Funding Awarded

A functional genomics pipeline for genetic discovery in diabetic kidney disease

Diabetes is responsible for a large proportion of chronic kidney disease (CKD), end-stage kidney disease (ESKD), blindness, amputation, heart disease and stroke. Tight glycemic control in type 1 diabetes (T1D) or type 2 diabetes (T2D) can delay or arrest the progression of microvascular complications. How hyperglycemia...

Cystic Fibrosis Liver Disease (CFLD); predicting and prescribing in the era of CFTR modulators

Life expectancy for people with Cystic Fibrosis (PWCF) has improved dramatically over the last 2 decades. This improved survival has not been observed in those with CF liver disease (CFLD). In the Irish Longitudinal Study of CFLD (ILSCFLD), we found that those with CFLD had a mortality rate difference of 6.6 versus those with no liver...

Developing an innovative patient-centred xenograft model of multiple myeloma and its use in testing novel antagonists of JAM-A signalling

Multiple myeloma (MM) is an incurable cancer in which uncontrolled plasma cell proliferation disrupts the bone marrow environment and impairs immune function. With poor 5-year patient survival (<50%), better clinical models and pipelines for targeted therapies are urgently required. This proposal will focus on both. Firstly, an MSc...

Development of mRNA Vaccines for Children with High-Risk Neuroblastoma

Neuroblastoma is one of the most aggressive childhood cancers contributing to 15% of cancer related childhood deaths. At diagnosis half of the patients have a metastatic tumour and recurrence is very common. Despite advances in available therapies, children with drug-resistant and relapsed neuroblastoma have a dismal outlook with...

A pain and wound management approach for RDEB patients via a functionalized collagen-based hydrogel dressing with controlled release of painkillers

Patients with Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB) have a broad spectrum of need for pain and wound treatment, varying with the type of EB, the severity within that type, and the particular physical, emotional, and psychological milieu of each individual. EB research has advanced considerably in the past decade and wound and pain management have...

Towards Personalised Clinical Management of Suicide Risk through Data-Driven Clinical Decision Support using Transnational Electronic Registry Data "PERMANENS"

Two longstanding limitations hamper effective suicide risk management in clinical practice. First, unassisted clinical judgement is not sufficient to accurately assess suicide risk, leading to ineffective clinical decision-making and poor patient experience; and second, the need for adequate mental health treatment is often unmet among...

PersonAlisation of RelApse risk in autoimmune DISEase "PARADISE"

Autoimmune disease affects 10% of adults, most of whom are women, and two of the top five medications with the highest cost globally are used to maintain these recurring conditions in remission. These medications act by suppressing the immune system, leaving the patient exposed to severe infection and at risk of cancer. Affected...

Prevention in prediabetic patients of infection’s morbidity following a high fibre and vegetal protein diet "PreVegDiet"

Obesity is a risk factor for both susceptibility to infections including postoperative infections and other nosocomial infections and the occurrence of a more severe disease course. The main cause of obesity is energetic imbalance due to increased caloric intake and little expenditure. This induces metabolic and hormonal changes that...

Multi-markers risk assessment of kidney sensitivity to injury to personalize prevention of acute kidney injury "SpareKid"

Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a life-threatening disease with high mortality characterized by an abrupt decrease of the kidney glomerular filtration rate, extra-kidney consequences (cardiovascular diseases, lung injury, neurological impairment) and high risk of secondary chronic kidney disease (CKD). The cost of AKI is very high and...

Early Detection and Intervention for Cerebral Palsy (EDI4CP).

Public and Patient Involvement (PPI) in research is a key focus of our active award, the HRB Irish Network for Children’s Clinical Trials (In4kids). We are now seeking KTA funding for a 0.6FTE PPI coordinator dedicated to our Cerebral Palsy (CP) Research programme in the network. This is a new national programme that will be rolled out...

Co-creation of a cookery book - pathways to making changes in diet

Personalized nutrition is based on the idea that individualizing nutritional advice will be more effective than more generic approaches. Studies are showing successful outcomes by applying such methods. Our group has been involved in several human intervention studies where dietary advice is given to participants based on their...

Medication without harm: Building a network and knowledge exchange programme.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has a Global Patient Safety Challenge: ‘Medication Without Harm’ which aims to reduce worldwide harm associated with medications by half over 5 years. Medication-related harm includes medication incidents, errors, adverse drug reactions (ADRs; harmful responses to medicine) and adverse drug events...

PARKIE: Parkinson's community Awareness of Research; emphasis on Knowledge and Information Exchange.

Our lab is studying the role of our immune system in the development of Parkinson's. Our immune system protects the body against attacks from viruses and bacteria but, when we look at blood samples of people with Parkinson's, we can see they have an increased amount of one immune cell type, namely a type of T-cell called Th17 cells. In...

Art4Knowledge – Art Therapy for Knowledge Exchange between UCC CTG patients with cancer, their families, and clinical trials teams.

Art4Knowledge expands on efforts of the HRB-funded UCC Cancer Trials Group (UCC CTG), which provides access via clinical trials to cutting edge treatments and supportive care for patients with cancer in the South of Ireland. UCC CTG connects UCC research teams with clinical trials units in Cork University Hospital, University Hospital...

Psychosis in the Theatre

This project is about enhancing our public patient involvement (PPI) activities within our Clinical Doctoral Award (CDA) programme by using the Arts to give voice to and tell the story of the collective of people who are affected by psychosis. Our CDA, PSI-STAR (Psychosis Ireland Structured Training and Research Programme) includes...

Taking a World Cafe approach to improving understanding of psychosis and establishing a psychosis research PPI network

The primary aim of this project is to establish a psychosis research PPI network in Ireland. This will be done via a process of meaningful engagement and dialogue with people with lived experience of psychosis and other individuals and organisations with an interest in psychosis.

Specifically, we propose to host a series of...

Clinical trials: what are they and why are they important.

Randomised trials are an important research design and can provide reliable and robust evidence on the benefits, harms and costs of health care. Substantial public and charitable funding is allocated to clinical trials every year. However, there are concerns that much of this is wasted.1 The reasons for such waste include inadequate...

National Patient Education and Research Engagement Programme.

Inflammation is a critical process in fighting infection. However, if uncontrolled, it can contribute to the development of autoimmune disease, including inflammatory forms of arthritis, which cause joint destruction and disability. Medicines available for patients with RA have improved a lot over the last 15-years, however a...

Better Osteoarthritis Care: Delivering education and training for primary care health professionals in Ireland.

Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis in Ireland. It is a condition of the joints that can cause pain, reduce mobility and result in poorer quality of life. It is more common in people over the age of 50 and often affects the knee and hip joints. To ensure that people with osteoarthritis receive ideal care, it is...

Developing an online platform to promote oral health among the Cystic Fibrosis community.

This KTA will be used in order to disseminate findings from our research into the oral health of people with Cystic Fibrosis (PWCF). We seek to provide information and education to two groups of people: 1. PWCF and parents/guardians of PWCF, and 2. Oral Healthcare Professionals. 

We will engage with patient advocates from...

Integrated Knowledge Translation for Advanced Therapies: From Bench to Bedside.

The value of clinical research is to improve treatment outcomes for patients and to inform health policy.  However, the knowledge gained from research only translates into impact for patients when new therapies become used as part of routine practice. 

Advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs) are...

HD-knowhow.

A rare disease is a health condition that affects a small number of people compared with other prevalent diseases in the general population. Empirical research shows that patients with severe illnesses prefer the physician to dominate decision processes and provide the information needed. However, in rare diseases, due to the low...

Translating knowledge into care to enhance sensory-cognitive health of people in longterm care in Ireland

This Knowledge Translation (KT) project will convert our research into practice to improve sensory-cognitive health in residents with dementia (RwD) in nursing homes in Ireland.  We are currently conducting a pilot clinical trial (‘SENSE-Cog Residential Care’) to evaluate whether enhancing sensory health (i.e. hearing/vision) in...

FUTURE-VASC

This project, FUTURE-VASC, aims to share knowledge from a research study called FAIRVASC, so that more people can benefit beyond the life of the original award. FAIRVASC has united scientists, clinicians and patients across Europe in a common goal of linking together data from several vasculitis registries (databases) to create one...

Building Circles of Support for people with intellectual disabilities.

The overall aim of the project is to use research information to develop resources to enhance the Circles of Support (COS) for adults with intellectual disabilities that can be used in person-centred planning processes. Person-centred planning puts the individual with intellectual disability at the centre of the process, and builds...

Translating the tailoring process to improve the implementation of diabetes care.

Our application supports the CUSTOMISE project funded by a HRB Research Leader Award. Our project which is looking at how to implement effective programmes in the health service in a way that is acceptable and practical for health professionals and service users. One such programme is the DAFNE self-management programme for adults with...

Educating the Irish Public on Genomics

The exploration of the human genome is one of the defining medical ethical issues of our time. It has both the potential to improve and save countless human lives, but doesn’t come without risk.  As genomics enters the Irish public's eye, there is a recognised need for efforts to educate the public here in Ireland about the...

Pandemic Resilience- translating knowledge for improved future pandemic preparedness.

Since 2015, the HRB-Irish Critical Care-Clinical Trials Network has established a research program in preparation for pandemics. As part of this, we assessed the barriers and developed solutions to conducting research during a future global pandemic. This work led to a coordinated Irish and global response to COVID-19 with a programme...

TAME-Translation: Translating the TAME cardiac arrest trial results to public, policy, clinicians and researchers.

People who survive sudden out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) usually require intensive care unit (ICU) treatment. The ‘TAME’ cardiac arrest trial, co-led by the Irish Critical Care-Clinical Trials Network (ICC-CTN), has just completed, including 1700 ICU patients from Ireland and 17 countries worldwide. TAME looked at a novel...

CURRENT-KTA | Recurrent Miscarriage: evaluating CURRENT services-Knowledge Translation Acceleration.

Through this RE:CURRENT-KTA application we aim to work with knowledge users to raise awareness, share knowledge, and facilitate practice change to maximise the impact of the RE:CURRENT (Recurrent miscarriage: evaluating CURRENT services) Project and provide more effective healthcare services for people with recurrent miscarriage. We...

Tip of the iceberg: highlighting the long term health consequences of polycystic ovary syndrome.

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a chronic health condition that affects up to 15% of all women. It is characterised by increased blood levels of hormones called androgens (such as testosterone), alongside irregular periods and multiple follicles on the ovaries on ultrasound. PCOS has traditionally been perceived as a purely...

The Ignition study: Sharing stories to improve the experience of transition for young people with cerebral palsy

Cerebral palsy (CP) is a common cause of disability among children. All people with CP have a physical impairment. About 30% use a wheelchair and some children also have difficulties hearing, seeing and speaking. Children with CP are transferred from children’s health services to adult services at age 18. This can be challenging as...

Enhancing Testicular Awareness and Self-Examination Among Gay Men: Campaign Co-Design and Delivery Using the World Café Methodology.

Purpose 

To design and deliver a community-based campaign to promote testicular awareness and self-examination among gay men.

Importance 

In comparison to straight men, gay men are more likely to report a cancer diagnosis including testicular cancer, the most common...

Co-design and co-adaptation of a trustworthy online resource for healthcare professionals and people with chronic hip and knee pain in Ireland

Long-term, painful conditions of the hip and knee joint are common in Ireland. Yet, many patients sit on waiting lists for months or years, even when specialist opinions are not needed. In the meantime, pain gets worse, affecting ability to live, work and be fully active. Expert knowledge on how to exercise with these conditions and...

Teaching & Learning Trauma Informed Care for Health Settings.

While most people have experienced some form of psychological trauma at some point in their life, severe psychological trauma is particularly common in people who are socially excluded (i.e., through homelessness, addiction, poverty, incarceration and/or belonging to minority ethnic groups). Accessing healthcare in hospitals for those...

Ex vivo autologous stem cell gene therapy for Multiple Sulfatase Deficiency

Multiple Sulfatase Deficiency (MSD) is an inherited lysosomal storage disorder (LSD) that predominately involves the brain, bones, and skin. The disease is due to mutations in SUMF1, a gene that provides the instructions for making an important enzyme called formylglycine generating enzyme (FGE). The FGE enzyme activates all the...

Defining how innate immune function is impacted long term in people who have had active Tuberculosis

The Problem:

Tuberculosis (TB) is a complex disease caused by a bacteria called Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) and claims the lives of 1.4 million people annually. When a person is exposed to Mtb, their immune response may clear the infection asymptomatically, contain it in a dormant state (called latent TB)...

Surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, but now what? Exploring the rehabilitation needs of people with brain tumours in Ireland

In Ireland, about 480 people are diagnosed with primary brain tumours every year. Many more people develop secondary brain tumours arising from other cancers. Brain tumours can shorten life span and cause many problems including muscle weakness, speech difficulties, loss of mobility and independence, difficulties thinking and...

Retinal Dystrophy in Ciliopathies (RDCilia): modelling patient mutations to decipher disease mechanisms, interpret Variants of Uncertain Significance, and uncover therapeutics

Retinal dystrophies (RD) are inherited disorders characterised by degeneration of light sensing retinal cells (photoreceptors). Affecting approximately 2 million people worldwide, RD causes chronic and gradual sight loss. A major research issue is that RD is rarely investigated in the context of the gene mutations found in patients....

Long non-coding RNAs: regulators of epileptogenesis and potential targets for therapy

Temporal lobe epilepsy is the most common type of epilepsy in adults, with seizures being the major symptom although individuals with this disease may also have anxiety, depression and/or memory disturbances as a result of their condition. Temporal lobe epilepsy is very difficult to treat and about 30% of individuals with this type of...

Developing the IL-36 receptor antagonist as a therapy for colon cancer

The immune system is rapidly emerging as a key player in the development and progression of cancer. Whilst the body’s immune system is designed to detect and destroy cancer cells, tumours are known to produce proteins that suppress the immune response. A better understanding of the relationship between tumours and the immune system...

Interrogation of novel Glioblastoma Subtypes towards an improved Precision Medicine Approach for Brain Tumour Patients

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most frequent and aggressive adult brain tumour. Sadly, 85% of patients die within two years, despite surgery and chemo/radiotherapy. Treatment resistance is related to cell types that make up the tumour (“tumour microenvironment” or “TME”). Specifically, the behaviour of TME cells such as blood vessel and...

Exploring the risk factors and consequences of cannabis use in adolescence using population-based data: the "CANNARISK" study

Over the past decade there has been an increase in the number of adolescents using cannabis worldwide. This is concerning because cannabis is increasing in strength with more serious long term effects on health such as psychosis and depression. The adverse effects of using cannabis are particularly pronounced in those who start to use...

‘Investigating the relationship between the Complement Pathway and outcomes in Psychosis; from Clinical High Risk to First Episode Psychosis’

Schizophrenia is amongst the most expensive disorders in terms of quality of life and societal cost. Based on current treatments more than 30% of schizophrenia subjects do not respond to treatments, including antipsychotic medications. While early intervention is known to be associated with improved outcome, we cannot tell in advance...

Study of rolE of PlateletS In Sepsis (SEPSIS)

Sepsis is a severe illness caused by a bloodstream infection and is the primary cause of death in-hospital. While antibiotics are the primary treatment for sepsis the emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria along with the inability to culture bacteria from blood in many cases makes treating sepsis challenging. The...

A probiotic strategy for antipsychotic-induced metabolic dysfunction

Schizophrenia is a mental illness associated with psychosis and is treated with antipsychotic medication. These medications are very effective; however, they cause side-effects that impact people’s physical health. Substantial body weight gain occurs in up to half of people during long-term antipsychotic treatment. Antipsychotics can...

ExamIning the diagnostic and functional role of a novel DNA meThylation signaturE in predicting ColoRectAl Cancer meTastasis - “INTERACT”

Ongoing scientific/clinical efforts have drastically improved survival rates (60-80%) of patients with early stage bowel (Colorectal) cancer. However, only 14% of advanced (stage 4) bowel cancer patients survive post-5 years of diagnosis. Currently, there are no effective approaches that can predict if a patient’s bowel cancer will...

Predicting and monitoring outcomes in Autoimmune Encephalitis (POTA)

Epilepsy is a disorder of the brain in which people have repeated seizures. 

Autoimmune encephalitis (AE) is a rare cause of epilepsy. It is an inflammatory disease of the brain. This means that the body’s own immune system attacks healthy brain tissue, just like it would if it were infected by a virus or a bacteria, by...

Combining HDAC6 inhibitors with KRAS inhibitors for the treatment of Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC)

In Europe lung cancer is the second most common cancer in men and the third most common cancer in women. Globally, lung cancer contributes to more cancer deaths than any other type of cancer. While we have witnessed some improvements for lung cancer patients, the outcomes and treatment options for the majority remains poor. One...

Stromal cell subtypes define distinct pathogenesis in RA and PsA

Arthritis is a leading cause of disability affecting up to 15% of the Irish population. 2% suffer from inflammatory arthritis (IA) such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and psoriatic arthritis (PsA). The cost of treating patients with IA in Ireland is ~€20,000/patient/year.

Activation of our immune cells is a key mechanism by which...

Altered histone protein acetylation is associated with dysregulated NK cell metabolism in different cancer types

Fixing broken immune cells in a range of cancers.

Finding a way to stop cancer spreading (known as metastasis) remains a holy grail of scientific research. We know that we can use the immune system in anti-cancer therapies and this has opened up the possibility that patients can be cured using combinations of...

Pathways to Improving Transition to Adult Services & Enhancing Self-Management in Adolescents with Cystic Fibrosis: A New Era of Treatments

The teenage years are a time of change. Being an adolescent with Cystic Fibrosis (CF) can bring additional challenges due to complex and demanding treatments. A key task for teenagers with CF is to learn the skills to manage their health, as they prepare to transition into adult-based care. In Ireland, many adolescents transition to...

Evaluation of a novel drug combination treatment for nephropathic cystinosis in a new cystinotic rat model.

Cystinosis is a rare disease that results in the build-up of cystine in all cells of the body. Cystine is a protein building block and normally the excess is moved out of cells. In cystinosis the transporter for cystine does not work and cystine builds up inside the cells and forms crystals which cause damage to all organs and...

Hepato-Flame: Studying the interaction of diet, obesity, microbial translocation and inflammatory pathways in hepatobiliary cancer development: A European prospective cohort study

In many world regions including Ireland, the incidence of liver cancer and nearby cancers of the biliary tract (together termed hepatobiliary cancers) is rising steadily, and these deadly cancers have limited available treatments. Increasing rates may be linked to obesity and other components of unhealthy lifestyles which cause...

Analyzing the therapeutic potential of anti-inflammatory drugs in brain development, neuronal activity and long-term outcomes after birth asphyxia

Birth asphyxia or neonatal hypoxia is a medical condition resulting from deprivation of oxygen to a newborn infant that lasts long enough to cause harm, usually to the brain. It remains a serious condition which causes significant mortality and morbidity. Neonatal hypoxia is a global insult, which can damage all organs, but the brain...

Neutrophil Plasticity in Infection and Inflammation

Neutrophils make up 40-60% of all white blood cells. They arrive as the first cell type wherever viral, bacterial, or fungal infections occur, or when tissue damage and injury happen. In severe and longer lasting incidents neutrophil numbers go up due to increased release from the bone marrow. Neutrophils detect, swallow up and destroy...

A translational investigation of the anti-inflammatory and antidepressant effects of Psychedelics in Depression

There has been a renewed interest in the therapeutic potential of psychedelics. These substances (e.g. psilocybin, D-lysergic acid diethylamide, dimethyltryptamine) when given under psychiatric supervision and with psychological support have been shown to have therapeutic benefits for a range of disorders with restricted or maladaptive...

Addressing the economic and human cost of hospital acquired and nurse-sensitive adverse events in older patients through optimal use of routine discharge data and measurement of missed nursing care

Older patients make up the largest patient group in acute hospitals in Ireland. Common hospital acquired complications in this group contribute to higher healthcare costs, lower quality care, and less satisfactory patient experiences overall. Pneumonia, delirium, urinary tract infections and pressure injuries are four commonly acquired...

Investigating the potential of CTNS-mRNA loaded nanoparticles as a new therapeutic strategy for nephropathic cystinosis.

Cystinosis is a rare disease that results in the build-up of cystine in all cells of the body. Cystine is a building block of proteins and normally the excess is moved out of cells. In cystinosis, the transporter for cystine is deficient and cystine builds up inside cells. It forms crystals which cause damage and eventually...

Participation in physical activity: what really matters to adolescents with physical disability?

Being physically active is hugely important for health. It improves physical and mental wellbeing and reduces the risk of health problems in adulthood. Young people with physical disability, especially adolescents, do less physical activity than their peers. We want to learn more about how we can support adolescents with physical...

Interrogating Steroid Non-responsiveness in the Irish Eosinophilic Oesophagitis Population

Eosinophilic oesophagitis (EoE) is a rare, increasingly recognised disease where an immune cell (eosinophil) builds up in the oesophagus in response to allergens including foods. This damage can lead to vomiting, abdominal pain, difficulty swallowing, blockage, and with time scaring which may need surgery. EoE is a serious affliction...

Sustaining activity with arthritis (SAWA) following an Arthritis Ireland Be active with arthritis (BAWA) exercise programme

Best practice guidelines across the world always recommend those living with arthritis to be physically active. Research shows that being active can help people living with arthritis to do the things that they want to do for longer, reduce pain, improve quality of life and protect against getting other health conditions such as heart...

Counting the cost: The contribution of older carers in Ireland and impact of caring on mental health and wellbeing of carers

Family caring plays an essential role in Ireland’s health system, but it does place social, financial, physical, and emotional demands on carers. Caring by older people has been shown to have benefits for health and longevity when providing lower numbers of hours of care. Less is known about why some carers seem to manage better than...

IMPRINT: Defining pathogen-specific IMmune PRedictors of bloodstream INfecTion outcomes

The past 20 months has provided a front row seat to the ravaging effects of a virus on the global population. During this time, scientists have responded with a momentous research effort, which has yielded unprecedented levels of understanding of how SARS-CoV-2 causes COVID-19 disease and importantly how our immune system responds to...

STARFISH: Sustained inflammaTion in preterm infAnts and multioRgan dysFunctIon correlateS witH long term outcomes

Preterm birth describes babies born before 37 weeks an is the world's leading cause of death in children less than 5 years old. Babies born before 32 weeks have higher risks of injury to their brain, kidneys, lungs, heart and more infections. Although clinical care of these issues in the neonatal period is well defined there are few...

