cancer cells to radiotherapy.
Dr Jonathan Coulter (top), from the School of Pharmacy at Queen’s University Belfast, explains: “Our research has shown that ultra-low concentrations of the RALA-gold nanoparticles effectively sensitise prostate tumour cells to radiotherapy.
“Now we want to build on this work, to address the second major challenge, consistently delivering sufficient nanoparticles to the tumour throughout a patients’ radiotherapy. We are delighted that Prostate Cancer UK are supporting our proposal to develop a biodegradable implant designed to provide sustained release of the gold nanoparticles.”
“Following insertion into the main tumour lesion, the biodegradable implant will consistently release the nanoparticles over time. This is opposed to current approaches that involve daily injections. Following consultation with a local prostate cancer patient focus groups, we learned that a one off implant would be better tolerated by patients than regular injections to the tumour.”
A UK-wide study, led by Queen’s University Belfast, has shown how a new surveillance pathway for people with stable diabetic eye disease is safe and cost-saving, freeing up ophthalmologists to evaluate and treat people requiring urgent care.
The new health care surveillance pathway may help ophthalmic units across the world to improve their capacity whilst saving patient’s sight. It is already having a positive impact on the re-design of NHS services across the UK, having been implemented successfully in several hospitals.
The research, funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), has been published in leading journals including Ophthalmology, BMJ and NIHR’s Health Technology Assessment.
The EMERALD (the Effectiveness of Multimodal imaging for the Evaluation of Retinal oedemA and new VesseLs in Diabetic retinopathy) diagnostic accuracy study tested a new “ophthalmic grader” pathway. Rather than ophthalmologists, this pathway involves trained graders monitoring people with previously treated and stable complications of diabetic eye disease, namely diabetic macular oedema (DMO) and proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR), based on the reading of images and scans of the back of their eyes.
The grader’s pathway can save £1390 per 100 patients, and the real savings are the ophthalmologist’s time, which can then be redirected to the evaluation of people at high risk of visual loss.
Professor Noemi Lois, lead researcher and Clinical Professor of Ophthalmology from the Wellcome-Wolfson Institute for Experimental Medicine at Queen’s University Belfast, explains: “Diabetic macular oedema and proliferative diabetic retinopathy, the main sight-threatening complications of diabetic retinopathy can cause blindness if left untreated. It is therefore important to diagnose them and to treat them timely.
“NHS hospitals eye units are under significant pressure given the extremely high number of people that need to be examined and treated and given the insufficient number of ophthalmologists in the UK. Currently, ophthalmologists need to evaluate all patients, even those that are stable after treatment and who are doing well.”
In EMERALD, trained ophthalmic graders were found to achieve satisfactory results when compared to standard care (i.e., ophthalmologists evaluating patients in clinic) while releasing ophthalmologist’s time.
Professor Lois added: “EMERALD showed trained ophthalmic graders are able to determine whether patients with diabetic macular oedema or proliferative diabetic retinopathy previously successfully treated remain stable or if on them the disease has reactivated.
“Thus, they would be able to follow people that have been already treated, releasing ophthalmologists’ time. Ophthalmologists could then use this time to treat timely other patients, for example, those who have indeed diabetic macular oedema or active proliferative diabetic retinopathy and who have not yet received treatment saving their sight.”
Dr Clare Bailey, consultant ophthalmologist at the Bristol Eye Hospital, said: “The important data from the EMERALD study has helped us to significantly increase the numbers of people with diabetic retinopathy being seen in ‘imaging/grading’ pathways.
“This has hugely increased our follow-up capacity, whilst allowing ophthalmologists’ time to be directed to the people with diabetic retinopathy who need treatment or further assessment.
“This has helped us to deal with the capacity pressures as a result of Covid -19 as well as the longer-term capacity demands due to the increasing prevalence of diabetic retinopathy.”
Dr Caroline Styles, Consultant Ophthalmologist with NHS Fife, added: “Emerald provided us in NHS Fife with the relevant evidence that allowed us to redesign our pathways for people with diabetic eye disease.
“The involvement of people with diabetes in this study reassures our population that these are safe and appropriate changes, and not just based on cost.”
The EMERALD study was set in 13 National Health Service (NHS) hospitals across the UK and is a large multicentric, UK-wide, National Institute for Health Research (NIHR)-funded diagnostic accuracy study.
‘we may want to consider refining the testing criteria for children to include GI symptoms’
Over 1,000 children from Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales, known as ‘COVID Warriors’ have had their antibodies measured in the UK-wide trial called ‘Seroprevalence of SARS-Cov-2 infection in healthy children’.
The findings were published on Friday (28 August) as a pre-print on the server medRxiv.
The study is led by Queen’s University Belfast, in partnership with the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust Northern Ireland and Public Health England.
The aim of the study, which began in May and is ongoing, is to assess the number of children who have had COVID-19, the symptomatology of infection and if those children have antibodies that may be able to fight off the infection.
To conduct the study, the researchers are measuring children’s COVID-19 antibodies via blood tests at baseline, with further tests planned at two months and six months.
The researchers have found that following the first wave of the pandemic, seven per cent of the children tested positive for antibodies, indicating previous infection with COVID-19.
Half of the children with COVID-19 reported no symptoms, and gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms (such as diarrhoea and vomiting) were also more common than cough or changes in the children’s sense of smell or taste, which may have implications for the testing criteria used for children.
The findings also showed young children under 10 years of age were just as likely to have evidence of prior infection as older children, and that asymptomatic children were just as likely to develop antibodies as symptomatic children.
Dr Tom Waterfield, researcher from the Wellcome-Wolfson Institute for Experimental Medicine at Queen’s University Belfast and lead on the study said: “Following the first wave of the pandemic in the UK, we have learnt that half of children participating in this study are asymptomatic with SARS-CoV-2 infection, and those with symptoms do not typically have a cough or changes to their smell/taste, with GI upset a far more common symptom.
“This study has shown that we may want to consider refining the testing criteria for children to include GI symptoms.”
Health and Social Care Research & Development Division (HSC R&D Division) of the Public Health Agency plays an ongoing role in supporting the conduct of high-quality health and social care research and has provided funding to support the delivery of this important study.
Professor Ian Young, Chief Scientific Advisor and Director of HSC Research and Development said: “Research studies are vital at this time, and thanks to efforts such as the COVID Warriors study, we now know more about COVID-19 in terms of the exposure of children in the UK to the SARS-CoV-2 virus since the pandemic began.
“These significant findings can now be explored further as this research continues to monitor community transmission in children, to help tackle the spread of COVID-19.”
The study is supported by funding from HSC R&D Division, Public Health Agency, The Belfast Health and Social Care Trust and is also subsidised by a donation from the Queen’s Foundation thanks to a past graduate of the University through a charitable gift in their will.
It is being delivered in partnership with The Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, Public Health England, the Ulster Independent Clinic, NHS Glasgow and Greater Clyde, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust and Cardiff and Vale University Health Board.