Effective Subsets of Fine-Grained Network-based Neurophysiological Biomarkers for Early Stratification in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Motor Neurone Disease (MND)/Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a terminal neurological condition in which the neurons (neural cells) that control movement degenerate. The exiting drugs have very limited effects on the disease progression and those affected only survive for about 3-4 years after the symptoms begin.

More than...

Mental Health and Wellbeing during the Transition from Childhood to Young Adulthood

While positive mental health and wellbeing is important for children and young people in its own right, mental ill-health in early life can also have lasting impacts on later-life outcomes. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the prevalence of mental health difficulties was increasing among children and young people in Ireland, and there...

Identifying and Addressing the Barriers to Home Haemodialysis (DREAM)

Kidney disease is becoming more common. This means that more people require kidney transplants and haemodialysis. Haemodialysis is a way of replacing the functions of failing kidneys by using an external machine to clean the blood. Haemodialysis is usually carried out in a hospital. However, after training, many patients and their...

A realist process evaluation of an intervention to promote competencies in interprofessional collaboration among interdisciplinary integrated care teams for older people

Government policy in Ireland recognises the importance for older people to live well in their homes and their communities. This means that the right healthcare is available for older people and their family carers in their communities as and when they need it. The government have a plan to develop healthcare teams called Integrated...

SocialPaths: Sex-specific socioeconomic pathways to cardiovascular disease risk across the life course

Heart disease is the leading cause of death globally in both females and males. After decades of research, we know what causes heart disease but prevention remains challenging. Much of what we know about heart disease and how we go about preventing it today is based on research in males. Future prevention strategies require research...

Planning and design for quality of life and resilience in residential long-term care settings for older people in Ireland: Research and Universal Design Guidelines for new-build, adaption and retrofit

In Ireland, the provision of Residential Care Settings (RCS) for Older People is currently inadequate; putting pressure on the health system and undermining the care of many older people. As the population increases and ages, the number of people requiring RCS will increase. This is recognised by the Irish government in health...

The design and psychometric evaluation of a health-related quality-of-life outcome measure (QoLTEN) for adults with Stevens-Johnson syndrome/toxic epidermal necrolysis (SJS/TEN)

Stevens-Johnson syndrome/toxic epidermal necrolysis (SJS/TEN) are devastating conditions with a sudden onset. Patients are catapulted into a rapid and unexpected form of acute skin failure with a significant risk to their life. They become critically ill within a short period of time and are treated as a medical emergency with the...

Patient-led development of a “Patient Reported Outcomes” instrument to improve health-related quality of life in patients with Glomerular Disease – PRO-GD

Glomerular diseases (GDs) are rare kidney diseases that damage kidney filters (glomeruli) and can result in kidney failure, hospitalisation, and death. Glomerular diseases also affect health-related quality of life (HRQOL), including reduced ability to participate in normal life, fear or anxiety about the future, low mood, or eroded...

Increased Thrombotic Risk in Patients with Myeloproliferative Neoplasms: Linking Inflammation, Metabolism and Hypercoagulability - the CLIMB study

Blood clotting is an important defence mechanism that prevents blood loss after injury, but when this process is not controlled, it can block blood vessels and cause life-threatening thrombosis. Individuals with myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) generate excessive numbers of all blood cells, including white cells, which predisposes...

Development of a Core Outcome Set for research studies with older adults in the Emergency Department

The number of people over the age of 65 is increasing. This change in the population will continue to put pressure on healthcare services including Emergency Services into the coming decades as older adults are most frequent Emergency Department (ED) attendees.

Older adults are at risk of health decline and functional decline...

The development of an intervention to improve the use of point-of-care diagnostics in the management of respiratory tract infections in primary care: a mixed methods study

Using antimicrobial medicines (e.g. antibiotics) too often, especially when they are not needed, is associated with increased antimicrobial resistance (AmR). AmR can weaken the effects of antimicrobials, which threatens our already vulnerable health systems. Sometimes, antibiotics (which kill bacteria) are used to treat viral...

An investigation into the prevalence and experience of psychopathology and mental disorders among children and adolescents with cerebral palsy

Cerebral palsy (CP) is the most common cause of physical disability in childhood. Most people with CP live well into adulthood. Although CP primarily affects a person’s ability to sit or move, many people with CP report experiencing mental health problems. Children and adolescents with CP who experience mental health problems are more...

Advanced, automated compound screening for the identification of therapeutic agents in Multiple Sulfatase Deficiency.

Multiple Sulfatase Deficiency (MSD) is an extremely rare, fatal, yet untreatable condition. It is caused by the inherited deficiency of an enzyme (called FGE) that activates a whole family of 17 other cellular enzymes named sulfatases. Sulfatases are indispensable for the degradation of a subset of intracellular molecules. Thus,...

Development, validation and dissemination of the PRECIS-3 tool to support the design of pragmatic randomised controlled trials: Towards making clinical trials part of routine clinical care

Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) have been proven to be the best means of acquiring clinical data for the provision of a wide variety of healthcare solutions. Conventional (explanatory) RCTs, however, are normally performed under ideal conditions in a scenario that is divorced from the clinical care of the participants. They are...

Comprehensive characterisation of resistance mechanisms for the accurate detection of Helicobacter pylori antimicrobial resistance

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection is a public health issue. It remains one of the most common infections in adults in Ireland and is associated with significant disease as the main cause of stomach ulcers and stomach cancers. Despite significant work resulting in a better understanding of this bacterium (germ) and how it...

PRedicting Onset, Variation and Effect of treatment in Rheumatoid Arthritis (PROVE-RA)

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a common, autoimmune disease affecting synovial joints that may result in cartilage damage, joint destruction, and disability. Treatments available for patients with RA have improved a lot over the last two decades with the result that many patients will go into remission. However, a significant number of...

Investigation of hospital sanitary ware as reservoirs of persistent antimicrobial resistant pathogens and links to bloodstream infections: Implications for infection prevention and control

Infections caused by bacteria lengthen patient stays in hospital and increase the complexity of treating the patient. These bacteria are frequently antibiotic resistant superbugs, like MRSA or CPE. Once the bacteria is in a patient it is a danger to the patients' health. These bacteria can survive and live outside the human body in...

Discovering and modulating mechanisms by which Peptidylglycine alpha-Amidating Monooxygenase (PAM) influences the risk of genetically inherited tissue damage in Rheumatoid Arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a disease in which the immune system attacks the body and affects around 50,000 people in Ireland. This results in swollen and painful joints, which can be severely debilitating. The underlying cause is a mixture of nature (genetics) and nurture (environment). The genetic site rs26232 has been found to be...

Ongoing examination of the PD-1:PD-L1 pathway throughout the evolution of Rheumatoid Arthritis

Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is a chronic autoimmune disease which causes joint destruction, disability, and increased mortality. While treatment has improved, only 1:4 patients achieve full remission and predicting who will develop severe disease or who will respond to treatment is difficult. This research will examine an immune pathway...

Polyfunctional-T "" stromal cell crosstalk in the joint of patients with inflammatory arthritis

Over a million people in Ireland alone, with inflammatory arthritis and other autoimmune diseases know only too well the frustration of the trial-and-error approach in finding the right treatment. In many cases this entails enduring chronic pain over several years, before a successful drug is stumbled upon. Therefore, there are areas...

Development of a gene activated construct targeting proinflammatory signalling to promote zonal regeneration of osteoarthritic cartilage

Cartilage is a specialised, layered tissue that coats the end of bones, facilitating low friction movement of the joints and providing cushioning from impacts. When cartilage is injured or degenerates, due to diseases such as osteoarthritis, these functions are impaired, causing inflammation, pain and significantly impacting quality of...

Identifying gut microbiome-responsive brain biomarkers of cognitive impairments relevant to schizophrenia: A next-generation functional CNS circuit mapping approach

Ireland has among the highest rates of mental illness in Europe. Schizophrenia is the leading psychiatric diagnosis nationally. Schizophrenia patients have problems remembering their past, are unable for social interactions and cannot hold on to information long enough to use it. Scientists have found that gut microbes can affect our...

A Standardised Approach to Measuring Infant Feeding Outcomes to Prevent Childhood Obesity

Approximately one in five children currently experience obesity worldwide, making it a major public health challenge. What, how and when children are fed in the first year of life ("infant-feeding") contributes to childhood obesity risk. However, strategies, including interventions to prevent childhood obesity by targeting...

Cortical and Spinal Connectivity of Motor Units as a novel biomarker of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis pathology

One in every 400 in Ireland is at risk of developing Motor Neurone Disease during their lifetime, with Ireland having the highest overall incidence of Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in Europe. ALS is a nervous system disease that causes a gradual loss of muscle control. It is characterised by the death of motor neurons, which are...

Co-producing actionable knowledge to strengthen cultural humility in Irish mental health services

Research tells us that ethnic minority populations experience mental health difficulties at an unequal rate compared to the general population and experience great difficulties getting their mental healthcare needs met. Human rights law and mental health policy state that everyone must get their mental healthcare needs met. People have...

Development of a Health Impact Assessment (HIA) Implementation Model: Enhancing Intersectoral Approaches in Tackling Health Inequalities

Public health research has shown that our health and wellbeing are affected by the circumstances into which we are born, grow, live, work and age. These circumstances are generally described as the social determinants of health. We know that incorporating a health focus drawing on the social determinants of health across all publicly...

Interrogating the role of miRNA in predicting responses to novel modulator therapies in children with Cystic Fibrosis

Cystic Fibrosis (CF) is a hereditary condition effecting over 80.000 people worldwide with the highest incidence occurring amongst the Irish population. There is no cure for CF however the arrival of a new era of medication that can correct Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane Conductance Regulator gene (CFTR) mutations, the basic defect that...

Exploring enablers & barriers to community-based & community-led LGBTQI+ Healthcare

While many aspects of life for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer & Intersex individuals & communities have notably improved through shifting societal attitudes & legislative reform; significant health inequalities remain for these groups, & LGBTQI+ people are often invisible in healthcare research & service...

Student Experiences of Health Psychology in the US (STEP-US): A mixed methods study with US Health Psychology doctoral students and programme leads.

The "Student Experiences of Health Psychology in the US (STEP-US): A mixed methods study with US Health Psychology doctoral students and programme leads" project aims to explore understanding of Health Psychology, experiences of training and career supports, and diversity within US Health Psychology doctoral training programmes. The...

Applying Machine Learning Techniques to Ecological Momentary Assessment Data to Investigate Complex Suicide Processes.

Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) provides moment-to-moment recording of suicide risk factors that can be feasibly monitored via mobile app. Machine Learning techniques applied to such data can help identify complex risk algorithms that one-time clinic-based assessments struggle to capture. The SafePlan trial, a Pilot Randomised...

The Inaugural Irish Research Radiation Oncology Group (IRROG) National Conference 2023

The Irish Research Radiation Oncology Group (IRROG) is a newly established collaborative group which aims to unite the five HSE radiotherapy centres under a common research function.

IRROG was initiated in January 2022 from a Health Research Board grant and co-investment from a number of collaborators.

IRROG comprises...

Stakeholder coalitions to guide future research directions for stuttering treatment: Shaping healthcare delivery and policy

This conference aims to provide current and innovative research and clinical practices in stuttering treatment, thus improving therapy services for those who stutter, informing health policies, and improving the quality of life for the international stuttering community. Stuttering treatment continues to be represented by a range of...

The Past, Present and Future of our Emergency Medical Services: Consultation on the Implementation of a National Research Strategy for Paramedicine in Ireland

Context:

Pre-hospital care traditionally refers to emergency medical care administered to ill or injured patients by paramedics, prior to transportation by ambulance to a medical facility. Internationally, Emergency Medical Services (EMS) have evolved to treat and referral models and paramedicine is moving towards a future of...

The Next Generation' Diabetes Self-Management Alliance Conference

The Diabetes-Self-Management Alliance (DSMA) conference aims to share the most up-to date research evidence on how best to support people with diabetes to manage their condition on a day to day basis and to explore ways to improve diabetes self-management education and support in the future in partnership with people living with...

UCC Symposium on Cutting Edge Computed Tomography (CT)

Computed tomography, commonly known as a CT scan, is a diagnostic test that combines X-rays with computer technology to produce detailed images of the inside of the body. Unlike standard X-rays, CT scans can create 3D images demonstrating almost all organs and tissues. CT scans have become an essential element of modern medicine for...

HRB NCTO International Clinical Trials Day Conference 2023 - "Clinical Research in Ireland 2023"

The NCTO International Clinical Trials Day (ICTD) event on May 11th 2023 will be a one day conference, celebrating International Clinical Trials Day, launching the calendar of ICTD events which will take place in the CRF/Cs across the network over subsequent weeks and showcase clinical research activities across the HRB funded...

Best practice for Caring for Patients with Cystic Fibrosis in Primary Dental Care

Ireland has the highest global incidence of Cystic Fibrosis and future trends predict that the adult Cystic Fibrosis population in Europe will increase by 75% by 2025, therefore it is timely and necessary to equip dental professionals with the most current information and guidance surrounding the management of Cystic...

Enhancing existing formal home support to improve and maintain functional status in older adults.

Ireland has an increasing ageing population and this has created the need for better and more integrated health and social care services. The benefits of physical activity for all ages are widely known. Physical activity programmes have been shown to improve older adults’ health and well-being and reduce falls, enabling the older adult...

Early Pregnancy Information Day 2022

The first trimester of pregnancy is a particularly important time not only for baby’s development, but also for the family that is adjusting to this big change. The woman is usually first seen by her GP to confirm the pregnancy, and discuss the options available to her for antenatal or maternity care. Often the mum-to-be will engage...

Migrant health research networking and knowledge exchange seminar: An arts based event

People have always migrated for a variety of reasons, to seek work, education and to seek protection from conflict, natural disasters and persecution. While Ireland has a long history of emigration, since the early 2000s the trend has changed and there are more migrants coming into Ireland than before. Therefore gaining greater...

Dementia Research: Bridging the gap between Research, Policy and Practice

This half day event is a knowledge exchange seminar focused on designing and using research results for real-life impact. It will be hosted by The Alzheimer Society of Ireland and Dementia Research Network Ireland.

Why we want to do it:

Research indicates that up to 85% of health research funding is potentially wasted...

"Euro Public Health + Consortium: reaching the future through research partnerships"

"Dublin 2023: First joint Euro Public Health + Consortium research seminar: reaching the future through research partnerships": 

The European Public Health Plus program is an intercultural, multidisciplinary master's degree in public health delivered by eight European universities (EHESP School of Public Health, Andalusian...

7th Annual Public & Patient Involvement Summer School

Enhancing Public, Patient and Carer involvement (PPI) in health research was identified as a priority area within the HRB's Strategy 2016-2020 and reiterated in the Strategy 2021-2025. This includes a defined commitment to develop and promote PPI within the HRB and HRB-supported projects and programmes, as well as within the community...

BlooDHIT | Blood Donation Haematology Infection & Transfusion Conference 2022

The Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS) is responsible for the national blood supply of Ireland. The rapidly evolving fields of transfusion and haematology mean it's imperative that upcoming advancements to clinical practice, donation, testing and production, are prepared for. Therefore the IBTS must provide a platform to bring...

Moving policy evaluation forward: A workshop on how to identify the ‘best buys’ in public policy for the promotion of physical activity and healthy nutrition.

Over the last 3 years, researchers and policy-makers in food and physical activity have been working together to establish the Policy Evaluation Network (PEN). PEN aims to evaluate policy measures to promote a healthy diet and physical activity of the population in terms of their content, implementation and effectiveness.

By...

Irish Clinical Academic Training: An All-Ireland Integrated Training Programme for Clinical Academics

The Irish Clinical Academic Training Programme (ICAT-1) was established with the vision of changing the training landscape for clinician scientists on the island of Ireland. The proposed ICAT-2 will advance the achievements of ICAT-1 and is the next step in developing clinical academics of the future across the spectrums of...

Structured Population Health, Policy and Health Services Research Education

The SPHeRE programme is the leading doctoral programme in Ireland for training the next generation of research leaders in Population Health and Health Services Research. Since 2007, the programme has provided a comprehensive integrated training model that produces graduates with a common understanding of population health and health...

Neurodevelopmental ciliopathies: a multimodel approach from molecular mechanisms to patients variant interpretation and treatment strategies "NDCil"

Nervous system malformation and neurodevelopmental defects (ND) are common hallmark features of genetically inherited diseases called ciliopathies. All ciliopathies are caused by abnormalities in tiny hair-like extensions called primary cilia (Cil), which are found on the surface of most cell types, including neuronal and glial cells....

Dietary Assessment & Further Development of Biomarkers for All "DIETARY DEAL"

There is a need for advancement in harmonised dietary assessment technologies supported by objective biomarker measurements for food and nutrient intakes. While many tools have been developed with specific purposes, a tool which encompasses the requirements of the EU research community to allow for harmonisation of data collection,...

Early Identification of Suicide and Self-Harm Risk and Comorbid Mental and PHysical Disorders: An INterdisciplinary TrAining, Research and InterventioN Programme (MHAINTAIN)

MHAINTAIN will create a research-through-training network addressing the need for doctoral training and career paths, to improving early identification and intervention of suicide and self-harm risk. The aim of this interdisciplinary consortium is to improve capacity building in the assessment of risk of suicide and self-harm...

PSychosis Ireland Structured Training and Research programme (PSI-STAR)

Psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder,  occur in about 3 in a hundred people and usually start in adolescence or young adulthood, greatly disrupting a young person's life in terms of education, social relationships and career outcomes. Because of the early age of onset and...

MIRANDA- Multidisciplinary Innovation and Research Advancing Neurological care in a Digital Age

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) or Motor Neurone Disease (MND) is a degenerative disease of the nervous system, which affects one in 300 people in Ireland. Those affected lose their ability to use their arms, legs and voice, and eventually their ability to breathe. Some people also experience changes in thinking.

There...

Advancing clinical research on ageing in Ireland

As the population of the world ages, there is a critical need to integrate research on aging into the medical training of clinicians. The goal of this program is to provide research development, training, and mentoring to physician-scientists in the newly established Master's of Medical Gerontology program at Trinity College...

Using single-cell RNA-sequencing to rationally model inflammatory skin disease

Rapidly advancing single-cell genomic methodology can give biologists unprecedented resolution in the study of cell types and states in tissues, such as the different epithelial cells (EC) of the skin. I wish to employ it to address an unmet clinical need in the chronic inflammatory skin condition hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) where EC...

Exploring the factors and mechanisms involved in the delivery of healthcare and support programs to people with dementia from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds

The management of dementia among immigrant populations is considered a global public health priority. Dementia interferes with the brain and older age is the strongest risk factor. The migration experience has been associated with specific stressors that can lead to poor health outcomes. In the United States dementia affects an...

HRB Trials Methodology Research Network (HRB-TMRN) 2021 - 2026

No summary available

Clinical Trial Feasibility Award - University of Limerick

No summary available

Clinical Trial Feasibility Award - Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland

No summary available

UCD Clinical Research Centre

No summary available

HRB Clinical Research Facility - UCC (HRB CRF-UCC)

No summary available

Wellcome HRB Clinical Research Facility at St. James's Hospital

No summary available

Children's Health Ireland

No summary available

HRB Clinical Research Facility Galway

No summary available

National Clinical Trials Office 2021 - 2024

No summary available

Social Circumstances and Epigenomics: Promoting Health in Three Countries

This project proposes an integrated set of aims and analyses of existing social and epigenetic data from three national studies of aging in the family of Health and Retirement studies (the US Health and Retirement Study (HRS), the Northern Ireland Cohort for the Longitudinal Study of Ageing (NICOLA), and the Irish Longitudinal Study of...

Uncovering the neural architecture underlying decisions abstracted from movements

Decision making is a core component of normal and abnormal cognitive function. Understanding the neural mechanisms of decision-making will lead to advances in the diagnosis, classification and future treatments of disorders affecting thought and control. Mathematical models of the decision process, based on bounded evidence...

MinDful: Music aNd Dance For Older adULts: The Feasibility of an Arts-Based Health Intervention for Health and Wellbeing

Ireland has an ageing population. Many older adults in Ireland have a chronic condition, low levels of physical activity and experience loneliness and social isolation. Additionally, approximately a third of adults over 65 years of age fall each year. Additionally, the unprecedented consequences of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic,...

Randomised controlled trial of reduced versus standard volume platelet transfusion in preterm babies with thrombocytopenia (with add-on studies to explore mechanisms of harm)

Platelets are cells which help blood clot but they also have other effects such as directing pathways of inflammation.  Premature babies often have low platelets, particularly if they have an infection or bowel inflammation. Doctors give platelet transfusions because they think that this prevents bleeding but there is no evidence...

Safeguarding the Brain Of Our Smallest Children- an open-label phase-III randomsied trial of cerebral oximetry combined with a treatment guideline versus treatment as usual in premature infants

Approximately 25,000 preterm infants are born more than 12 weeks early every year in Europe. For these preterm infants, the consequences of such an early birth include a high risk of death and brain injury. About one in five will die and almost one quarter of all survivors will be at risk of longer-term developmental problems....

Emerge-2: placebo-controlled RCT of the Effectiveness of MEtformin in addition to usual care in the Reduction of Gestational diabetes mellitus Effects

Diabetes (high blood sugars) developing during pregnancy is called Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (GDM). GDM is increasing, affecting one-in-eight pregnant women in Ireland. Women with GDM have an increased risk of complications including delivery by Caesarean section and more blood pressure problems. Women with GDM have a 7-fold...

An Education and eXercise intervention (EDX-Ireland) for gluteal tendinopathy in an Irish setting: a feasibility randomised controlled trial (LEAP-Ireland trial)

Gluteal tendinopathy is a chronic condition which affects tendons of the gluteal (buttock) muscles of the hip. This condition is also known as Greater Trochanteric Pain Syndrome (GTPS). It can result in significant pain that can last for months or years. It can disturb sleep and affect everyday activities such as...

The StrokeCog-R study: a randomised pilot study of a novel cognitive rehabilitation intervention in stroke

Stroke is a leading cause of death and disability in Ireland and worldwide. Many people are aware of the physical disabilities that occur following stroke, but are less aware of the cognitive problems that people experience. Cognitive problems, or cognitive impairment, include difficulties with thinking, memory, and concentration. They...

European Blood Pressure Intensive Control after Stroke-Pilot trial (EPICS-Pilot)

Stroke is the second leading cause of death, the leading cause of new disability and a major contributing cause of dementia and healthcare costs in the world. About one-third of recovered stroke survivors will have second stroke or heart attack by 5 years. High blood pressure (hypertension) is the leading treatable condition...

SENSE-Cog Care: A feasibility study of hearing and vision support to improve quality of life in care home residents with dementia

What is the need?  Of the 55,000 people with dementia in Ireland, nearly 17,000 live in nursing homes. Over 90% of these residents have significant hearing and vision problems that are frequently undetected or under-corrected. Also, the sensory environment (noise, bad lighting) in many nursing homes may contribute to poor...

Randomised Placebo-Controlled Trial of Early Targeted Treatment of Patent Ductus Arteriosus with Paracetamol in Extremely Low Birth Weight Infants

Patent Ductus Arteriosus (PDA) is common in newborn infants, especially premature infants. During pregnancy, the Ductus Arteriosus is an open channel between the two main blood vessels coming from the baby's heart. After birth it usually closes during the first few days. For very premature babies it may take longer to close, or may not...

Maximising medication adherence and minimising physician interia: Lowering to target the blood pressure of older patients with hypertension-A cluster randomised feasibility study in general practice

High blood pressure can lead to strokes and heart disease. Despite treatment, many patients continue to have uncontrolled blood pressure. In Ireland, we do very badly in this area - the worst of sixteen high income countries worldwide. For example, the proportion of Irish male patients with controlled blood pressure is 17% - in Canada,...

OPTimization of Medication by transdisciplinary Assessment of drug Treatment in Elderly hospitizalised patients (OPTIMATE): application of a definitive intervention by physicians or clinical pharmacists

Older people commonly experience multimorbid illness i.e. several chronic medical conditions occurring in the same patient simultaneously. Each of these conditions is usually treated with one or more medications, such that multimorbid illness usually results in several medications being simultaneously prescribed long-term; this is...

Enhancing Men’s Awareness of Testicular Disease (E-Mat): A Feasibility Study and Study Within A Trial (SWAT)

Testicular cancer is the most common cancer in European men younger than 50 years. In Ireland, 176 men are diagnosed with testicular cancer each year. Testicular cancer treatments, especially in late stages, can cause infertility, heart, and neurological diseases. Other testicular diseases can also cause lumps and bumps. These are...

HRCI Support Award

Award supporting HRCI activities.

IPPOSI Support Award

Award supporting IPPOSI activities.

WHO Solidarity Trial Ireland

WHO Solidarity Trial Ireland

Building research capacity, harnessing data and strengthening health systems to improve outcomes in community emergency & unscheduled care in Ireland

This research project aims to improve systems of community emergency care by focusing on a condition called Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest (OHCA). OHCA is an emergency where a person’s heart suddenly stops pumping blood around the body. It happens without warning, often because of an abnormal heart rhythm. In Ireland 2500 people suffer...

An analysis of nurse-led COVID-19 interventions among homeless populations – a mixed methods study

This research project will study the effectiveness of nursing care given to prevent, identify or treat COVID-19 among people who are homeless. Research shows that homeless populations are more at risk of infections because of existing health issues and diseases, poor nutrition, addictions and mental health problems. People who are...

Sustaining increased and improved access to opioid substitution treatment (OST) in Ireland: a mixed-methods study to evaluate the impact of national contingency OST guidelines on process and client outcomes, and identify quality indicators for the continued and safe delivery of OST throughout and beyond COVID-19.

People who use heroin have a risk of death six times higher than the general population. The most effective treatment for heroin use is the prescription of legal, substitution medicine, most commonly methadone. This is called opioid substitution treatment or OST. Most people in OST attend a specialist outpatient addiction service,...

Understanding and Enhancing Medication Safety During COVID-19: The CONNECTS (COVID-Nineteen Medication Safety) Toolkit

Medicines are the most common treatment used to maintain and improve health. Due to COVID19, the way in which people access and use medication in their communities has changed rapidly and in an unprecedented way. Many are using technology to avoid potential exposure to COVID19 and we do not yet understand the impact on medicines safety...

Manipulating macrophage bioenergetics to improve patient outcomes in TB infection

Tuberculosis (TB) is the most lethal infectious disease worldwide, causing 1.8 million deaths annually. For the last 4 years in Ireland, we have seen a doubling of TB cases after the use of immuno-suppressants called TNF blockers, and the emergence of drug resistant TB in Irish people for the first time in this regard. Targeting and...

Oral health in adults with Cystic Fibrosis

Approximately 1 in 19 Irish people are said to 'carry' one copy of the altered gene that causes Cystic Fibrosis (CF). Half of people born with cystic fibrosis in 2017 will live to at least 47. This is a remarkable medical advance, however this means that we now have a shortage of evidence for the healthcare management of adults...

Progressing Sláintecare delivery from proposal to implementation: Insights from palliative care in Ireland

Sláintecare, Ireland’s national ten-year reform plan recommends universal healthcare. This represents the biggest Irish health system reform since its inception. Using palliative care as an example this project examines the development universal palliative care internationally and applies these learnings to Ireland.

Through a...

Measures of wellbeing for use in economic evaluation: valuing and assessing health outcomes in Ireland

In Ireland, healthcare decisions primarily concentrate on maximising health gain. However, with more integrated social care, there is growing recognition that this perspective is too narrow. Health maximisation is unlikely to be a relevant objective, particularly where demand for social care is high (e.g. in chronic diseases,...

Iron deficiency assessment for protection of the newborn brain

Iron deficiency is the most common nutritional deficiency in the world. About 1 in 4 people do not have enough iron to stay healthy. Pregnant women, infants and young children are at high risk of iron deficiency, as they need more iron than other population groups to support growth and development. Maternal health, including body...

Food industry corporate political activity and its potential influence on public health policy, research and practice in Ireland

In Ireland, non-communicable diseases (NCD), which include diabetes, cardio-vascular diseases and cancers, contribute to premature death and increased suffering and disability. Unhealthy diets, particularly those high in ultra-processed food products, and obesity, are one of the primary risks factors for NCD. Internationally...

Blood-based biomarkers for early detection of preclinical neurocognitive disorders

With more people now living longer lives, dementia is becoming an increasingly important problem in society. One of the biggest challenges in designing studies of potential new treatments for dementia, is accurately predicting which people are most likely to develop dementia in the future, prior to them showing signs of the disease....

Exercise therapy for degenerative meniscal tears in the primary care - a feasibility cluster randomised controlled trial

Knee pain due to a degenerative meniscal tear is a common joint condition seen in Irish orthopaedic clinics. Changes to the knee joint and meniscus (cartilage within the knee that helps cushion the joint) occur normally with age but can become painful in some middle-aged adults. Exercise is recommended as the main treatment to aid...

Scenario and intervention modelling in Ireland for stroke: Evaluating the effect of alternative policy scenarios and interventions for stroke in Ireland on outcomes and costs

One in every four people in Ireland will have a stroke in their lifetime. People are less likely to die if they have a stroke than in previous decades, partly due to new treatments that prevent further strokes and improve outcomes.  For every three people who survive their stroke, two acquire some type of disability such as...

Using knowledge translation to enhance the use of evidence in public health decision-making by policymakers and healthcare managers in Ireland

Health policy refers to decisions, plans, and actions that are undertaken to achieve specific health care goals within a society. Using high-quality evidence to inform how health policies are made is crucial to ensure safe and effective healthcare and to optimise patient and public health outcomes. Despite this, international research...

Hip fracture outcome recording and geographic equality

Hip fracture is a serious event in the lives of older people with around one in five individuals dying in the first year after their injury and many more losing their independence. Currently in Ireland, little is known about how people recover in the longer-term after hip fracture and many do not receive routine follow-up. In the last...

COVID-19 and the role and impact of the built environment on resident, family, and staff experiences in residential long-term care settings: Key findings and recommendations for building adaptation and retrofit.

Supporting the Sustainability of Long-Term Residential Care in a COVID-19 Environment and in the Future.

Long-term residential care (LTRC) homes have been at the centre of the COVID-19 pandemic, with high infection rates among staff and residents. A significant proportion of COVID-19 deaths have occurred in LTRC residents....

Plasma-based therapies for bone infection

Orthopaedic infection is life-threatening and current treatments are only sparingly successful. Despite aggressive peri-operative antibiotic treatments, 1.5% of knee revisions, 0.7 to 11.9%, of spinal infections (depending on the complexity of the procedure) and up to 27% of open fractures become infected. Moreover, the complexity of...

Development of a rapid, highly sensitive, handheld Raman-based device for detection of SARS-CoV-2 and serological responses against SARS-CoV-2

Serological assays to detect antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 are critical to study immune responses to the virus, determine precise rates of infection, track progression of infections, and identify immune individuals in order to limit exposure of susceptible groups or as potential sources of convalescent serum therapeutics. The...

Treating Primary aldosteronism-induced hypertension via microwave thermal therapy

In this tripartite US-Ireland R&D partnership program R01 research plan, we propose the development, optimization, and evaluation of a minimally-invasive microwave thermal therapy (MWT) system for definitive treatment of primary aldosteronism. Primary aldosteronism (PA) accounts for 5 - 12% of all hypertension and confers a higher...

Enhancing healthcare transition and longitudinal care for adolescents and adults with spina bifida and/or hydrocephalus in Ireland

Spina Bifida (SB) and hydrocephalus are lifelong conditions. Many people who have SB will also have hydrocephalus. While there are a number of supports and care plans for children with SB and/or hydrocephalus in Ireland, transitioning into adult care may pose problems. This project will investigate the experiences of those affected by...

Maximising the quality of stroke care in Ireland – Development of a National Stroke Audit

Stroke is a leading cause of death and disability. In recent years, improvements in stroke treatment have led to more people surviving stroke and to lower levels of disability. However, outcomes for stroke patients vary depending on the quality of care received. This indicates a need for a National Stroke Audit, involving regular...

Practice Enhancement for Exclusive Breastfeeding (PEEB)

Breastmilk makes the world healthier, smarter, and more equal as reported by The Lancet Series on
breastfeeding in 2016. There is substantial scientific international evidence that demonstrates the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding for infants, in the short, medium and long term. Such benefits include fewer infections ,increased...

Meeting the challenge of childhood obesity treatment in Irish Healthcare: Generating Data to Facilitate Action.

Obesity is caused by the storage of too much fat tissue in the body. When children become obese they can have difficulties with their physical and mental health including:

• high blood pressure;
• painful joints;
• breathing difficulties;
• anxiety and early development of other diseases.
...

• The effect of after action review in enhancing safety culture and second victim experience and its implementation in an Irish hospital

  After Action Review is a discussion of an event with the team involved in the event. Four questions are asked:

  1. what did we expect to happen?
  2. what actually happened?
  3. why was there a difference?
  4. and what have we learnt?

  An independent person guides the process. The purpose is to...

• National Helicobacter pylori antibiotic resistance surveillance to guide clinical practice

  Helicobacter pylori infection is a public health issue. It remains one of the most common infections in adults in Ireland and is associated with significant disease as the main cause of stomach ulcers and stomach cancers. Infection is more common in lower socioeconomic groups and increases with age.

  Despite significant work...

• Expanding the lung donor pool: interventions to improve donor management, expand ex vivo lung perfusion and repair injured donor lungs

  When people sustain injury to the brain after a fall, road traffic accident, or major brain bleed, they require care in an Intensive Care Unit. After major brain injury, a patient’s lungs also often fail – this is termed "Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome" (ARDS).

  ARDS after brain injury is common and contributes significantly...

• Improving psychosocial supports for youth mental health

  This research program will focus on improving the mental health of young people with serious mental health disorders. Serious mental health disorders (including schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders) are ranked among the top causes of years lived with disability.

  My research will build on what is currently known about...

• Towards an integrated model of care for older adults transitioning from the Emergency Department to the community

  Worldwide increases in life expectancy are leading to the rapid ageing of populations. By 2031, it is forecasted that there will be more than one million older adults in Ireland, representing 20% of our overall population. It is widely accepted that older adults frequently avail of health services in the community and in the hospital...

• Precision diagnosis and care for families with pulmonary fibrosis in Ireland

  diopathic-Pulmonary-Fibrosis (IPF) is a devastating fatal lung disease leading to death at an average of 3 years after diagnosis and while new drugs offer hope of slowing the disease, lung transplant is the only effective cure. Genetic factors contribute significantly to the risk of developing IPF. In Ireland our results from the IPF...

• Identifying children at risk of schizophrenia

  Five of the ten leading causes of disability in young people are mental illnesses, of which psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia, are the most severe and disabling.

  The Health Service Executive recently launched a National Clinical Programme for Early Intervention in Psychosis, which emphasizes the importance of...

• Health Services Research Centre for UnderStanding TailOred iMplementation Involving Stakeholders, Evidence and skills Development (CUSTOMISED) for policy and practice

  I will find ways to answer one of the most pressing and difficult questions facing health systems around the world- how do we implement effective changes in everyday healthcare in a way that is acceptable and practical for health professionals and service users?

  We know from research that there are many things that health...

• Linking 11-oxygenated androgens, skeletal muscle glucose metabolism and diabetes risk in polycystic ovary syndrome

  Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) affects up to 10% of all women. It is characterised by increased blood levels of hormones called androgens, as well as irregular menstrual cycles and multiple small cysts on the ovaries. Traditionally PCOS has been predominantly perceived as a reproductive disorder impacting on fertility. However...

• Towards dynamic resilience in health system performance and reform

  Worldwide increases in life expectancy are leading to the rapid ageing of populations. By 2031, it is forecasted that there will be more than one million older adults in Ireland, representing 20% of our overall population. It is widely accepted that older adults frequently avail of health services in the community and in the hospital...

• Collaboration to reduce antimicrobial use and resistance and identify opportunities for improvement and awareness

  Infections are often treated with antibiotics, even though antibiotics are not always the best option. Only infections that are caused by bacteria can be treated with antibiotics, infections caused by viruses do not respond to antibiotic treatment. An additional problem is that bacteria are becoming more and more resistant to...

• Characterising problematic polypharmacy in older community-dwelling people attending general practice

  As people grow older they are more likely to live with multiple chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and arthritis. As a result these people are prescribed multiple medications by their doctors. In Ireland, for example, 6 in 10 people aged over 65 years are prescribed five or more medications and 2 in 10 are prescribed 10...

• Targeting the compromised brain endothelial barrier function during cerebral malaria with AT2 receptor agonists.

  Strengthening of inter-cellular junctions of endothelial cells would facilitate important translational applications for a variety of diseases where endothelial integrity is compromised. As a first model, we have chosen cerebral malaria (CM), which remains the deadliest manifestation of malaria. It is caused by Plasmodium falciparum...

• Collaborative Doctoral Programme in Chronic Disease Prevention (CDP-CDP)

  According to the WHO, chronic disease prevention is one of the major health challenges of the 21st century. Prevention programmes are urgently needed to reduce burden on patients and health services.

  In Ireland, there is a national deficit in skills, leadership and capacity in the development, implementation and evaluation of...

• Diabetic Foot Disease: from PRevention to treatment to IMproved patient Outcomes (DFD PRIMO)

  Diabetic foot disease (DFD), is associated with devastating outcomes including foot ulceration, sepsis, amputation and premature death. The risk of premature death in people with DFD is reportedly nine fold the risk of amputation. Early interventions to prevent the first ulcer are a key priority of national and international clinical...

• iPASTAR-Improving Pathways for Acute STroke And Rehabilitation

  Stroke is a disease of enormous global significance. It is a major cause of death and the commonest form of acquired physical disability in adults. Fragmentation of care results in inadequate coordination of the fundamental components of acute stroke care and fails to provide an effective integrated system for acute and rehabilitative...

• Evidence for Policies to Prevent Chronic Conditions (EPICC)

  Chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes are the most common causes of death in Ireland and Europe. These diseases are becoming more common and they are extremely costly for governments. The costs will continue to increase unless governments can find better way to prevent and treat these diseases.

  Moreover, these chronic...

• TeenPath: Social Environment, Health and Well-Being Among Adolescents in Ireland

  A person's physical growth, psychological development and personal behaviours in adolescence are the foundation upon which the life course is built. Health behaviours established in adolescence will likely continue into adulthood with long-term implications for health and life-expectancy. For example, 80% of teenagers measured as obese...

• Development and validation of a risk stratification tool for assessment of maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality using data from the National Maternal and Newborn Clinical Management System

  Many women and their unborn babies experience problems during pregnancy. Occasionally mothers or babies die. These outcomes vary across hospitals. Currently, there is no accepted method of comparing outcomes between hospitals. Therefore, we do not know if all hospitals are performing to standard, or whether there are worse or better...

• Using lessons learned from statutory notifications to improve quality and safety in social care settings

  In Ireland, providers of designated centres for older people and people with disabilities are required to inform the Chief Inspector of Social Services in the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) about certain events that occur. For example: serious injuries to residents and allegations of abuse. These are known as statutory...

• Disparities in Heath Outcomes of Chronic Kidney Disease between Men and Women in the Irish Health System

  It is increasingly recognised that there are differences between men and women in regard to chronic kidney disease (CKD). It appears to be more common in women and they have a shorter survival compared to women in the general population. It is unclear 1) whether these differences are due to biological factors like hormones or due to...

• Study of queuosine salvage and function in eukaryotes; a forgotten micronutrient

  Queuine is a largely forgotten bacterial-derived micronutrient that is obtained exclusively from the gut; a preeminent small-molecule of the gut-brain axis. Our contention is that queuine is important in metabolism and development—mammals are born sterile and queuine free—and induces long-lasting effects into adulthood, particularly in...

• Food-based biomarkers, diet quality and cardiometabolic health

  Accurate assessment of human diet is the cornerstone of nutritional epidemiology. Biomarkers that are sensitive and specific to food intake can provide objective information that improves the characterization of diet. Advances in metabolomic profiling techniques now permit the discovery of novel food biomarkers, although, thus far,...

• Mapping Parkinson's Disease needs and services in Ireland to inform service planning

  There is evidence that Parkinson's disease (PD) is on the rise. The number of people living with Parkinson's in the world is set to double between 2015 and 2040. Despite this, there has not been enough investment made in healthcare services to improve care for people with Parkinson's in Ireland. Also, under-staffing can be a problem in...

• Health system foundations for effective Regional Integrated Care Organisations (RICOs) - co-producing evidence to inform the design of regional organisations to support integrated care in Ireland

  Health systems all over the world are struggling to provide equitable access to integrated, patient centred services that better meets the needs of individuals and populations. In Ireland, the way our health system is funded and structured creates particular barriers for people trying to access effective, responsive, quality...

• Implementation of Making Every Contact Count (MECC): developing a collaborative strategy to optimise and scale-up MECC.

  Importance of the study:
  Many chronic illnesses can be prevented if people adopt healthier behaviours. The Making Every Contact Count (MECC) programme, developed by the Irish Health Service Executive (HSE), aims to train all healthcare professionals to support patients to make healthier lifestyle choices during...

• Examining the interplay of the immune system with brain cells in Parkinson's disease.

  Parkinson's disease occurs when nerve cells that produce the chemical dopamine are lost from the brain. This causes a person to have many symptoms including a tremor of their hands and slowness of movement. There have been a lot of studies trying to determine why these dopamine nerve cells die.

  There is growing evidence that the...

• The Test of Complex Syntax: final development phase, standardization and diagnostic accuracy with respect to children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and those at risk of language disorder.

  This project aims to develop an online interactive tool which will allow us to identify children who find it more difficult to understand language than their peers and to individually tailor support to help them to overcome these difficulties. Difficulties understanding spoken language are often hidden and children's problems may go...

• Implementation of a Frailty Care Bundle for older adults in acute care

  During hospital admission, older patients often reduce their walking activity and nutrition intake due to illness. However, research suggests that inflexible hospital routines, lack of patient awareness and limited nursing attention are also factors. Long periods of inactivity combined with suboptimal nutrition cause leg muscle...

• Embedding collective leadership to foster collaborative inter-professional working in the care of older people (Eclectic)

  Recent government policy in Ireland has emphasised the importance of supporting older people to live well in their homes and communities. This would mean fewer older people will have to go to hospitals to receive health care. In order to do this it is necessary for healthcare professionals to work as a team to manage the care of...

• Collaboration Agreement to Establish a Research Collaborative for Quality and Patient Safety Phase III

  The Research Collaborative in Quality and Patient Safety (RCQPS) is a collaborative initiative between the Health Research Board, the Health Service Executive, National Quality Improvement Team and the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. It was established in 2013 to advance nationally relevant research in the area of quality and...

• Improving transition from child to adult health services for young people with cerebral palsy living in Ireland.

  In Ireland, people with cerebral palsy (CP) receive healthcare from children's services up to the age of 18, after which they transfer to adult services. Poor management of the transition from child to adult health services can lead to poor health and increased hospital admissions. While there are practices that health professionals...

• Evidence-based guidance in general practice: exploring general practitioner preferences, content prioritisation and dissemination

  General practitioners (GPs) need resources to support their use of the most up to date information in their clinical practice. This is to make sure that patients are receiving the best care possible from their GP.Th e Irish College of General Practitioners (ICGP) produces research update guides for GPs to support their management of...

• A new cell free DNA liquid biopsy assay to predict bevacizumab outcome in metastatic colorectal cancer patients

  Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most common cancer in Europe with an estimated 420,000 new cases diagnosed and 230,000 related deaths anticipated in 2018. CRC is the 2nd most common and 2nd most fatal cancer in Ireland. Currently standard chemotherapy (FOLFOX) and bevacizumab [(BVZ); avastin] a drug which inhibits tumour blood...

• Tracking Trajectories of Psychopathology from Infancy to Young Adulthood: an Irish national longitudinal cohort study

  Approximately 30-50% of people will experience a mental disorder over the course of their life and the majority of mental disorders begin in adolescence. Despite a shift toward 'early intervention' strategies in many medical specialities, psychiatry lags behind in this regard. There is a pressing need to identify the early life...

• An investigation of the prevalence and molecular epidemiology of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium in Irish hospitals using whole-genome sequencing

  Vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium (VREfm) is an antibiotic-resistant bacterium that causes serious infections among patients in hospitals. Ireland has the highest level of VREfm causing life-threatening bloodstream infections (BSIs) in Europe but little is known about how it has emerged and spread here or the genetic...

• The identification of plasma protein markers of antipsychotic drug treatment response in first episode psychosis; a proteomic analysis of baseline plasma samples from the OPTiMiSE and PSYSCAN studies.

  Schizophrenia is amongst the most expensive disorders in terms of quality of life and societal cost. While early intervention is known to be associated with improved outcome there is little information on predictors of patient outcome following antipsychotic drug (APD) treatment. We seek to identify, for the first time, discriminative...

• 3D collagen-based scaffolds as gene delivery platforms for the treatment of human breast cancer

  Gene therapy has recently become a potential method for the targeted treatment of cancer but successful delivery remains a real problem that hinders its use in the clinic. The aim of this study is to create and define three-dimensional (3D) lab-based models of breast cancer to mimic primary and secondary tumours, and to assess the...

• To identify molecular signatures that can predict disease onset in 'at-risk ACPA+' individuals and disease progression in RA patients

  Inflammation is a critical process in fighting infection. However, if uncontrolled, it can contribute to the development of autoimmune disease, including inflammatory forms of arthritis such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA), which causes joint destruction and disability. Targeted therapies have advanced the treatment of RA, however a...

• Evaluation of the clinical, psychological and economic effects of the Cystic Fibrosis Newborn Screening Programme: the Irish Comparative Outcomes Study of CF (ICOS) Part 2

  This is a national programme of research which addresses key outcomes in the recently established Cystic Fibrosis (CF) Newborn Screening programme (NBS). Ireland has the highest prevalence of CF worldwide. NBS for CF was introduced in 2011. The Irish Comparative Outcome Study (ICOS) Part I was conducted in 2013-2017 and studied...

• Development of a Model of Care for Osteoarthritis in Primary Care in Ireland- A mixed methods study

  Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis in Ireland. It is a condition of the joints that can cause pain and reduced mobility. It is more common in people over the age of 50 and often affects the knee and hip joints. This project aims to improve the care of people with osteoarthritis who attend their general practitioner...

• Switching on the light: Reprogramming T cell metabolism for novel HIV Cure interventions

  With 37 millions people currently living with HIV and 2.6 million people newly infected worldwide, the AIDS pandemic is a global health crisis. In Ireland, the HSE and the HSPC have made HIV/AIDS "a notifiable disease and a major public health importance". 30 years of intense HIV/AIDS research have provided efficient antiretroviral...

• Molecular evolution of metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer

  Approximately 20% of all breast cancers (BCs) are HER2-positive and this type of BC is particularly aggressive. Drugs that target HER2, such as trastuzumab (Herceptin), have improved our ability to treat HER2-positive BC. However, many women with HER2-positive BC are not cured following treatment, and more than 25% of women go on to...

• Immunometabolic manipulation of pulmonary immunity - towards TB host directed therapy

  Tuberculosis (TB) is a major global health emergency, with over one and a half million people dying per year, despite being a curable disease. Drug-resistant TB is a new aspect of the epidemic meaning this disease has now become more difficult to treat with antibiotics. Consequently there is urgent need to generate better treatments,...

• Prediction of radiation toxicity in prostate cancer patients using Raman spectroscopy

  There are no tests currently available to predict an individual patient's response to radiotherapy. Some patients experience severe long term side effects months and even years after their treatment has finished and these effects can be permanent. For example, some prostate cancer patients develop life-changing bowel and urinary...

• FIREFLY: Followup of Inflammatory Responses and multiorgan outcomes FoLlowing neonatal brain injurY

  Babies who have brain injury also frequently have involvement of their kideys, lung and heart. Although clinical care in the neonatal period is well defined there are few guidelines and evidence for developmental, heart and kidney followup in childhood. We aim to develop and implement guidelines for health care workers and families on...

• Analysis of the oral metagenome for markers of malignant transformation of oral leukoplakia

  Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) accounts for 90% of oral cancers. According to the National Cancer Registry, the rate of OSCC in Ireland is increasing annually by 3.3% and early diagnosis and treatment is crucial if patients are to survive beyond 5 years. OSCCs can arise de novo or from preneoplasis such as Oral Leukoplakia (OLK)....

• Sláintemedicines - a roadmap to essential medicines entitlement for universal health coverage

  According to the World Health Organisation, universal health coverage is an important goal for health systems. Ireland does not currently have universal coverage as some individual have to pay for services such as visiting their GP. Sláintecare is a plan to implement universal coverage in Ireland over a 10 year period. However, this...

• Study of the impact of dedicated recurrent miscarriage clinics in the Republic of Ireland

  Spontaneous miscarriage is the most common complication of pregnancy. While improvements in the quality of care provided during pregnancy have led to substantial reductions in many adverse pregnancy outcomes, there has been little effect on miscarriage which still occurs in between 20% to 30% of pregnancies, in the first trimester....

• Bile Acids as a host trigger of Chronic infecting Pathogens in Respiratory Disease

  This study will investigate the unexplained link between bile aspiration and the chronic infection/inflammation characteristic of severe respiratory disease in patients. Despite advances in the clinical management of respiratory disease, patients continue to develop lung damage even from an early age. We know that harmful bacteria...

• Using guanine to re-sensitise MRSA to methicillin: Is purine nucleotide homeostasis the Achilles' heel of MRSA antibiotic resistance?

  The threat of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections to hospital patients and the wider society continues to escalate. The discovery of antibiotics in the 1940's and 1950's represented one of the most important scientific breakthroughs in history. However since then the spread of antibiotic-resistant pathogens has gradually erooded...

• Wound infections: biofilms and the search for novel antimicrobial agents

  Wound infections are one of the most common bacterial infections that are seen both in the community and in the healthcare setting. Wounds may occur acutely or if they fail to heal within a timely reparative process of three months are considered to be chronic wounds. The most common bacteria that cause wound infections is...

• NK cell RESTORE - Can GLP-1 therapy restore tumour immunity in severely obese patients?

  Obesity has recently over taken smoking as the number one cause of preventable deaths worldwide. This is because obesity causes many serious diseases such as heart disease and cancer. Recent reports suggest that up to 50% of all cancers are now due to obesity. Obesity is linked to cancer through many avenues from inflammation, hormonal...

• Optimizing 40 Hz sensory stimulation protocols for Alzheimer's disease treatment

  Clinical dementia, the majority of cases being caused by Alzheimer's disease, seriously impairs the lives of over 50 million people worldwide currently. There are approximately 55,000 people with dementia and as many dementia carers in Ireland. At present the lifetime risk of developing dementia is about 10% but this is increasing...

• Transitions of Care in Advanced Chronic Kidney Disease

  Patients who suffer from advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD) are at risk of progressing to kidney failure which is associated with a shortened life span and significant disability. The transition from advanced CKD to kidney failure requiring renal replacement therapy (RRT) [dialysis, kidney transplantation or conservative therapy] is...

• Defining the consequences of innate immune training on protective versus pathogenic T cell responses in patients with tuberculosis.

  Tuberculosis (TB) ranks alongside HIV as the world's most deadly infectious disease, killing 1.5 million people every year. It is caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), which primarily infects people's lungs. Treating this disease is becoming more difficult due to antibiotic-resistant Mtb, therefore, scientists are...

• Evidence synthesis and translation of findings for national clinical guideline development: addressing the needs and preferences of guideline development groups

  National clinical guidelines aim to help healthcare providers and patients' make decisions about appropriate healthcare. These guidelines use the best available evidence, gathered from national and international research, to develop recommendations on a wide range of topics. These include preventing and managing specific conditions to...

• The impact of mutations in PI3K/AKT pathway gene loci on response to PI3K inhibitors

  Despite advances in the treatment of breast cancer, the National Cancer Registry of Ireland reported in 2014 that it accounted for 30% of all diagnosed female cancers and 16% of all female cancer deaths. The application of modern technologies to the study of breast cancer has demonstrated that a group of cancer pathways acquire changes...

• PRoviding Improved care for Self-harM: a mixed-methods study of intervention, economic and implementation outcomes from a national clinical programme

  Suicide is a societal concern in Ireland and is associated with both personal and economic costs. People who self-harm are at particular risk of suicide, and so developing services and interventions for this population can help prevent deaths. Under Ireland's national strategy to reduce suicide, a programme to help people who present...

• Engineering RNA-based therapeutics for treatment of sepsis and sepsis induced multiple organ dysfunction syndrome

  Sepsis is a life-threatening organ dysfunction caused by a dysregulated host response to infection. Worldwide it affects over 30 million people of all ages and results in 5.3 million deaths annually. In Ireland sepsis contributes to 25% of in-hospital deaths and one in five patients diagnosed with sepsis will die from this disease. To...

• Comparison of staphylococcal species from the oro-nasal cavity, periodontal pockets and foot ulcers of patients with type II diabetes: a potential microbial reservoir for diabetic foot ulcer infection

  The Research Collaborative in Quality and Patient Safety (RCQPS) is a collaborative initiative between the Health Research Board, the Health Service Executive, National Quality Improvement Team and the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. It was established in 2013 to advance nationally relevant research in the area of quality and...

• Investigating breast cancer risk factors to understand breast cancer epidemiological outcomes

  This proposal aims to expand cancer prevention research in Ireland through the assessment of breast cancer risk factors and their influence on clinically relevant characteristics of aggressive breast cancers.Prior research has identified factors associated with increased risk of breast cancer development. One such known factor includes...

• Harnessing the power of the Gut-Lung Axis: How Dietary Short-Chain Fatty Acids Balance Inflammatory Outcomes in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

  Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is an incurable lung condition triggered by smoking, or other air pollutants, that leads to long-term lung damage and serious trouble breathing. While COPD is an illness of the lungs, maintaining a healthy gut and a balanced diet can prevent COPD and reduce COPD attacks or flare-ups. But how...

• SCaRLeT: Sex differences in Cardiovascular Risk across Life course Transitions

  Heart disease is still the leading cause of death around the world. Preventing heart disease, by focusing on risk factors like smoking is essential for improving population health. Females and males do not experience heart disease equally. In adults, research suggests risk factors that can be changed like smoking do not have the same...

• Developing a new approach to stroke rehabilitation for the upper limb based on TMS neurofeedback

  Today in Ireland, most people who experience a stroke survive, but more than half are left with long-term disabilities due to paralysis of one arm. In the proposed research, we aim to push the boundaries of standard stroke rehabilitation, by introducing a technique that promises to boost the brain's recovery mechanisms, stimulating...

• IMPlementation of osteoArthritis Clinical guidelines Together

  Osteoarthritis is a disease of the joints, affecting 1 in 8 Irish people as they get older. Due to the growth of our ageing population amongst other reasons, this figure is expected to double within one generation. Most people with the disease in their hips or knees are likely to experience some level of pain as well as difficulty...

• Membrane Seeping for induction of labour: The Milo Study

  Post-term pregnancy refers to a pregnancy that continues past 42 weeks’ gestation. It occurs in approximately 10% of pregnancies and is the most common reason for induction of labour. Post-term pregnancy is associated with higher risk of trauma to mother and baby.

  Membrane sweeping is a simple procedure potentially promoting the...

• Development and evaluation of an adaptive mobile health physical activity intervention post-stroke: a Sequential Multiple Assignment Randomised Trial

  Despite recent advances in acute stroke intervention, strategies to prevent recurrent stroke are lacking. This is of urgent importance for people with stroke who are at risk of having another stroke. Physical activity (PA) is the second-largest predictor of stroke and the cornerstone of secondary prevention therapies. Interventions...

• Rehabilitation Strategies following Oesophagogastric and Hepatopancreaticobiliary Cancer

  In our bodies, the oesophagus, stomach, pancreas and liver help us digest food. Together, they form the “upper digestive system”. The treatment used to cure cancer in the upper digestive system is surgery to remove that part of the body. Some patients also receive chemotherapy (drug treatment) before and/or after...

• A Cognitive Occupation-Based programme for people with Multiple Sclerosis- a cluster randomised pilot trial to improve cognition and daily functioning for people with multiple sclerosis

  The aim of this research is to test the feasibility of running a large-scale trial of an occupational therapy intervention called a Cognitive Occupation-Based programme for people with Multiple Sclerosis. The study will focus on how acceptable the intervention is and how well the trial runs. Sixteen occupational therapists will run the...

• COIchine for prevention of Vascular Inflammation in Non-CardioEmbolic stoke- a randomised clinical trial of low-dose colchicine for secondary prevention of Stroke. European and Canadian extension

  Inflammation of the lining of arteries is an important factor contributing to clots,leading to heart attacks and strokes.Current studies are testing medicines traditionally used for inflammation of joints (arthritis) to prevent strokes and heart attacks. One such clinical trial has shown that an anti-inflammatory drug used for...

• A Physiotherapist led intervention to Promote Physical Activity in Rheumatoid Arthritis- a pilot study

  As a long-term chronic condition, Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) can have a significant long-term impact. Typically presenting as a disease that causes joint pain and swelling, excessive tiredness and difficulty doing everyday activities RA occurs usually in people over 40 and is three times more likely in women than men. There has been...

• Feasibility and preliminary efficacy study of an online pain management programme for children undergoing major orthopedic surgery: iCanCope Post-Op Surgery

  After major surgery,  one in four children experience chronic post-surgical pain (i.e., pain that lasts longer than 3 months). Children and adolescents report that chronic pain makes them feel insecure, affects school attendance and affacts their relationships with friends and family. It is important that children and adolescents...

• Ketamine as an adjunctive therapy for major depression- a randomised controlled trial

  According to the World Health Organisation, depression is now the leading cause of disability worldwide.  Depression can be a chronic disorder, with 5-9 episodes per lifetime, and 30% of sufferers don’t respond to adequate trials of antidepressant drugs and/or talking therapies.  This creates a great societal as well as...

• Digital Fetal Scalp Stimulation (dFSS) versus Fetal Blood Sampling (FBS) to assess fetal wellbeing in labour- a multi-centre randomised controlled trial.

  Despite recent advances in acute stroke intervention, strategies to prevent recurrent stroke are lacking. This is of urgent importance for people with stroke who are at risk of having another stroke. Physical activity (PA) is the second-largest predictor of stroke and the cornerstone of secondary prevention therapies. Interventions...

• A prospective, multicentre, randomised, double-blind placebo-controlled, phase III trial of EPOetin alfa vs, placebo in critically ill TRAUMA patients

  Trauma-a major public health problem

  Trauma is a global health problem with estimates of more than five million deaths per year (WHO). Trauma includes road traffic accidents, falls, assaults and crush injuries. Patients who suffer major trauma are often critically ill and require breathing support. Despite...

• Computational evaluation of morphologic tumour tissue features as diagnostic and prognostic predictors of lung cancer

  Co-funded with Irish Cancer Society

• Intensive Care Airway and Lung Microbiome Network ICALM Network

  Hospital acquired pneumonia (HAP) is the most frequent infection acquired in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). ICU-related respiratory infections arise as a consequence of the processes of ICU care. Mechanical ventilation (MV) is potentially lifesaving, but also carries microorganisms into the lower airways, changing the native flora, and...

• National intellectual Disability Supplement to The Irish Longitudinal Study of Ageing-Wave 4

  IDS-TILDA is a longitudinal study researching ageing in Ireland among people with an intellectual disability (ID) aged 40 and over. This study is the first of its kind in Europe, and the only study able to directly compare the ageing of people with intellectual disability with the general ageing population through its linkage to The...

• Vaccination: Knowledge is power

  Over 3 million global deaths are avoided annually due to the existence of vaccines. In Ireland the state funded immunization program protects against 14 infectious diseases including HPV. However, we face a number of challenges with immunization. Alarmingly, in recent years uptake of vaccines has been waning. Perhaps due to complacency...

• Health and social inequalities in the Mid-West

  As there are many disadvantaged areas in the Mid-West, health and social inequalities are important issues locally. This is because deprivation is linked with poor health and poor access to healthcare. Under the Healthy Ireland Framework, taking actions to address health inequalities is a key priority. In the Mid-West, many...

• Self-Harm and Suicide AwaREness ? SHARE

  SHARE is based on outcomes of the HRB funded research programme: Improving Prediction and Risk Assessment of Suicide and Self-Harm (IMPRESS). The IMPRESS study aims to improve the knowledge base on predictive risk factors associated with repeated self-harm and suicide among high-risk groups of self-harm patients in Ireland. During the...

• Postnatal Mental Health PARTNERship

  It is estimated that 10-25% of mothers will experience a mental health problem following the birth of their baby. With approximately 63,900 births in Ireland each year (6), conservative figures would suggest that over 6390 mothers will experience a mental health problem in the postnatal period. For many mothers, their partner plays a...

• Towards Recovery After Childbirth, through Knowledge: (ON TRACK)

  The Maternal health And Maternal Morbidity in Ireland (MAMMI) study identified problems women had postpartum. We have provided information for women on physical problems, such as incontinence, and will now address other important issues. For example, 15% of women have anxiety during pregnancy, and 44% have pain during sex at 3 months...

• Developing an on-line course for first-time mothers: ?Pathway to Birth?

  Concern has been expressed globally at rising caesarean section (CS) rates with no evidence of any decrease in associated health problems for mothers and babies, indicating that many CSs are unnecessary, and can be harmful. We are at present running a pilot trial called "REDUCE"to see if a new intervention, based on research evidence,...

• The Breakfast Club

  The Breakfast Club is the story of diabetes in pregnancy in Ireland. In a weekly, serialized, online graphic novel, we will follow the lives of women attending a Breakfast Club for women who have received a diagnosis of diabetes during their pregnancy. We will explore their experiences, from having a Glucose Tolerance Test, to meeting...

• Medtrack KEDS

  "Health professionals are the lifeblood of the health system"(President M Robinson), yet our junior doctors (NCHD-trainees) continue to report that responses for improving their working conditions have had "little tangible change or impact on their day-to-day working lives and training experience?. The RCSI research team has...

• Development of a Teaching Programme for the Junior Cycle Mental health and Mental Ill-Health Module

  Great progress has been made nationally on destigmatising mental health but it has not yet become a topic that people are universally comfortable with. A major change in the Junior Cycle in 2018 is the introduction of Wellbeing which directly addresses youth mental health through Strand 4 in the new Social Personal and Health Education...

• Development of Book About Mental Health Problems For Children and Adolescents

  There has been steady improvements in the quality of information available to people about mental health issues but a challenge remains to communicate this fully to children and adolescents. Much of the existing information is text heavy and can be off-putting for this age group. Presenting this information so that it is accessible...

• Citizen Science: The People's Trial

  Randomised trials are instrumental in providing reliable and robust evidence on the benefits, harms and costs of health care, so that people can make informed choices. However, the general public?s understanding of randomised trials can be limited and ensuring public support for and participation in trials remains challenging. The...

• Delivering a Reduction in the Development of Maternal Prenatal Stress: DIRECTMAPS

  Pregnancy can be a stressful time during which many expectant mothers experience understandable worries and concerns. High levels of prenatal maternal stress are linked to several unfavourable conditions which can affect the health of the child at birth. Normal development of the central nervous system is also at risk during the early...

• Piloting the Community Engaged Scholars Program in Ireland

  Public and patient involvement in health research is not embedded in Irish Universities. As part of the PPI Ignite Awards scheme the HRB have funded 5 Irish Universities to demonstrate the value of PPI and champion this approach in Ireland. PPI involves public/patients working in partnership with researchers in setting research...

• The GENIE fellowship: Gauging the Effectiveness of Novel computer-support technologies for Implementing Evidence in healthcare

  Healthcare professionals must keep pace with a rapidly growing knowledge base. By 2020, the quantity of medical evidence is expected to double every 73 days. Typically, healthcare professionals leverage 'systematic review' articles to tackle this issue. A systematic review is a consolidated summary of evidence that healthcare...

• Exploring the immunome of oesophageal adenocarcinoma using bioinformatics to assess and predict responses to neoadjuvant therapy (Immune-AEGIS)

  The immune system is made up of cells that are designed to protect the body from infection and disease, like cancer. However, in patients with cancer, the immune system often does not do this well. Recently, a new treatment for cancer has been tested - called immunotherapy, which uses the patient?s own immune system to fight the...

• Promoting Education and Research Knowledge (PERK)

  THE PROBLEM Cancer of the oesophagus (food pipe) is an aggressive type of cancer, and has a low survival rate. It is usually diagnosed at a late stage, often due to a lack of knowledge of underlying symptoms which can be mild, including heartburn, bloating and problems swallowing. Oesophageal cancer is not as well known as some other...

• Rheumatoid Arthritis Patient Awareness INitiative (RA-PAIN)

  Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is a common autoimmune condition that causes disability for patient's day-to-day tasks. New medications that target bad molecules or cells improve outcomes, however responses may be limited or side effects may occur. Who will develop RA, get severe disease or respond to current treatments is not known. Studies...

• Using photovoice to enhance knowledge exchange and dissemination

  The EOLAS programmes are information and learning programmes for people with experience of psychosis and their family members. The programmes have been co-produced and are co-delivered by peer and clinician facilitators in partnership with mental health clinicians. Such service user and family member involvement in the design and...

• CHErIsH- KEDS

  This CHErIsH-KEDS application has two aims: to increase capacity in translation of research into practice in Ireland and to develop a knowledge exchange strategy for the future roll out of CHErIsH across different settings in primary care. This application builds on the existing study, the CHErIsH study. The CHErIsH study is funded...

• How to Use TILDA Data - Webinar, Seminar and Workshop Series

  The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA) was established in 2006 with baseline data collection commencing in 2009. TILDA collects data in a series of data collection waves. The data is collected through a computer-assisted personal interview and a self-completion questionnaire once every two years with a comprehensive health...

• Co-Designing, Pre-Testing and Refining an Intervention Programme to Support Parent-Adolescent Communication about Shared Self-Management Responsibilities in Type I Diabetes

  This knowledge exchange activity aims to work together with young people with Type 1 Diabetes (TID), parents of young people with TID, professionals (from a range of disciplines e.g. diabetes nurse specialists, psychologists, consultant paediatric endocrinologists) and community advocates (e.g. Diabetes Ireland) to codesign, pre-test...

• Collecting and using data about ethnicity in healthcare -a drama

  Ireland has a long history of emigration. More recently, we have inward migration. Census 2016 found that 17% of the population were born outside Ireland. This means that there are different minority ethnic groups in our country, in addition the Irish Travellers. The Health Service Executive wants to gather information on the ethnic...

• The APART Study Public Participation Initiative for Knowledge Exchange

  The APART Study is exploring an important, low-cost intervention that may limit bone loss associated with initiation of antiretroviral therapy to treat HIV. Results from this trial may have significant implications for how HIV is managed both in Ireland and internationally. We will use this KEDS award to develop a research partnership...

• Real Talk with Real Mums

  ?Real Talk with Real Mums? is a 10-episode podcast series looking at the issues of everyday pregnancy with medical professionals and the real women who have gone through the pregnancy journey. Each episode of c.30 minutes will tackle a different topic, from exercise in pregnancy (with a Physiotherapist), to mental health issues in...

• Reducing Maternal Stress in Ireland

  Stress experienced by women during pregnancy and up to two years after the baby is born can have negative consequences for the mother and the child. Strategies and guidelines to reduce stress experienced during pregnancy and early parenthood is lacking in Ireland. In this project the research team will develop an intervention...

• Economics of palliative care: from international evidence to Irish policy

  Palliative care is specialised care for people with serious and complex illness. Its goal is to improve quality of life for patients and families, and studies show that it generally achieves this goal. Palliative care access is strong in Ireland by international standards but there are still significant gaps in services and...

• Investigating the iceberg model of self-harm and suicide in children, adolescents and young adults: a multi-methods study of predictors of onset, escalation and premature mortality

  Rates of self-harm among children, adolescents and young adults in Ireland have increased sharply in the past decade and rates of youth suicide remain high. Self-harm and suicide have been described as an "iceberg", with the rare event of suicide as the tip of the iceberg. Beneath this are higher rates of self-harm resulting in...

• TeamTalk: Interactive Resource Hub for Healthcare Teams

  Healthcare teams who are interested in improving how they work together to deliver better patient care often struggle to find the time to learn and implement new practices. Teams rarely have the opportunity to attend training courses or other learning events together. This makes it difficult to transfer their newly acquired knowledge...

• Working with the Research Community: Training and a Toolkit for Patients & Members of the Public

  The PPI Ignite Programme at Trinity College Dublin is focused on building capacity for public and patient involvement in health research, with a particular emphasis on improving the quality of approaches. One of 10 Ignite Partners, the Medical Research Charities Group (MRCG), hosts a Public Patient Involvement (PPI) Shared Learning...

• Disseminating, Engaging, and Sharing Knowledge (DESK):patient informed resource for understanding our research

  Based on the findings of the research conducted during our HRB Research Leader's Award, the aim of the proposed KEDS project is to effectively disseminate the finding of our research to chronic pain patients and the general public. Sharing research findings with the general public is very important but can be difficult to get right; we...

• A Patient Education Programme in Health Research & Innovation

  Well informed patients and carers have a key role to play in the design and implementation of person-centered healthcare and research. Whilst patients are eager to have better and safer health products and innovations, they are often unaware of the complex nature of how new health innovations are researched, developed and made...

• The patient is part of the answer - don't leave us out in the cold!

  This application aims to produce a documentary that explains public and patient involvement in health research to the general public and encourages more people to become involved with researchers. Known as PPI, public and patient involvement means that people who are likely to be affected by research results are directly involved in...

• Promoting National Awareness of Thrombosis in Pregnancy.

  Women who are pregnant have a higher chance of developing blood clots (thrombosis) that can cause serious ill-health and can be fatal. Therefore, it is incredibly important that women who are pregnant, women of childbearing age and their families are aware of their risk factors for thrombosis in pregnancy. In the HRB-funded "HIGHLOW"...

• Access to primary and emergency care for children with intellectual disabilities: utilisation, decision making, parental preferences and disparities

  The aim of this research is to learn about the inequalities faced by children with intellectual disabilities (ID) in Ireland in relation to healthcare and to find out the reasons why these inequalities occur. In many other countries around the world, children with ID do not receive the same standard of healthcare as children without...

• Maximising collaboration to expedite positive change in the assessment process that determines physiotherapy students' readiness for independent practice

  Assessment of student physiotherapists in the clinical environment is a critical part of their education which determines their readiness for independent clinical practice once qualified. Therefore it has significant implications for patient safety and quality of service delivery. Yet, research and experience highlight many challenges...

• LoVIC-Kids: Improving public awareness of abnormal bleeding symptoms

  Congenital bleeding disorders (CBD) may result in increased bleeding at times of injury, surgery, childbirth or with periods (menstrual bleeding). Although an estimated 1-2% of the population are affected by CBD, most people are unaware that their bleeding symptoms are abnormal. In addition, there is limited awareness amongst many...

• "Let's Talk About" Series

  Researchers in dementia at NUI Galway are producing important research insights into many aspects of dementia care in Ireland, specifically: resource allocation decision-making; support structures for family carers; and how people with dementia are treated within the care system. The focus is now turning to sharing the results...

• Using visual media to communicate complex information

  Services in Ireland for people with dementia are poorly developed. The main partnership award aims to (i) describe current dementia services across all sectors and (ii) ask people with dementia, carers, health workers and managers about the ideal level and type of service provision for people with dementia who have different needs and...

• Factors influencing decision-making for caesarean section

  The rising rate of caesarean section (CS) has become a growing concern worldwide, with limited justification of the rising trend. Understanding the factors that influence the rise in CS is important because obstetricians and midwives are directly involved in the decision to perform a CS and are the key drivers to achieving the remedial...

• The Frail Brain and the Frail Body: Impact of FRAILty and COGnitive impairment on trajectories, patterns and costs in care in old age

   

• Informing Chronic Kidney Disease health policy in Ireland: Linkage of large datasets to study the interaction between ageing and kidney

  The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA) is a remarkable study undertaken in Ireland, which invited over 8,500 people aged 50 and over to participate at wave 1 between 2009 and 2011. Individuals who agreed to take part were subsequently invited to present for a comprehensive health assessment. This study is invaluable to the...

• Enhancing ?The Model for Dementia Palliative Care Project? by targeting potential model users with innovative Knowledge, Transfer and Exchange activities.

  This KEDS application will further enhance Knowledge, Transfer and Exchange (KTE) activities arising from 'The Model for Dementia Palliative Care Project', by supporting new connections with key groups, through novel activities and outputs. The active project will develop a new service delivery model for palliative care for people...

• What the Researcher and the Dentist want to share, supporting knowledge dissemination

  Research is ongoing to monitor the oral health of the Irish population, the uptake of dental services, and targeting of services to specific groups most in need. Results of such research inform policy makers in the Department of Health with respect to issues such as community water fluoridation and recommendations on the use of...

• HPV associated disease: shaping the future prevention and management pathway

  Infection with HPV is the most important cause of cervical cancer. As such, HPV testing is now being introduced as part of cervical cancer screening. HPV is also involved in the development of other anogenital cancers, which include: vulvar, vaginal, anal and penile cancers. HPV vaccination will help reduce the burden of HPV-associated...

• Scaling up the Family Carer Decision Support Intervention: A transnational effectiveness-implementation evaluation

  The Family Carer Decision Support (FCDS) intervention has been designed to inform family carers about end of life care options available to a person living with advanced dementia. The effect of the FCDS was demonstrated through a study that employed a cluster randomized control trial involving 24 care homes located in the United...

• European eHealth care model for rare neurodegenerative diseases

  Rare neurodegenerative disorders (RND) like Huntington?s Disease (HD) require multidisciplinary care teams which are in short supply. Given the devastating consequences of RNDs for the individual patient and their families there is an urgent need to develop innovative ways to ensure access to best practices and established care...

• Multi-Domain Lifestyle Targets for Improving ProgNOsis in Huntington?s Disease

  Huntington?s Disease (HD) is a progressive, life-limiting neurodegenerative disease. It has devastating consequences for the individual and their families. No current treatment to modify the course of the disease exists. Improved evidence-based symptom assessment is crucial to optimising disease management. This project aims to...

• Control of neuronal proteostasis by stress-induced transfer RNA fragments (?tiRNA?) as a common stress pathway across neurodegenerative disorders.

  This application is for supplemental funding through PA-18-591 for the recently funded grant (1R01AG058476-01), entitled ?Dysfunction of the autophagy-lysosomal pathway as a common mechanism of neurodegeneration,? and the JPND project to support collaborative studies between Dr. Finkbeiner?s lab (Gladstone) and the JPND RNA NEURO...

• Autophagy induction as a novel therapeutic strategy for MSD

  The lysosomal degradation pathway of autophagy has a crucial role in different pathophysiological conditions, such as infection, neurodegenerative disorders, cancer and ageing. In particular, autophagy plays an important role in the pathophysiology of a family of inborn errors of metabolism due to defect in the activity of lysosomal...

• The microbiome as an environmental trigger for autoimmune epilepsy (MICA)

  Autoimmune epilepsy is a rare form of drug-resistant epilepsy characterised by frequent seizures in later life. Patients may respond to immune therapy, but causation of disease is poorly understood, and more targeted treatments are required. This gap in knowledge is the major priority for epilepsy specialists, and the area of greatest...

• Elucidation of the role of SARM1 in retinal homeostasis and oxidative stress induced retinal degeneration

  Photoreceptor cells found in the back of our eyes convert light into signals that allow us to see. Death of these cells and the cells that nourish them, called RPE cells, is termed retinal degeneration and is characteristic of blinding diseases such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and retinitis pigmentosa. Millions of people...

• Towards novel anti-infective with enhanced wound-healing for diabetic foot infections : Co2 releasing star shaped micro biocidal polymers

  It is estimated that 422 million people worldwide are living with diabetes and among them, a common and serious problem is the development of diabetic foot infection. One in five patients with diabetes are hospitalised with a diabetic foot wound (DFW) at least once in their lives. Infected DFWs are treated by removal of infected tissue...

• Combining Electrochemotherapy with a Toll Like receptor agonist for the treatment of lung cancer

  Successful cancer treatment aims to totally eliminate the entire tumour and the risk of recurrence. Treatment currently relies on removal of the primary tumour by surgery or radiotherapy followed by control of the remaining dispersed cancer cells in the whole body usually by chemotherapy. At the Cork Cancer Research Centre (CCRC) we...

• Preoperative Exercise to Improve Fitness in Patients Undergoing Complex Surgery for Cancer of the Lung or Oesophagus

  Treatment for people with cancer of the lung or the oesophagus (food-pipe) often involves surgery. This surgery is complex and there is a high risk that patients will develop severe complications afterwards, mainly lung or heart problems, leading to a longer hospital stay and higher hospital costs, and impacting greatly on recovery and...

• Evaluation of the role of MxA and ISGylation in chemosensitivity in oesophageal cancer

  Many oesophageal cancers develop resistance to the drugs currently used to treat this disease. This allows the cancer cells to survive and the cancer can come back again at variable times after the initial treatment. Research already performed by this group has identified genetic differences between cancer cells that respond well to...

• Incorporation of sensor technology to provide clinical meaningfulness for existing standardised measurement scales in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

  Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) also known as Motor Neurone Disease (MND) is a progressive and ultimately fatal neurodegenerative disease for which there is no cure. People with ALS experience loss of mobility and arm function, breathlessness and chest infections, loss of speech and swallow and in 30-50%, cognitive and behavioural...

• Novel Neurophysical Biomarkers of Heterogeneous Network Degeneration in Motor Neuron Disease for Quantifying the Progression and Outcome in Clinical Trials

  Motor Neurone Disease (MND)/Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a terminal neurological condition in which the neurones (neural cells) that control movement degenerate. Despite encouraging results from studies in animals, translation of new treatments to humans has been disappointing. The aim of this study is to provide scientific...

• Evaluating a novel macrolide based early intervention in the clinical management of chronic infections and inflammation in Cystic Fibrosis

  Chronic persistent respiratory disease is a leading cause of death worldwide. Despite years of global research, the clinical management of respiratory disease, including the life-limiting genetic disease cystic fibrosis (CF), remains a significant challenge. Treatment options are extremely limited, due in part to the increased pathogen...

• Gold-drug: Targeting a novel dual inhibitor drug with gold nanoparticles for improving radiation response in oesophageal cancer

  Oesophageal cancer (cancer of the food pipe) has low survival rates and a very poor response to treatment. Sadly, this cancer type is on the rise in Ireland and is linked with increasing obesity rates. Unlike many other cancer types, we are still only using treatments that have existed for decades - chemotherapy drugs with radiation...

• The role of sialylated-alpha-1 antitrypsin in resolution of acute and chronic inflammation

  Alpha-1-antitrypsin (AAT) deficiency (AATD) is a hereditary disorder that results in the rapid progression of lung disease, especially in smokers. Specific treatment for this disorder is available in the form of weekly intravenous injections of AAT. This is referred to as augmentation therapy and studies have shown that augmentation...

• Compound library screening in a zebrafish model of MSD to identify novel therapeutic compounds

  Multiple Sulfatase Deficiency (MSD) is currently an untreatable disease and while we know some of the processes inside cells that cause or influence the disease, there is still much to be understood. While progress has been made from studying simple cell culture systems, this does not tell us about how different disease changes may...

• Evidence Synthesis Ireland

  Health care decisions should be based on the combination of the full amount of information that is available rather than relying on the convenient selection of one or more individual pieces of information, or studies. Evidence synthesis methods seek to establish the overall balance of information on a given topic, and are based on...

• Good vigilance practice in pregnancy: A multistakeholder approach to optimising the effectiveness of risk minimisation measures to prevent harms from teratogenic medicines

  When new medicines are approved for use in the general population the drug company responsible for the medicine has to make sure that certain measures are in place to avoid unnecessary harm. These are known as risk minimisation measures (RMMs). This is particularly important when the medicine may cause harmful effects to an unborn...

• Co-producing health and well-being in partnership with patients, families and communities: the role of the epilepsy patient portal

  Claire a 35 year old teacher with a 10 year history of epilepsy attends the Galway University Hospital (GUH) where an electronic patient record (EPR) is used by the epilepsy service. Recently on a weekend trip to Waterford, Claire had a seizure resulting in a fall in the street and a minor injury. She was taken to the emergency...

• Enhancing existing formal home support to improve and maintain functional status in older adults: A feasibility study on the implementation of the Care to Move (CTM) programme

  Ireland has an increasing ageing population and this has created the need for better and more integrated health and social care services. The benefits of physical activity for all ages are widely known. Physical activity programmes have been shown to improve older adults’ health and well-being and reduce falls, enabling the older adult...

• Loneliness and health: the moderating role of befriending services.

  Befriending services deliver companionship to older adults through regular volunteer visits. ALONE is a charitable organisation providing befriending services to older adults in Ireland. It is the mission statement of ALONE to use befriending to reduce the negative impact loneliness has on health, but evidence for this use of...

• Premature Ageing in long-Term Homeless adults (PATH)

  The number of homeless adults in Ireland is rising. Homeless people have more chronic illnesses and a shorter
  life-expectancy than people who have somewhere secure to live. We have carried out a pilot study showing that
  homeless people have dementia, frailty and other diseases associated with ageing at a much younger age...

• Unlocking the potential of healthcare complaints to improve hospital care (UP-CIC)

  Most assessments of quality of care in Irish healthcare services are focused on healthcare workers’ opinions, statistics (e.g., how many patients got infections), or investigating large errors. However, these assessments fail to consider patients’ unique insights into quality of care and support improvement in services. For example,...

• I-PARC (Ireland’s Physical Activity Research Collaboration): Bridging the research to action gap to support the implementation of the National Physical Activity Plan

  The purpose of this research is to develop a bespoke research collaboration ‘I-PARC’ (Irish – Physical Activity Research Collaboration) to support Get Ireland Active! the National Physical Activity Plan (NPAP)1. I-PARC will bring together researchers, policy makers and practitioners from physical activity (PA) to establish how best to...

• How can a multi-disciplinary prescribing strategy support appropriate prescribing of oral nutritional supplements (ONS) by Irish general practitioners (GPs)?

  Malnutrition is a major burden to the Irish health service as malnourished patients have poorer health and are more expensive to treat than patients who are well-nourished. The annual cost of healthcare associated with malnutrition is approximately €1.4 billion in Ireland (10% of our total healthcare budget). Oral nutritional...

• Doctoral program in youth mental health leadership (The YouLead Program)

  This doctoral training program focuses on youth mental health research. Mental health difficulties (including depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia) account for approximately half of all causes of disability in individuals under the age of 35. Despite the fact that access to treatment is strongly associated with reduced risk...

• "Right Care": a programme of research to enhance safe and appropriate care for older patients in Ireland

  We propose a structured PhD training programme for multi-disciplinary health researchers on the topic of “Right Care” for older people. This research programme will examine how right care can be given at the right time and in the right setting, so that older people get the greatest benefit and the lowest harm from health interventions....

• Neonatal Brain Injury Consortium Ireland

  Neonatal brain injury has serious consequences including problems with development and cerebral palsy. Cooling or Hypothermia therapy is the only treatment available but half of all babies still have brain injury. All babies have detailed tests of their brain function using brain imaging and brainwave monitoring. They also have...

• Managing complex multimorbidity in primary care: a multidisciplnary doctoral training programme

  This application outlines a Structured Doctoral Training Programme for four PhD students with clinical and research backgrounds. The focus is on primary care delivery for patients who are referred to as having complex multimorbidity, which means that they have multiple long term conditions and are often on ten or more regular...

• Cancer Prevention Fellowship 2018

  Research Programme for mid-career researchers working in Republic of Ireland (RoI) to become NCI Cancer Prevention Fellows at the prestigious National Cancer Institute (NCI) in the USA.
  This programme provides training at post-doctorate level from the health professions, biomedical, and behavioural sciences to become leaders in the...

• Manganese enhanced MRI as an early technique for lung cancer

  The objective of the project is to prove that the manganese enhanced MRI (MEMRI) technique could help to detect early-stage cancers and metastases in lungs which could be treated rapidly with a good prognosis. This patient friendly and inexpensive diagnostic technique will be tested in preclinical models and presented to clinicians to...

• Label free monitoring of fibrinogen levels in human blood plasma using asymmetric imides

  The project aims to develop new methodologies for analysis of blood plasma samples using vibration spectroscopy (infrared and Raman spectroscopy) as alternative to the time consuming, costly and poorly reliable Clauss assay, commonly used in hospitals. Two different aspects will be addressed, (i) requirement for optimisation of...

• Intervention of antimicrobial resistance transfer into the food chain (INART)

  Joint Programming Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance (JPIAMR)
  
  Soil and water have been identified as reservoirs of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and the food chain as the most likely mode of AMR transfer into human and animal pathogens. Manure is reused as soil fertiliser in which food plants grow and is a source of AMR....

• Preventing transmission of MRSA from livestock to humans through competitive exclusion (EXCLUDE MRSA)

  Joint Programming Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance (JPIAMR)
  
  Pig farms act as reservoir of Livestock-Associated Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (LA-MRSA). Through occupational exposure to farm dust and contact with pigs, farm workers are at risk for acquiring LA-MRSA. Although health care institutions can cope...

• Preventing transmission of MRSA from livestock to humans through competitive exclusion (EXCLUDE MRSA)

  Joint Programming Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance (JPIAMR)
  
  Pig farms act as reservoir of Livestock-Associated Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (LA-MRSA). Through occupational exposure to farm dust and contact with pigs, farm workers are at risk for acquiring LA-MRSA. Although health care institutions can cope...

• Intervention of antimicrobial resistance transfer into the food chain (INART)

  Joint Programming Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance (JPIAMR)
  
  Soil and water have been identified as reservoirs of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and the food chain as the most likely mode of AMR transfer into human and animal pathogens. Manure is reused as soil fertiliser in which food plants grow and is a source of AMR....

• Implementing evidence based guidance for dementia palliative care through participatory action research

  Dementia is a progressive illness and as the condition progresses into the later stages, the person will have difficulty communicating their needs particularly in relation to thirst, hunger, pain or discomfort.  In Ireland persons with dementia are often cared for in Long Term Care (LTC) settings. Carers of persons with dementia...

• Communicating and promoting SAFE medicines use in Ireland

  The likelihood of side effects of medicines, drug interactions and potentially inappropriate prescribing increase with the increasing number of medicines people take. Taking multiple medicines at the same time is common in people age 65 year olds or older with six in every ten in this age group. Also, around one in ten of those aged 65...

• Interact for Health: Increasing integrated knowledge translation capacity for impact

  Although the Health Behaviour Change Research Group (HBCRG) has engaged with the HSE Health and Wellbeing (H&W) Division as health partners on a number of activities to date, we believe there is significant potential for enhanced knowledge exchange between these two groups. Additionally, integrated Knowledge Translation (iKT)...

• The biology of mood: What brain imaging and genetic studies tell us about Bipolar Disorder

  This project aims to translate the known biology of bipolar disorder, enhance the accessibility of the latest discoveries and interpret the meaning and relevance to individuals with bipolar disorder, their families, carers and health professionals that are not research active. To complement the current emphasis on clinical aspects of...

• Implementing evidence based guidance for dementia palliative care through participatory action research

  Dementia is a progressive illness and as the condition progresses into the later stages, the person will have difficulty communicating their needs particularly in relation to thirst, hunger, pain or discomfort. In Ireland persons with dementia are often cared for in Long Term Care (LTC) settings. Carers of persons with dementia can...

• The youth mental health animation creation project

  This KEDS award will be used to create animations about young people's mental health that will be embedded into the youth mental health website, ReachOut.com.
  
  
  
  This project will involve crafting key messages from this study into short narratives using direct quotes from the research interviews conducted for this...

• How can mental health services and primary care best collaborate to enhance physical health outcomes among patients presenting with first episode of psychosis? A mixed methods study

  For people who experience a first episode psychosis, this is a critical event in their life. If they do not receive the appropriate treatment at an early stage of the illness, they will experience potentially serious health consequences - both physical and mental. Good collaboration between specialist mental health services and primary...

• Brain superheroes and villains

  We are a group of neuroscientists, funded by the HRB, who aim to test and develop novel drugs for brain related illnesses. We are excited about disseminating the value of work like ours and, in 2012, were delighted to be awarded our first HRB Knowledge Exchange and Dissemination Scheme (KEDS), which consisted of three activities...

• Learning about trials - for children, by children

  This project will consist of the development of new resources for teaching primary school children (aged 10-12) about why we need trials and how trials work, with a view to being more widely used throughout the trial community. These resources will align with the START (Schools Teaching Awareness of Randomised Trials) Competition,...

• Family carer knowledge exchange project

  We are interested in how family carers of people with dementia develop and maintain resilience in the care giving role and we are designing a project to help family carers to be more resilient and to better cope with the demands of care giving. As a team of researchers, we have reviewed studies of family carers'experiences in other...

• OPTI-MEND: Optimising early assessment and intervention by health and social care professionals in the emergency department (ED)

  Emergency Departments (ED) face significant challenges in delivering high quality and timely patient care against a background of increasing patient numbers and limited hospital resources. A mismatch between patient demand and the hospital's capacity often leads to poor patient flow and ED crowding, resulting in a reduction in the...

• Community exercise

  It is recognised that exercise benefits people living with chronic disease. The CRF at St James's Hospital exercise physiology suite is used by research studies examining the role of exercise training for patients with chronic disease. These exercise trials support patients to exercise during structured supervised exercise classes and...

• Biological Resource Analysis to Identify New Mechanisms and phenotypes in Neurodegenerative Diseases "BRAINMEND"

  Joint Programme on Neurodegenerative Disease (JPND)
  
  No summary available.

   

• Driving policy with data: A longterm sustainable specialist service for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

  The JPND-funded project ALS-CarE is coordinated by the Irish partner, and has collected detailed information across 5 different countries about the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) patient and caregiver journey from ALS diagnosis through to end of life. In Ireland, we have collected extensive quantitiative and qualitative...

• The implementation of National Clinical Effectiveness Committee clinical guidelines relating to health care associated infections in Irish healthcare organisations: multiple perspectives

  Background: Healthcare associated infections (HCAI) create a major burden on individuals, their families, and the health services. They lead to longer stays in hospital, higher risk of death, and increased frequency of other health problems such as heart failure, and pneumonia. All of this also contributes to greatly increased...

• The StrokeCog partnership: effective intervention through collaboration

  Stroke is a leading cause of death and disability worldwide and will increase considerably in coming decades as people live for longer. Many people are aware of physical disabilities after stroke, but are less aware of cognitive problems. These include difficulties with memory, concentration and abstract thinking, often experienced as...

• Non-motor symptoms in dystonia and musician's dystonia

  Our multidisciplinary Irish Dystonia Research Group, combining the expertise of Bioengineers in Trinity College Dublin and a network of Clinical Neurologists, has been working to determine the cause of a disabling movement disorder, adult onset dystonia, characterised by abnormal postures and excessive muscle activity. The causes of...

• Evidence to Support Prevention Implementation and Translation - Knowledge Translation (ESPRIT-KT)

  This application adds to a larger HRB Research Leader Award about improving care for people with diabetes in Ireland. The goal of the KEDS project is to connect people who do research with people who make decisions about our national health policy so they can learn from each other and work together to improve the health of the...

• Developing a website for public awareness about computer use in aphasia rehabilitation

  Aphasia is a language disorder which occurs in 1 in 3 people after stroke. It can impact on a person's ability to produce and understand spoken and written language. People with aphasia have had limited opportunities to have their voices heard within Irish stroke research.
  
  
  
  This research project has already engaged...

• The Art of Pregnancy

  The Art of Pregnancy is an exciting and ambitious public outreach exhibition and programme supported by the HRB Mother and Baby CTN togther with the Science Gallery Dublin as a key partner.
  
  For this project we want to commission (via an open call process) a group of artists to create works inspired by the wide ranging areas of...

• Speaking Up About Safety (SUAS)

  Speaking up about safety concerns is an important aspect of a healthcare professional's role. Our research has shown that in comparison to nurses, junior doctors are particularly poor at speaking up and tend not to report incidents and adverse events, in many cases because they believe it is not their responsibility to do so. Yet, a...

• Our voices, our impact

  Wave 3 KEDS will build on previous success by recruiting actors with ID to develop DVD and on-line resources comprising scenes that illustrate key IDS-TILDA wave 3 findings. Feedback from wave 3 indicates that participants would like to receive the findings in DVD format and IDS-TILDA wishes to respond to the specific dissemination...

• Brain, mind and psychosis: Engaging young people in learning about research

  Great progress has been made over the past few years in "destigmatising" mental illness and this has been particularly successful for conditions such as depression and anxiety. However there still remains a great lack of knowledge about psychosis. This lack of knowledge can lead to stigma and fear and can prevent young people coming...

• The LinKT (Linking into Knowledge Translation) project: connecting, integrating and translating evidence to make a difference for families

  Increasing evidence highlights the effectiveness of early intervention and prevention parenting interventions for improving the mental health and wellbeing of parents and children in the earliest years. However, these are often complex, difficult to implement effectively and fail to reach the most vulnerable families. Accessible,...

• Development of an online cancer genetics educational resource for undergraduate and postgraduate healthcare learners

  Genetic testing is becoming cheaper and easier to perform. As such, it is being performed more and more frequently; to help explain why people have developed cancer, or to try to identify genetic changes in their tumours to which novel drugs can be targeted. Genetic testing may also help identify individuals at risk of cancer,...

• Pathfinder: Parental information on therapeutic hypothermia followIng neonatal encephalopathy

  Neonatal brain injury can have devastating outcomes for the baby and their family and may result in longterm disability. The only treatment available is whole body cooling started within a few hours of birth. Babies also require intensive care to support their lungs, heart and kidneys. We will develop an educational toolkit including...

• Let's talk - and act - about adherence in multimorbidity - a teaching and learning resource for general practice

  More than half of those over the age of 65 live with more than one chronic condition. This is known as multimorbidity (MM). The prevalence of MM increases with age and is more common in less well off patients. Using muliple medications i.e. polypharmacy, is the norm in MM and many do not take their medications as prescribed i.e....

• Cracking the mysteries of cancer immunotherapies - e.courses for oncology healthcare professionals

  The new therapies for cancer that target the immune system have revolutionised cancer care in recent times. The treatment of melanoma, leukaemia and other malignancies has been transformed by these immune modulating drugs. However, few oncology clinicians or oncology specialist nurses have backgrounds in immunology or immune...

• The stressed brain & depression

  Understanding depression is challenging both for professionals and for the public. It is complex and poorly conceptualized. Clinical depression involves biological, psychological and social causes that all contribute to the expression of depression in each individual sufferer. Trauma, especially early in life when body systems are...

• CERVIVA: The HPV educate project

  The goal of this CERVIVA HPV Educate Project is to provide accurate and reliable information relating to HPV and HPV associated diseases, to create awareness and educate the public, health care professionals and healthcare providers on public health issues related to HPV associated diseases and on the specific research programmes...

• Overweight & obesity in Ireland: Translating policy into action

  The launch in 2016 of "A healthy weight for Ireland", the Government's National Obesity Policy and Action Plan, 2016-2025 represents an important milestone in Ireland's response to ongoing epidemic of overweight and obesity in children and adults. Researchers in the HRB Centre for Health & Diet (CHDR) generated key evidence which...

• Listening to the newborn brain

  This outreach programme will provide dedicated public information and education resources on the neonatal brain stethoscope device, which aims to facilitate interrogation of the neonatal brain and improve the quality and accuracy of the diagnosis brain injuries, reduce the stress of parents with babies in the NICU and establish the...

• Expert forum to advance the potential of IL-1 family members as novel therapeutics in IBD

  Current treatment strategies for Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), such as Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, are ineffective in a large number of patients. Although the reasons for this are not fully understood, it seems likely to reflect the complex nature of chronic intestinal inflammation. Recent advances in our understanding...

• Supporting individuals and organisations involved in implementation of community water fluoridation

  The Fluoride And Caring for Children's Teeth (FACCT) study was initiated to determine the effect of the change in water fluoridation policy (2007) on dental caries (tooth decay) and enamel fluorosis (marks on tooth enamel which are associated with fluoride) in Irish children, while also considering the change in policy on the use of...

• Development and validation of diagnostic biomarkers for neurodegenerative conditions based on MRI measures of pathognomonic brain regions

  Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a devastating, relentlessly progressive neurodegenerative condition with no effective disease-modifying therapies and no validated biomarkers. Three main themes exist in ALS biomarker research; (1) development of diagnostic indicators, (2) identification of accurate prognostic markers and (3)...

• Biomarker discovery and validation in autism spectrum disorder: A study of neonatal cord blood in international birth cohorts

  What is Autism? Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex disorder of brain development. ASD is characterized by difficulties in social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication and repetitive behaviours. ASD begins in infancy and persists into adolescence and adulthood. ASD imposes significant emotional and economic burdens on...

• Using Bayesian network models to predict the impact of public health interventions on disease-prevalence in population health research

  Population Health Research studies determinants of health and disease with the goal of identifying interventions that promote health and reduce the burden of disease. Deciding on an appropriate intervention mandates a prior forecast of the intervention's effect on disease. For example, for an intervention targeting smoking, we might...

• The Hospital Doctor Retention and Motivation (HDRM) project

  Ireland is losing almost as many doctors to emigration as it trains each year. This rate of doctor emigration is a threat to the future of the health system, which may run short of doctors to staff its hospitals. So far, Ireland's solution has been to recruit doctors from other countries. One in three doctors in Ireland is from...

• Targeting metabolism for individualised rectal cancer treatment: Development of an omics-led predictive signature of chemoradiation therapy response and novel neoadjuvant therapeutic strategy

  Cancer of the rectum is one of the most common cancers in Ireland and worldwide. Patients with rectal cancer are commonly treated with chemoradiation therapy (CRT), which is a combination of chemotherapy and radiation therapy, to shrink the tumour before undergoing surgery to remove the tumour. CRT has been shown to improve survival...

• Investigating mitochondrial dysfunction and meta-inflammation as a shared pathogenic network in pre-eclampsia and gestational diabetes mellitus

  Pre-eclampsia (PE) and gestational diabetes (GDM) are two common complications of pregnancy. PE is characterised by high blood pressure and increased protein in the urine. GDM develops because the mother's body is not able to produce the extra insulin needed for pregnancy. Together, these pregnancy complications affect 15% of first...

• An allostatic load framework for understanding social differences in health and mortality

  A consistent finding in the epidemiological literature is that health is socially patterned. On average, individuals from more disadvantaged social backgrounds will develop diseases earlier and will die earlier compared with their more advantaged peers. So ubiquitous is the association between health and wealth that it has been...

• Enhancing the evidence base for cost-effectiveness analysis in Ireland: Building improvements from the intervention-specific to system-wide levels

  The objective of this research is to increase the relevance and reliability of health economic evidence in Ireland. The aim is to improve the methods for prioritising scarce health funding to the most beneficial uses. This research will translate valuable lessons learnt from cervical cancer prevention to screening for other cancers,...

• The liver neighbourhood watch: regulatory tissue-resident natural killer (NK) cells protect against liver decompensation in patients with chronic liver disease

  Liver cirrhosis occurs when normal liver tissue is replaced by scar tissue, leading to the eventual failure of normal liver functions. Cirrhosis develops as a result of chronic liver disease, and it accounts for 170,000 deaths annually in Europe and more than 3,000 deaths annually in Ireland. Presently the only treatment is liver...

• Targeting adipose tissue inflammation by intermittent hypoxia: towards personalised medicine in obstructive sleep apnoea

  Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is a very frequent condition, which is strongly linked with obesity and associated with the development of various heart conditions, such as high blood pressure, heart attack or stroke. It also leads to diseases which are associated with abnormalities in blood glucose levels, such as type 2 diabetes...

• Using genetics and CRISPR to personalise new targeted treatments for patients with familial breast cancer

  This research project is focused on the genetics of breast cancer. We know that cancer can be caused by errors in certain genes, called mutations. We also know that these mutations run in some families, and therefore some women unfortunately inherit a risk of developing breast cancer. Landmark studies on these families led to the...

• Exercising control over runaway kynurenine pathway metabolism: Towards improved treatment outcomes in major depression

  We all know someone who suffers from depression, the difficulties they experience before being diagnosed and the hardship endured before an effective medication that improves their symptoms is finally found. Often, despite multiple trials of different medications, the symptoms of depression persist. In addition to the personal and...

• The relationship of medication adherence and environmental factors to exacerbations in patients with severe asthma

  Some patients with asthma suffer attacks, termed exacerbations, these periods of loss of control and heightened symptoms both significantly reduce quality of life and increase healthcare costs, as they are a cause of disability, hospitalisation and death. Predicting when an exacerbation may occur involves knowledge of the person's...

• Biomarker discovery in ultra high risk for psychosis: Towards prediction of psychotic disorder, non-psychotic mental disorders and recovery

  Mental disorders such as schizophrenia and major depression are among the most expensive disorders in terms of quality of life and societal cost. Early identification and intervention is associated with improved outcome and is facilitated by targeting those at ultra-high-risk-for-psychosis (UHR) as up to 25-30% subsequently develop...

• HRB Trials Methodology Research Network (HRB-TMRN) 2017 -2021

  No summary available

   

• HRB Trials Methodology Research Network (HRB-TMRN) 2017 - 2021 - Pilot: Education and training for recruiters to randomised trials

  No summary available

   

• The impact of stress on maternal gastrointestinal permeability during pregnancy: Implications for maternal immunology and infant neurodevelopment

  Pregnancy can be a stressful time during which many expectant mothers experience understandable worries and concerns. Unusually high levels of prenatal maternal stress are associated with a number of behavioural and cognitive problems for the child in later life. Normal development of the central nervous system is also at risk during...

• Alpha melanocyte stimulatory hormone and improvements in glucose tolerance in humans: Role of enhanced skeletal muscle glucose uptake and utilisation

  Patients with diabetes show significant impairements in the control of blood levels of nutrients such as sugars and fats after eating. This causes excessive levels of nutrient to circulate (e.g. high blood sugar-hyperglycaemia) and over time this phenomenon can injure cells and tissues of the body resulting in complications such as...

• The heme oxygenase system as a therapeutic intervention for inflammatory bowel disease

  Ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn disease (CD) are major chronic inflammatory bowel diseases affecting approximately 20,000 people in Ireland and an estimated 2.2 million individuals in Europe. Treatment with infliximab, corticosteroids and aminosalicylate-based compounds has been shown to suppress the generation of pathogenic immune...

• Assessment of the predictive value of immune and histological parameters in oesophageal adenocarcinoma using digital pathology

  Cancer of the oesophagus, or food pipe, is an aggressive type of cancer, with poor survival rates. The number of people affected is increasing and is set to double in Ireland within the next 20 years. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy are used to treat patients with oesophageal cancer, but these therapies only work for a small number of...

• HRB Clinical Research Facility University College Cork 2018-2021

  No summary available

   

• Phenotypic and functional characterisation of immune cell populations in ACPA+ vs ACPA- RA patients: Implications for treatment strategies

  Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is the most common inflammatory arthritis affecting 1-2% of the population, with potentially debilitating effects impacting on quality of life and function. Targeted therapies inhibiting TNF have advanced RA treatment, however these treatments are expensive, placing further strain on an already overstretched...

• Targeting HIV persistent reservoirs: Evaluation of new classes of latency reversing agent as part of novel strategies for HIV cure approaches

  With 37 millions people currently living with HIV and 2.6 million people newly infected worldwide, the AIDS pandemic is a global health crisis. In Ireland, the HSE and the HSPC have made HIV/AIDS "a notifiable disease and a major public health importance". 30 years of intense HIV/AIDS research have provided efficient antiretroviral...

• IRISH-1: A retrospective cohort study of PD-L1 by RNA ISH (RISH) as a potentially superior companion biomarker for immune checkpoint inhibitors in NSCLC

  The role of the immune system to fight illness is well known, but it can in fact also fight cancer. Indeed, most potential cancer causing cells are detected and removed from our bodies by our immune system in process called "immune surveillance". However, at some point, tumors manage to evade our immune system by producing molecules...

• Wellcome-HRB Clinical Research Facility at St James'Hospital 2018-2021

  No summary available

   

• Gastric cancer risk: The influence of selenium status and selenoprotein genetic variation

  Dietary and lifestyle factors and infection with the bacterium Helicobacter pylori play important roles in the development of different types of stomach (gastric) cancer (GC), one of the top ten most serious cancers in Europe. Selenium is a micronutrient needed in small amounts for important proteins, called selenoproteins, countering...

• Do we die as we live? Age, socioeconomic status, healthcare utilisation and pathways to death in Ireland

  It has long been understood that illness and healthcare needs increase as a person approaches the end of life, and that much of what appears to be higher costs with ageing is mainly the costs of dying. Age at death is closely linked to socioeconomic status, but little is known about how patterns of illness and use of services vary...

• Prospective validation of the complement system as a novel treatment stratification tool in oesophageal adenocarcinoma patients

  Cancer of the oesophagus (food-pipe) is rapidly increasing in incidence in Ireland and worldwide and has one of the worst survival rates of all cancers. In Ireland, oesophageal cancer patients are currently treated with chemoradiation therapy (CRT), which is a combination of drugs (chemotherapy) and radiation (radiation therapy),...

• Skin in Parkinson's disease - a potential biomarker?

  Parkinsonism is characterized by slowness, stiffness, tremor and poor balance. Parkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive, incurable neurological disease and the most common cause of Parkinsonism. PD is caused by a reduced level of a chemical (dopamine) in an area of the brain responsible for automatic movement control. Current...

• Elucidating the pathological role of obesity, inflammation and immunity in cancer related sarcopenia in upper gastrointestinal cancers

  Cancer is a devastating disease affecting the majority of us at some point in our lives. Cachexia is a common debilitating consequence of cancer, which is responsible for the deaths of nearly 20% of all cancer patients. It is thought to be driven by inflammation and leads to an involuntary loss of muscle (sarcopenia) and fat. This has...

• CERVIVA-Vax: Monitoring the impact of HPV vaccination in Ireland

  Infection with Human Papillomavirus (HPV) can lead to development of cervical cancer. For this reason HPV now plays an important role in cervical cancer prevention. For example, HPV vaccination programmes are established in several countries worldwide, including Ireland, where a national school based HPV vaccination programme began in...

• A population-based, longitudinal investigation of changes in multisensory integration with ageing and its causal role in the incidence of falls and cognitive decline in older adults

  Our sensory systems are constantly bombarded by information, yet we are able to maintain a coherent perception that allows us to efficiently interact with our world. Recent research in neuroscience has led to important breakthroughs in our understanding of how multisensory interactions occur in the brain. However, the ageing process...

• Advanced scaffold-based therapeutics for regeneration of large volume, vascularised bone defects

  Although bone has a natural capacity to repair itself following fracture, problems arise when large critical-size bone defects do not spontaneously heal and therefore require surgical intervention to repair completely. As many drawbacks exist with traditional repair approaches, the field of bone tissue engineering - which combines...

• The Low Von Willebrand factor Ireland Cohort of Kids (LoVIC-K) study

  Von Willebrand factor (VWF) is a large plasma protein essential for maintaining normal blood coagulation. Approximately 1% of the children and adults inherit low levels of his blood clotting protein, and consequently have a lifelong bleeding disorder known as von Willebrand disease (or VWD). Children with VWD often demonstrate easy...

• HRB Clinical Research Facility Galway 2018-2021

  No summary available

   

• Sex matters! Identification of novel therapeutic targets to mitigate the increased prevalence of depression in women versus men.

  Stress, particularly early life, is a major risk factor for several psychiatric disorders including depression. The prevalence of depression is twice as high in women compared with men. Thus in addition to stress, biological sex is an important contributor of depression susceptibility. The neurobiology underlying increased...

• Monoclonal xIL-6R antibodies as a treatment for memory dysfunction in the mdx mouse model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy

  Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) is a genetic disorder that affects ~ 1 in every 3,600 live male births. This disease is characterised by progressive muscle weakness, disability, immobility and premature death, often due to respiratory failure. Symptom manifestation is due to a genetic mutation in the dystrophin gene, which protects...

• Development of a nebulised cell based therapy for acute respiratory distress syndrome

  Acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) constitute a spectrum of severe acute respiratory failure. Mortality rates over 60% have been reported and ARDS is the leading cause of death in the critically ill. ARDS develops most commonly in the context of severe sepsis, particularly infection with gram-negative...

• The microbiome as a risk factor and biomarker of oesophageal cancer

  Oesophageal cancer is the eighth most common cancer worldwide (19th most common in Europe) with nearly 456,000 new cases diagnosed in 2012. It is well established that microbes can cause cancer. For example, H. pylori infection can lead to stomach cancer. For other cancers, such as colon cancer, there is a change in the population of...

• Systems modelling of tumor heterogeneity & therapy response in colorectal cancer

  Colorectal cancer (CRC) has one of the highest worldwide incidences (>1.3 million new cases) and mortality rates (~610,000 deaths per year). Genotoxic chemotherapy in stage II and III confers minimal treatment benefit (improved survival in 3-4% stage II and 15-20% of stage III patients), and predictive markers to select...

• Multimodal cardiovascular modelling for predicting and preventing disability in TILDA

  Increasing proportions of older adults will lead to an increased prevalence of age-related health problems, and long-term care systems. The issues are numerous and complex. In response to these challenges, 'ageing' has become a research priority both nationally and internationally. TILDA aims to improve population health by providing...

• A mixed methods research study to develop an acceptable, evidence and practice based model for palliative care for people with dementia in the community

  People are living longer, which means that more of us will get age-related illnesses such as dementia. Palliative Care aims to improve the quality of life of patients and their families who are facing an incurable, life-limiting illness, such as dementia. Palliative care involves actively looking for symptoms of any kind- physical,...

• Epigenetics in the pathogenesis of pseudoexfoliation glaucoma

  Glaucoma is a common cause of blindness, which affects approximately 60 million people worldwide. There are many causes and risk factors for developing this disease but pseudoexfoliation (PXF) syndrome is currently the single most important identifiable risk factor for developing glaucoma (PXFG). A build up of certain proteins...

• Alternative approaches to achieving universal healthcare -potential costs, outcomes and challenges

  For the first time in Ireland there is cross-party political interest in achieving universal healthcare (UHC); however there is little clarity about the meaning of universality or how best to transition from the current Irish system to one of universality. In Ireland, most people currently pay relatively high fees to visit general...

• PPI Ignite Award - National University of Ireland Galway

  The Public and Patient Involvement (PPI) Ignite Awards aim to promote PPI in health research in Ireland. Our NUI Galway Primary Care PPI group of patients and members of the public were asked to describe what a successful PPI Ignite project would look like (Figure 3). They responded by saying that success would be creating an...

• PPI Ignite Award - University College Dublin

  UCD in collaboration with 10 partner organisations will develop a PPI network and resource platform called UCD PPI Ignite Connect that will seek to firmly embed patient and public involvement in UCD's research,learning and teaching activities and in its academic processes. The partner organisations include the Ireland East Hospital...

• PPI Ignite Award - Dublin City University

  Patient and public involvement means carrying out research with or by members of the public rather than to, about or for them. This PPI Ignite award plans to improve patient and public involvement in health and social care research. We will do this by bringing people who use health services (patients, carers, and/or their...

• PPI Ignite Award - University of Limerick

  PPI Ignite at the University of Limerick will serve as a rallying point within the university and the wider community it serves, to build capacity for research conducted  "with" or "by" patients and members of the public rather than "to", "about" or "for" them. PPI Ignite UL will accomplish this among a coalition of academic,...

• PPI Ignite Award - Trinity College Dublin

  Research is considered "engaged" when it is developed in collaboration with patients, community members and partnering organisations rather than for or about them. Such public and patient involvement improves the relevancy of the research question, the quality of the approach, and the likelihood that what is discovered through the...

• Research Programme - Taskforce on staffing and skill-mix for nursing

  The Department of Health recently published a document entitled a Framework for Safe Nurse Staffing and Skill Mix in Ireland. In this report a number of recommendations were made to ensure that the staffing of hospitals was safe and effective; that is to ensure the right number of nurses are in the right place at the right time and...

• Longitudinal assessment of cardiac function in infants with Downs Syndrome using novel echocardiography techniques

  Down syndrome is a condition where there is an extra chromosome 21. Babies with Down syndrome have well recognised features. Some babies with Down syndrome have an abnormal heart and need surgery to correct the defect. For this study we are interested in the proportion of babies who have a normal heart structure. Those babies can have...

• Cancer Prevention Fellowship 2017

  Research Programme for mid-career researchers working in Republic of Ireland (RoI) to become NCI Cancer Prevention Fellows at the prestigious National Cancer Institute (NCI) in the USA.

  This programme provides training at post-doctorate level from the health professions, biomedical, and behavioural sciences to become...

• Children's unscheduled primary and emergency care in Ireland: decision making, trends, outcomes and parental perspectives (CUPID)

  The Irish healthcare system is partly publicly funded by government spending and partly privately funded by out-of-pocket payments and private health insurance. Universal healthcare coverage is a situation where all people who need health services receive them, without undue financial hardship, based on need, not income. In 2011 the...

• Lending an ear: "iPeer2Peer" plus "Teens Taking Charge" online self-management to empower children with arthritis

  Childhood arthritis is common and makes everyday activities diffciult for young people. It is a chronic illness that can cause children to experience pain, fatigue and emotional upset. This makes it more difficult for children to see friends and do enjoyable activities.
  
  When children become teenagers they start making more...

• Ancient genomics and the Atlantic burden

  WT Scheme: Investigator Award in Science.
  
  Massive human genome resequencing projects are in train to further the understanding of the genetic contributions to disease. However these offer a limited view of genome genealogies, variant history and past selection, all of which are instrument to the models underpinning genomic...

• Project manager and knowledge exchange manager

  No summary available

   

• Reducing caesarean section rates in Ireland: a feasibility study and pilot randomised trial of an evidence-based intervention designed to reduce unnecessary caesarean section

  Concern has been expressed globally at the rising caesarean section (CS) rate with a lack of evidence of any associated decrease in health problems for mothers and babies, indicating that many CSs are unnecessary. Maternal death and severe maternal health problems are trebled following CS compared with vaginal birth, and newborn babies...

• Enhancing doctors' engagement with regulation of professional competence

  In the field of medicine, information about how best to care for patients is constantly changing. Since 2011, medical doctors in Ireland are required by law to demonstrate that they are taking part in educational activities to keep them up to date. The aim of this requirement is to reassure the public that their doctors are competent...

• A randomised placebo-controlled trial of low-dose aspirin initiated in the first trimester for optimising pregnancy outcome in pregestational diabetes

  Pre-existing diabetes confers a high risk for adverse pregnancy outcome. High blood pressure disorders in pregnancy, including preeclampsia, are particularly common in this population and the combination of pre-existing diabetes and preeclampsia represents a notable high risk for poor pregnancy outcome, including stillbirth....

• Improving outcomes for young adults with type 1 diabetes in Ireland: the D1 now feasibility and cluster randomised pilot study

  Many young adults with type 1 diabetes find it hard to control their blood glucose levels. With many changes going on in their lives their diabetes is often not a priority. They also find it hard to engage with hospital diabetes services because of an inflexible clinic appointment system and seeing a different member of staff at each...

• The SEA-CHANGE study: a pilot randomised controlled trial of the SElf-management After Cancer of the Head And Neck Group intErvention

  Head and neck cancer (HNC) and its treatment are associated with specific challenges such as facial disfigurement and impairments in speech, breathing and swallowing, which can have a negative impact on wellbeing. Despite these burdens, there is a lack of psychosocial interventions to help HNC survivors live well with and beyond...

• We Can Quit2: A cluster randomised pilot trial of a community-based smoking cessation intervention for women in disadvantaged areas of Ireland

  Smoking rates remain high in Ireland despite considerable progress being made to reduce them in recent years. Ireland ranks second highest for smoking-related causes of death in the EU. Lung cancer, which is strongly linked to smoking, is now the most common cause of death for women in Ireland particularly those living in more...

• EOLAS: Building capacity for collaborative education between service users, family members and practitioners within mental health services

  Background: Service users and families need information so they can take charge of their own recovery and relationship with the mental health system. To support this, we developed and delivered 2 mental health information programmes (the EOLAS Programmes), to over 800 service users and family members. The programmes were on recovery...

• Colchine for prevention of vascular inflammation in non-cardioembolic stroke (CONVINCE) - a randomised clinical trial of low-dose colchicine for secondary prevention of stroke. Northern Europe extension

  Inflammation of the lining of arteries is an important factor contributing to clots, leading to heart attacks and strokes. Current studies are testing medicines traditionally used for inflammation of joints (arthritis) to prevent strokes and heart attacks. CONVINCE is a clinical trial, testing colchicine in low doses, a medicine used...

• Promoting Assisted Decision Making in Acute Care Settings (PADMACS) for care planning purposes

  This project aims to produce an educational interactive game which will support health and social care professionals working in acute hospitals to include their patients in decisions about treatment and care plans. Decision-making capacity is the ability to make decisions for one-self. In some cases an older person may experience...

• Out of hospital cardiac arrest and community first response: International best practice, national consultation and prospective evaluation

  Cardiac arrest occurs when the heart suddenly ceases to pump blood around the body. The term 'Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest' (OHCA) is used to describe incidents where cardiac arrest occurs unexpectedly and is responded to by statutory emergency medical services (EMS). OHCA causes approximately 1,900 unexpected deaths in Ireland every...

• Feasibility of an intervention to improve attendance for diabetic retinopathy screening

  Retinopathy is a serious and common condition affecting the sight of people with diabetes and it can cause blindness. It is preventable through screening and can be treated if found in time. However, the success of screening is dependent on people attending when invited. Studies show that a number of people with diabetes do not attend...

• Low molecular weight heparin to prevent recurrent venous thromboembolism in pregnancy: a randomised trial of two doses: the HIGHLOW study

  Women who are pregnant have an increased chance of developing blood clots. These clots can cause serious ill-health and can even be fatal. The death of a young mother is a tragic event with wide-reaching effects on the woman's family.
  
  Women with a previous blood clot have a higher recurrence risk in pregnancy. In fact, the...

• Targeted therapeutic mild hypercapnia after resuscitated cardiac arrest: A phase III multi-centre randomised controlled trial

  A cardiac arrest occurs when the heart stops pumping blood to the brain and other major organs. Approximately 10,000 people die from cardiovascular disease every year in Ireland. It is estimated that 5,000 of these deaths are from a sudden cardiac arrest. Early resuscitation (CPR) can get the heart pumping again but in many cases the...

• Lifetime exposure to community water fluoridation and associations with key indicators of health in community-dwelling adults aged 50 years and over in Ireland

  The main aim of this project is to provide evidence that informs future policy about water fluoridation in Ireland. Community water fluoridation has existed in Ireland since 1964, so it is important to examine any association between long term exposure to water fluoridation and general health status. Such an assessment is a requirement...

• Community Risk-based monitoring for Atrial Fibrillation Trial (CRAFT)

  Atrial fibrillation, an irregular heart-beat, is common, affecting ~7% of people over 65 years of age. It is a major cause of stroke, increasing the risk of stroke 5-fold, and about one-third of patients with acute stroke have atrial fibrillation. Once detected, there are very effective treatments to prevent stroke - oral anticoagulant...

• What influences cervical screening uptake in older women and how can screening programmes translate this knowledge into behaviour changing strategies? A CERVIVA-CervicalCheck co-production project

  Most cervical cancers can be prevented by detecting early changes in the cervix which, if not found, could progress to cancer. This is done by testing cells from the cervix in a smear test. CervicalCheck, the Irish National Cervical Screening programme, started in 2008 and offers free tests to women aged 25-60. For the programme to be...

• Resource allocation, priority-setting and consensus in dementia care in Ireland

  A key action under the National Dementia Strategy (2014) is the delivery of appropriate supports and services for people with dementia that can be accessed in people's own homes and local communities. There is also an emphasis in the Strategy to address the individual needs of people with dementia and their carers in a manner that is...

• Traumatic brain injury: epidemiology and rehabilitation in Ireland

  Traumatic brain injury (TBI, informally known as head injury) is a leading cause of death and disability worldwide1. Neither the number of people affected by TBI, nor the severity of the disability caused, in Ireland, is known. This makes it hard to plan the specialised neuro-rehabilitation services, which are under-developed and...

• The utility of high-tech drug analysis to the decision maker

  The Health (Pricing and Supply) Act 2013 stipulates that the payer must consider the cost-effectiveness (the likelihood that the drug will offer value for money) and the likely cost impact of a new drug prior to deciding if it should be reimbursed. It also states that, after a 3-5 year period, continued reimbursement must be reviewed....

• Longitudinal profiling of adverse events in Irish hospitals and provision of a standardised assessment tool to the Irish healthcare system: the INAES-2 study

  Adverse events (AEs) are unintended injuries or complications that are caused by healthcare management, rather than a patient's underlying disease, which lead to death, disability at the time of hospital discharge, prolonged hospital stay or subsequent hospitalisation. The first Irish National Adverse Events Study (INAES) determined...

• Staphylococcus aureus induced immunosuppressive memory: Consequences for bug and for host

  WT Scheme: Investigator Award in Science.
  
  Antimicrobial resistance by Staphylococcus aureus is a global epidemic. New approaches based on induction of immune responses that control/prevent S. aureus infection, are required. This necessitates a thorough understanding of the unique relationship cultivated by S. aureus with the...

• Targeting autophagy in nephropathic cystinosis

  Cystinosis is a genetic disorder due to a gene defect called cystinosin, where a toxic metabolite called cysteine collects in the cells due to a defect in lysosomes. This results in the kidneys become leaky to protein, water and salts, which results in growth failure, severe dehydration and developmental delay in children. A subtype of...

• MRCG support award

  The Medical Research Charities Group (MRCG) is the national organization of 35 patient groups and foundations which promote an improved environment for medical research in general and for charities in particular, obtain funding for research projects, bring together organizations working in the field and disseminate the outcomes. Its...

• Building research capacity in the maternal health and maternal morbidity in Ireland study: Second baby follow-up, intervention development and testing, and measurement of costs (MAMMI-SIM)

  The MAMMI study (Maternal health And Maternal Morbidity in Ireland), Phase 1, is in progress at present. It will identify how often physical/emotional problems occur in women having their first baby in Ireland, what factors cause problems and what treatments might help. Some conditions affect one-third of women just after having a...

• Patients'satisfaction in a nurse-led oral chemotherapy clinic

  No summary available

   

• Novel immune targets in Multiple Sclerosis

  In Multiple Sclerosis Interferonb has been used as a first line treatment regimen for the past 15 years and many patients have shown therapeutic benefit and continue to do so from this 'natural' immune modulator. However, for others interferonb shows no clear therapeutic benefit and we are looking into how to change these patients into...

• Hedgehog control of resident vascular stem cell niches

  Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a major cause of death for Irish people killing 1 in 3 every year. Most of the problems associated with CVD are due to changes in the structural integrity of the blood vessel wall resulting in obstruction of blood flow that can lead to a heart attack or stroke. Key cells involved in this blockage are...

• An investigation of the role of Staphylococcus aureus colonisation of healthcare workers in nosocomial transmission of S. aureus to patients in an MRSA-endemic setting using whole-genome sequencing

  Staphylococcus aureus is a bacterium that frequently causes serious infections among hospitalised patients. This includes methicillin-susceptible S. aureus (MSSA) that are readily treatable with antibiotics and the so-called antibiotic resistant "superbug"MRSA (methicillin-resistant S. aureus). MRSA have been widespread in Irish...

• Symptom management through self-management: Improving the outcomes of patients with relapsed multiple myeloma

  The main aim of this project is to develop a symptom management self care tool for patient with relapsed MM. MM is incurable and as a result of all novel treatments available patients live longer but not always with a exceptional QOL due to symptom burden. It is hoped that this project will result in the formation of a tool which...

• Methadone substitution treatment: mortality and progression pathways

  People who inject heroin have a risk of death six times higher than the general population. The most effective treatment for heroin injectors is the prescription of legal, substitution drugs, most commonly methadone. This is called opiate or methadone substitution treatment (MST). The majority (60%) of patients on MST in Ireland attend...

• Development of a mult-faceted approach to reducing and mitigating the risk of foreign object retention (FOR)

  Over 1,000 Irish FOR incidents between 2011 and 2015 represent unnecessary suffering patients, reputational cost/damage to the healthcare service, institution and clinician and financial cost in claims and rework.
  FOR is an intractable human factors problem because removing materials after a task is not integrated into the natural...

• Application of state of the art raman chemical imaging and chemometrics to accelerate and improve patient prostate biopsy assessment for cancer.

  A pathologists' task in assessing a prostate biopsy for cancerous tissue is of prime importance since failure to correctly identify tissue can lead to a failure to accurately diagnose the patient and predict their likely prognosis. Histological staining assists in the assessment of prostate biopsies by making important features of the...

• Reducing resistance to beta-lactam antibiotics: A new treatment strategy for MRSA infections

  Approximately 5-10% of hospitalised patients acquire an infection in hospital. Serious infections are more likely in intensive care unit (ICU) or high dependency unit (HDU) patients, in whom implanted medical devices are required for life maintaining therapy. Unfortunately such devices also represent an opportunity for pathogens such...

• Developing the oncology practice context for pain assessment and pain registration in Ireland: an action research project

  Pain is one of the most prevalent symptoms of patients with cancer, which hampers daily activities and quality of life. Systematic pain assessment and documentation using a validated pain assessment tool at each visit in patients with cancer are key recommendations in the most recent clinical practice guidelines on cancer pain...

• Supporting prescribing in Irish primary care: a non-randomised pilot study of a GP practice-based pharmacist medicines optimisation programme

  Medication prescribing is one of the commonest medical interventions and there have been marked increases in patients taking multiple medicines with related adverse effects. We have developed an intervention involving practice based pharmacists working with GPs to optimise prescribing in Irish general practice settings.
  Study...

• To determine how the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines for tamoxifen and aromatase inhibitors (AIs) can be adapted to address the symptom burden for women with breast cancer in the follow up phase of treatment, who are receiving care in the North East of Ireland

  No summary available

   

• A comparison of emotion-focused therapy and cognitive-behavioural therapy in the treatment of generalised anxiety disorder.

  Generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) is a chronic and debilitating anxiety disorder characterised by excessive worry, anxiety, and somatic symptoms such as tiredness. It is often found alongside other disorders such as depression. Its main features are also important for our understanding of the other anxiety disorders. Alongside...

• Building a risk calculator to inform prostate cancer diagnosis

  Patients and clinicians are faced with the dilemmas associated with the detection and treatment of Prostate cancer. One such dilemma is in the early stages of diagnosis when men are referred by their GP for suspicion of prostate cancer but it is not clear if they need a biopsy or not. This is because PSA in not specific for prostate...

• Irish clinical academic training (ICAT) Programme

  WT Scheme: PhD Programme for Clinicians
  
  Ireland's ongoing economic recovery represents a unique opportunity to effect fundamental change in academic medicine that can have lasting societal benefits. We have designed a comprehensive National Programme for Clinician Scientists based at six major Irish universities. Our...

• Institutional Strategic Support Fund (ISSF)

  These funds will be used to grow and enhance a connected programme of health-related Research, Teaching and Public Engagement in Trinity College. Specific activities will include: (a) seed research support to early stage academics; (b) a programme to stimulate strategic international collaboration and: (c) the creation of a truly...

• Institutional Strategic Support Fund (ISSF)

  The Wellcome Trust ISSF scheme will help UCD's researchers to overcome systemic barriers to career and network development that will unlock future research potential within the University and beyond. The fund will support outstanding research in biomedical sciences, clinical sciences and the medical humanities that will enable UCD to...

• SAFE: Systematic Approach to improving care for Frail Elderly patients

  Much recent attention has focused on the problem of older people being treated in overcrowded emergency departments. Studies have clearly demonstrated an association between hospitalisation in older people and poorer outcomes, including loss of independence, admission to long-term care and mortality. Frailty, a state of increased...

• Anti-inflammatory therapy for preventing stroke and other vascular events after ischaemic stroke or transient ischaemic attack

  To systematically review the randomised clinical trials evaluating anti-inflammatory medications plus standard medical therapy for the prevention of recurrent vascular events after ischaemic stroke / transient ischaemic attack compared with standard medical therapy.

   

• Hybrid repair versus conventional open repair for thoracic aortic arch aneurysms

  To evaluate the effectiveness and safety of hybrid technique versus open arch repair in the management of thoracic aortic arch aneurysms.

   

• Membrane sweeping for induction of labour

  The objective of this review is to evaluate the effectiveness of amniotic membrane sweep for induction of labour in women at term gestation.

   

• Neoadjuvant treatments for malignant and metastatic melanoma

  The objective of this review is to assess the effects of neoadjuvant treatments for stage III and IV melanoma in adults. Historically stage III and IV melanoma have been associated with a very poor prognosis, and available treatments have had very little impact on the disease course.Various clinical options have been explored,...

• Hospital design for supporting people with dementia and their carers

  The relationship between health and wellbeing and the design of the built environment is becoming an important area of research that is bringing together the medical/clinical community with design professionals such as architects and urban planners. Evidence based medicine already underpins good healthcare, however, evidence based...

• The Irish Longitudinal Study of Ageing Wave 5 and 6 (TILDA)

  One of the greatest demographic and social transformations facing Ireland is aging of its population, increased life expectancy and related challenges. Whereas Ireland has one of the youngest populations in the European Union, by 2046 a quarter of our population will be over 65 and the greatest increase will be in those 85 and above...

• Interventions for promoting participation in shared decision-making for children and adolescents with cystic fibrosis

  To determine the effectiveness of interventions that promote shared-decision making (SDM) for children and adolescents with cystic fibrosis aged 4 to 18 years of age.Shared decision-making (SDM) is defined as a patient centered, collaborative process that enables individuals and their healthcare providers to make decisions together...

• Risk prediction models for familial breast cancer: a systematic review

  The majority of breast-cancers are sporadic, however, 20-30% are considered familial (occur in the context of a significant family-history of the disease). Women suspected of being at higher risk of breast-cancer than the general-population based on their family-history are frequently referred to a "family-risk" clinic for...

• Interventions for improving medication adherence in solid organ transplant recipients

  Organ transplantation is the removal of an organ from one individual and placement within another individual. Solid organ transplantation refers to transplantation of the heart, lungs, kidney, pancreas or liver, and successful transplantation involves collaboration across surgical, medical, legal, political and bioethical disciplines....

• Interventions for supporting pregnant women's decisions about first caesarean delivery

  This cochrane review will collate the best available evidence about interventions for supporting pregnant women's decision-making for first caesarean delivery thereby influencing current clinical practice, local and national guidelines. More evidence is needed to support the promotion of informed choice, involving the woman as a...

• HRB Collaboration in Ireland for Clinical Effectiveness Reviews (HRB-CICER)

  Through the National Clinical Effectiveness Committee (NCEC), the Minister for Health mandates clinical guidelines as National Clinical Guidelines for use in public healthcare in Ireland. The goal of the guidelines is to promote healthcare that is current, effective and consistent, ensuring best outcomes for patients and service users....

• Oral hygiene programmes for people with intellectual disabilities

  A systematic review will be undertaken of oral hygiene programmes aimed at training and supporting individuals with an intellectual disability and/or their carers about oral hygiene practices which are likely to improve the oral health of people with an intellectual disability in primary and secondary care settings. These programmes...

• Uncovering the role of ER-shaping proteins in neurodegenerative disease

  WT Scheme: Seed Award in Science
  
  Hereditary spastic paraplegias (HSPs) are a group of neurodegenerative disorders characterised by degeneration of the longest motor neurons which leads to muscle weakness and spasticity in the lower limbs. There are currently no treatments to cure or even to slow the course ofthese diseases. In...

• Identifying Interventions to prevent and manage chronic kidney disease

  WT Scheme: Postdoctoral Training Fellowships for Clinicians
  
  Chronic kidney disease (CKD) affects almost 500million people worldwide is increasingly prevalent,associated with morbidity and mortality, and interventions (dialysis or transplant) are expensive and unavailable in some regions. Developing programs to reduce CKD...

• Role of TWEAK/Fn14 pathway in mediating muscle pathology in SMA

  Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a devastating disease caused by loss of both nerve cells and muscle function. While the nerve is the major affected cell type, therapies specifically aimed at improving muscle function ameliorate survival and/or symptoms in SMA models. Thus,developing muscle-

• Application of next generation sequencing for the genetic characterisation of Irish retinal degeneration patients

  A key objective of the current study is to clinically and genetically characterise an extended group of 700-800 Irish patients with inherited retinal degenerations (IRD). The team have significant prior experience in the clinical and genetic evaluation of patients with inherited retinal degenerations. They believe it is timely to...

• Resolution of inflammation by metabolic reprogramming in the inflamed joint

  Arthritis is a leading cause of disability that affects up to 15% of the population and is the most common cause of pain in Irish society, including children. 2% suffer from inflammatory arthritis (IA) such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and psoriatic arthritis (PsA). IA causes joint damage and disability and is associated with...

• MicroRNAs in the mechanism of ketogenic diet therapies and as biomarkers in paediatric epilepsy

  Epilepsy is a disease caused by imbalances in electrical activity in the brain. Anyone can have epilepsy but it is particular common in children. Patients experience seizures (fits), which disrupt their lives and can be directly harmful to the developing brain. Although we have a number of drugs to stop seizures, they fail to work in...

• Peer-to-peer motivational interview intervention for smoking, alcohol and physical activity among at-risk adolescents in low SES communities: A feasibility trial

  Unhealthy behaviours established during adolescence often persist into adulthood; we will examine the effects of training adolescents (13-18 years) in a proven method for behaviour change (motivational interviewing) for smoking cessation, alcohol consumption and exercise promotion among adolescents in low SES communities. Peer-led...

• Towards host-directed therapies to overcome immune impairment in cigarette smokers during mycobacterial infection

  Tuberculosis (TB) is a bacterial infection which causes approximately 1.5 million deaths worldwide each year and it is estimated that one third of the worlds'population is latently infected with TB. In this proposal we aim to investigate the role of alveolar acrophages in the immune response to TB infection. Alveolar macrophages are...

• Unravelling the mechanisms of azoospermia and potential future treatments in male cystinosis patients

  Cystinosis is a rare inheritable disorder in which cystine, a small protein, accumulates in all cells throughout the body. Patients suffer from progressive renal failure due to extensive proximal tubular and glomerular dysfunction, but also various endocrine organs become affected later in life. Patients can be treated with cysteamine,...

• AVERT: Autoimmunity relapse prediction using multiple parallel data sources

  In most causes of autoimmune disease, where the body's immune system attacks an individual's own body, the condition relapses and remits. This means that strong medications to suppress the immune system bring the patient into remission, but they remain at risk of suffering a flare of their disease. In the autoimmune kidney condition...

• Pioneering advances for control of myopia in children - the SHIELD initiative

  Short-sightedness (or myopia) is the commonest eye problem in Ireland and is growing all over the world. It now affects up to 90% of young adults in Asia and up to 50% in Western countries. As well as the costs and frustrations of not being able to see well without glasses, myopia is also bad for the health of our eyes. As we get older...

• Ketamine for relapse prevention in recurrent depressive disorder: a randomised controlled pilot trial (The KINDRED Trial)

  Depression is projected to become the second greatest cause of disability worldwide by 2020. It can be a chronic disorder, with 5-9 episodes of depression per lifetime. The first six months following successful antidepressant treatment represents the highest risk period for relapse, with 40-60% relapse rates in persons with...

• Identifying the aetiology of diabetic progenitor cell dysfunction in osteoporosis

  Diabetes changes how a person's body gets energy from the food they eat. When we digest food, sugar is released into the blood and is used by the body's cells for energy. People with type 1 diabetes (T1DM) do not produce insulin and are therefore not able to use the sugar in the blood for energy. Patients with T1DM have to inject...

• Comparative mass spectrometric profiling of the dystrophin complexome in normal versus pathological muscles with differing degrees of fibre degeneration

  Duchenne muscular dystrophy is the most commonly inherited neuromuscular disease of early childhood. The disorder affects almost exclusively boys due to the fact that the defective gene is located on the X-chromosome. The skeletal musculature, the respiratory system,the heart and the central nervous system are majorly affected in...

• Bacteria in human tumours

  It is becoming apparent that the relationship between humans and bacteria can influence various diseases. Deeper understanding of the bacteria that live in our body is enabling identification of i) potential causes of and ii) potential treatments for disease. The Tangney lab at the Cork Cancer Research Centre has recently discovered...

• MRCG interim support award

  The Medical Research Charities Group (MRCG) is the national organization of 35 medical research patient-led charities formed to promote dynamic medical research in Ireland. The MRCG works in partnership with key stakeholders, such as the Health Research Board (HRB), to bring added value to the health research landscape. The MRCG is...

• An investigation of the mechanisms lining C5orf30 with tissue damage in RA

  Around 40,000 Irish people have rheumatoid arthritis (RA), around half being adults of working age. Advances in our understanding of the how joint inflammation develops in RA have resulted in greatly improved treatments with improved outcomes for most patients, particular those with severe disease. Despite these remarkable achievements...

• Evaluation of the 'pilot implementation of the framework for safe nurse staffing and skill-mix'

  Earlier this year, the Department of Health published a document entitled Framework for Safe Nurse Staffing and Skill Mix in General and Specialist Medical and Surgical Care Settings in Adult Hospitals in Ireland. In this report the Department made a number of recommendations to ensure that the staffing of hospital wards was safe and...

• Determining the mechanism of action of a novel histone deacetylase 6 specific inhibitor that kills chemoresistant breast cancer

  WT Scheme: Seed Award in Science
  
  The majority of cytotoxic agents used to treat patients kill tumour cells via the mitochondrial pathway of cell death. Previously, the applicant found that primary tumours that are chemoresistant in vivo usually contain mitochondria that are resistant to apoptotic signalling. Therefore, we...

• Modelling of pharmacokinetics into ischemic heart tissue from an implantable, replenishable therapy reservoir

  WT Scheme: Seed Award in Science
  
  Precisely controlled delivery of drugs, bioagents and cells directly to the heart has the potential to dramatically improve regenerative cardiac therapy for ischemic heart failure. Likewise, localized therapy delivery to ischemic tissue can increase retention at the target site and reduce...

• Perspectives of partners of women who experience mental health issues in the postnatal period

  For most families having a baby is a happy occasion. A small number of women, however, suffer from mental health issues following the birth of their baby. Often the womans partner can play an important role in seeking help and supporting the woman and the baby. However, we have very little information on how the partners of women who...

• The ExACT Trial

  Exercise therapy is a well established, effective treatment for individuals with chronic pain and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a promising new approach in the management of chronic pain. ACT helps people with chronic pain to focus on awareness of personal values and promotes activity that will enhance their quality of...

• SDHB and its role in epigenetic alteration in malignant phaeochromocytoma

  A phaeochromocytoma (PC) refers to a tumour located on the adrenal gland, which releases adrenaline and similar hormones and causes high blood pressure (in severe cases this may be fatal). When a similar tumour occurs outside of the adrenal gland it is called a paraganglioma (PGL) and can be located anywhere from skull to pelvis....

• The Irish kidney gene project - identification and characterisation of novel genetic causes of familial kidney disease

  Certain kidney diseases tend to run in families, suggesting that particular genes are inherited from one generation to the next, causing kidney disease. By undertaking a joint training programme between with Trinity College Dublin and Harvard Medical School Boston, I plan to study these families and seek to identify specific genes that...

• Use of software and computer technology in aphasia rehabilitation; investigating issues of efficacy, usability and cost effectiveness

  Technology can provide an answer for over-stretched health care provision but will service users, particular older adults, actively engage with it? This research will investigate the benefits of a computer programme on language comprehension abilities (i.e. ability to understand spoken sentences) and explore the user experience of...

• Development and validation of metric-based training to proficiency for dental implant placement

  Common dental diseases such as dental decay (caries) and gum (periodontal) disease can lead to the loss of teeth, which has detrimental effects on patients chewing ability, speech and smile. While retaining teeth for patients is a primary goal for the dental profession, the replacement of teeth when they are lost is an important role...

• Characterisation of polyclonal IgG and paraprotein glycosylation in multiple myeloma to investigate structural and functional insights into stage-specific pathologies

  Multiple myeloma is a type of blood cancer characterized by abnormal antibody called paraprotein, produced by the cancerous plasma cells in the bone marrow. Patients develop anaemia (due to bone marrow infiltration by cancerous cells), high calcium, bone destruction, kidney failure and death. Survival has improved since the approval of...

• Irish Platform for Patients Organisations Science and Industry

  The Irish Platform for Patients' Organisations, Science and Industry (IPPOSI) is a unique organisation in Ireland and abroad. The platform brings together patient groups, scientists, clinicians, industry and other key decision makers to discuss and build consensus on issues relevant to all involved in delivering treatments to people...

• Unwrapping the layers of complexity of clinical performance assessment of physiotherapy students and identifying key stakeholders' preferences towards enhancing the process

  Clinical performance assessment of health professional students is imperative as it provides a measure of a students readiness to practice within their profession. However, it is widely acknowledged as being inherently problematic. Difficulties reported by clinicians in medicine, nursing, psychology and social work include the...

• Caesarean section in nulliparous women: factors influencing decision-making process and outcomes for women- The MAMMI study caesarean section strand

  This study will find out the factors, or combination of several factors, that influence the decision to perform a caesarean section (CS) in first-time mothers in Ireland, the health problems women experience in the first year after the birth and what women, midwives and obstetricians believe are the reasons behind the decision to...

• Towards personalised therapy in stricturing crohn's disease- exploring and exploiting the role of NADPH oxidase in intestinal fibrosis

  Crohn's disease, a member of the family of inflammatory bowel diseases, causes inflammation throughout the digestive tract and frequently results in fibrosis (scarring) of the intestine, which will cause narrowing and ultimately bowel obstruction. Available treatments can dampen the inflammation, but do not prevent fibrosis. It is...

• Translational analyses of ingestive behavior after gastric bypass

  Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB) decreases appetite, caloric intake, glycemia, and body weight, all of which are maintained long-term. It is controversial whether, after RYGB, patients choose to eat less highfat and sugary foods in favor of lower energy dense alternatives. If true, this could conceivably contribute to improved glycemia...

• An investigation into early adverse life events and psychotic-like experiences in Irish youth

  At some time in their life, up to one in six adolescents is likely to have experienced some form of hallucinations or delusions, also known as psychotic-like experiences. These experiences include things like hearing voices, seeing things that are not there and having fixed false beliefs about yourself or the world around you. Most...

• Attenuation of exaggerated post-prandial gut hormone response: A novel therapeutic strategy for the treatment of excessive weight loss among disease-free post-oesophagectomy patients

  There is increasing incidence of cancer of the oesophagus (the gullet or swallowing tube). Improvements to treatment strategies for oesophageal cancer have produced an increasing population of patients who remain free from the disease recurrence in the long-term. Optimising long-term outcomes for these patients after treatment...

• The clinical application of immunometabolism to the TB Patient

  Recent studies have shown that cells of the immune system change the way that they break down sugars (their metabolism) after they are stimulated, and that this change in metabolism is needed in order to produce specific chemicals (cytokines) that fight infection.
  We will study what metabolism changes happen in immune cells from...

• Investigating the impact of body composition and nutritional intervention strategies in pancreatic cancer

  Pancreatic cancer is the 9th most common cancer in Ireland, and the 5th most common cause of cancer related death. Because of its location deep within the abdomen, patients often present with advanced cancer at the time of diagnosis. The options for treatment are limited as surgery is only suitable for patients who don't have spread of...

• Overcoming survival signalling in Multiple Myeloma

  Multiple Myeloma (MM) is a blood cancer affecting plasma cells, a type of white blood cell located in the bone marrow. It affects the bones, kidneys and causes patients to have frequent infections. There are approximately 250 new cases diagnosed in Ireland annually. MM is not curable and although the treatment for this condition...

• Living with Motor Neurone Disease (MND) and Dysphagia -the personal experiences of individuals with MND and their caregivers

  Motor Neurone Disease (MND) is one of the most progressive diseases of the nervous system, for which there is no cure. It often leads to weakness in the arms, hands and legs, posing difficulties with daily life activities. Throat muscles can also be affected leading to speech and swallowing problems (dysphagia). Dysphagia can be life...

• Development of a core set of clinical care provision indicators for non-specialist palliative care in the acute care hospital setting

  Palliative care encompasses the support structure around people facing problems associated with life-limiting illness and includes the support of their families, but this is more than end-of-life care, and is viewed as central component of care for people living with limiting illnesses. Palliative care policies in Ireland draw on these...

• The OPTIMAL study: A randomized controlled trial and process evaluation of an OccuPaTIonal therapy led self MAnagement support programme for patients with muLtimorbidity in primary care

  Many people with chronic disease tend to have more than one chronic condition, referred to as multimorbidity. It is predicted that the number of individuals with multimorbidity is set to increase substantially in the future due to the growing elderly population. Those with multimorbidity experience poor physical function and find it...

• Artificial neural networks, genomic data and case-control classification

  WT Scheme: Seed Award in Science
  
  Genome wide association studies have now reached the scale where one can hope to extract information relevant to clinical applications and public health. The large and complex nature of current datasets will benefit from new and more powerful methods of analysis. We propose to investigate the...

• Sound-based observation of neonatal brain growth and status

  WT Scheme: Seed Award in Science
  
  Neurological problems are more likely to happen in the early neonatal period than at any other time of life. 85% of neonatal deaths worldwide occurred in developing countries with neonatal encephalopathy due to the birth asphyxia being one of the major causes of high child mortality. The lack...

• Malnutrition in the elderly joint action call

  Joint Programming Initiative: Health Diet of a Health Life
  
  The Joint Action "Malnutrition in the Elderly Knowledge Hub" is part of the Strategic Research Agenda of the Joint Programming Initiative "A Healthy Diet for a Healthy Life". The general objectives of the Malnutrition in the Elderly Knowledge Hub (MaNuEL) are to extend...

• Metabolic reprogramming in innate immunity

  WT Scheme: Investigator Award in Science.
  
  Immune cells undergo metabolic reprogramming during activation which directly impacts on their phenotype (1,2). Glycolysis is a key feature of M1 macrophages and Th17 cells, whilst oxidative phosphorylation is more apparent in M2 macrophages and Treg cells. Signals regulated by the...

• Integrative genomic, epigenetic and functional studies in diabetic kidney disease

  Kidney disease is a common and devastating complication of diabetes, and represents a major public health problem worldwide. The inherited, genetic factors that play a role in determining who will get this complication are beginning to be discovered, creating opportunities to understand the underlying biological basis of diabetic...

• Cancer Prevention Fellowship 2016

  Research Programme for mid-career researchers working in Republic of Ireland (RoI) to become NCI Cancer Prevention Fellows at the prestigious National Cancer Institute (NCI) in the USA.

  This programme provides training at post-doctorate level from the health professions, biomedical, and behavioural sciences to become...

• ICORG Renewal 2016-2018

  In Ireland there are 20,000 new cases of cancer and more than 7,500 cancer deaths each year. A quarter of our annual death toll is cancer related. The number of new cases in the system by 2020 will be 107% of the number in 2000. Since 2005, the HRB has invested in the development of a network of cancer clinical trials in 17 hospitals...

• Patient preferences for health

  In Ireland we ask society or the general public to state their preferences for descriptions of health. We then use these valuations or preferences to calculate the impact of technologies on quality of life and this informs how decision makers decide what to fund. This is known as the QALY framework and is used in most jurisdictions to...

• Psychosocial, psychiatric and work-related risk factors associated with suicide in Ireland: Enhancing dissemination and impact of research

  The SSIS-ACE study examines how psychosocial, psychiatric and work-related factors relate to suicide. The study involves liaising with family members bereaved by suicide, family members of those who survived a high-risk self-harm act, general practitioners (GPs), emergency department staff, mental health staff and coroners. During the...

• Taking the stress out of dementia caregiving

  The existing award examines how the caring experience can impact the health of dementia spouse carers. Using this emerging research evidence we will develop two animated films and a dedicated online resource providing easy-to-understand practical advice to carers to improve their quality of life and reduce stress.
  FreeDem Films are...

• Synthesising and disseminating key lessons from the AIIHPC Palliative Care Research Network

  This application for KEDS funding proposes to further enhance knowledge transfer and exchange activities across the SRN/PCRN by conducting a higher level analysis of the dissemination products arising from each individual work project during the final year of the active grant. It is expected that dissemination products will include...

• Capnography monitoring for conscious sedation in oral surgery

  Capnography has the potential to enhance patients safety in the dental setting. Procedural sedation techniques are specific to each area of medicine where sedation is practiced. Conscious sedation in an out of hospital setting by a non anaesthetist requires robust monitoring. The most important negative side effect of sedation is...

• Doctor Emigration Knowledge Exchange Project (DEP-KEDS)

  The Doctor Emigration Project (DEP) aims to analyse doctor emigration from Ireland and to inform national health workforce policy about the factors influencing their emigration. The ultimate aim of the project is to assist national workforce planners to develop evidence-informed policies to promote the retention of doctors in, and the...

• Irish medical career tracking study (The MedTrack Study)

  Hardly a week goes by without a national media report on the medical staffing crisis in the Irish health services, which is perhaps the biggest current threat to the delivery of quality health services to the population of Ireland. With 6- and 12-monthly staff turnovers, employers are forced to recruit staff from abroad to fill posts...

• Blood brain barrier dysfunction in Schizophrenia; A molecular genetics based approach to prognosis

  Schizophrenia has been estimated to affect up to 1 in 100 people in Ireland. Given its prevalence, the underlying causes of the condition are still far from clear. Intriguingly, there exists a chromosomal abnormality termed 22q11 deletion syndrome (22q11DS), where schizophrenia can manifest 20 times more frequently than in the general...

• Early life stress and the etiopathogenesis of auditory hallucinations in young people

  This research project aims to look at the relationship between experiencing stressful life events during childhood and experiencing psychotic-like symptoms (like hearing voices that other people can't hear, for example) in adolescence. Researchers have already shown that there is a relationship between these two experiences but, up...

• Creating awareness of research in caregiving (CARING)

  An increasing number of people in Ireland are providing care for a relative with dementia. This important unpaid work comes with an underappreciated cost to the health of the caregiver. Evidence suggests that dementia caregiving is associated with heightened psychological stress, as well as problems such as depression.
  Our...

• The effects of maternal and foetal stress during pregnancy on adult mental health

  The causes of both common mental illnesses like anxiety and depression and more severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are still unclear. We know that these illnesses are most likely a complex mix of environmental factors working in conjunction with underlying genetic vulnerability. The genetic input to these...

• Development of a national severe asthma registry and comprehensive care program

  There has been a drive to deliver new asthma treatments through new biological agents. However, age old issues including poor adherence and poor inhaler use still apply and mean that it is difficult to tell if a patient has difficult to manage asthma or therapy refractory asthma. The proposal is to build a registry for patients with...

• Creation of a young adult colouring book illustrating biological research on mental illness

  We plan to create an innovative educational activity to promote our research on biological investigations in mental illness. Our idea is to publish a young adult colouring book that will introduce young people to the complex world of the human brain, how scientists perform neuroscience research and how the findings relate to...

• Development and upgrading of the HMDB Schizophrenia Metabocard

  The Human Metabolome Database (HMDB) is a freely available database that contains detailed information about small molecules found in the human body. It is the first and foremost reference site for metabolite data worldwide. It provides scientists, clinicians, educators and the public with the most current and comprehensive coverage of...

• An inflammatory biomarker study of psychosis: a longitudinal study in an at risk population

  Schizophrenia is among the most expensive disorders in terms of quality of life and societal cost. While treatments are inadequate, early intervention has been shown to be clinically effective. Consequently, there is an urgent need to improve our understanding of the pathophysiology of this disorder so that we can identify and treat...

• Brain superheros return

  Making new drugs is long, costly and complex, and is often a mystery to many people. Our laboratory is involved in the development of new drugs for brain related illnesses, including illnesses such as Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Multiple Sclerosis. Alongside our research, we conduct a number of outreach projects in the hope of...

• Priority setting in uncertainties in trial methodology

  Challenges in how clinical trials are designed and conducted are commonly experienced by researchers at different stages of the research process. For example, difficulty in recruiting people to a trial often results in a delay in completing the trial, or difficulty in using the trial results to make informed decisions about clinical...

• Thinking outside the box: towards a novel approach to care delivery for young adults with type 1 diabetes

  Many young people living with type 1 diabetes struggle with the burden of day-to-day self-management. As a result they often have poor outcomes including the development of life-changing complications. We have formed a partnership between existing diabetes service providers (in Galway University Hospitals), academics in National...

• Evaluating the role of TLR3 L412F in disease progression in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis

  Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a lung disease of unknown cause which leads to excessive scarring of the lungs, resulting in loss of lung function, respiratory failure and ultimately, death. IPF is believed to be caused by abnormal repair of the lung after a chronic injury by an unknown agent to the lining of the lung (the...

• Immunotherapy for the treatment of AMD: a preclinical evaluation

  Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of central retinal vision loss worldwide. Estimated prevalence of AMD in Ireland is 7% with an annual cost

• High quality pre-pregnancy care is essential for women with diabetes

  Women with diabetes have an increased risk of pregnancy complications. Many of these complications are due to high glucose levels in the first ten weeks of pregnancy. This means that pregnancy planning and tight glucose control is essential. Pre-pregnancy care is additional clinical care offered to women planning pregnancy. As part of...

• EMERGE: A randomised placebo controlled trial of the Effectiveness of MEtformin in addition to usual care in the Reduction of GEstational diabetes mellitus effects

  Diabetes (high blood sugars) that develops during pregnancy is called Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (GDM). GDM is increasing, affecting one-in-eight pregnant women in Ireland. Women with GDM have an increased risk of complications at the time of delivery, including Caesarean section. Women with GDM have a 7-fold increased risk of...

• Development of prognostic screening tools to predict patient response to neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy treatment for oesophageal adenocarcinoma

  Cancer of the oesophagus, or food pipe, is an aggressive type of cancer with poor outlook and is affecting a growing number of people. The main types of treatments are surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, which may be given alone or in combination. Although chemoradiotherapy treatments work well for some, the majority of patients...

• Blood adenosine levels as a novel diagnostic of seizures in humans

  Epilepsy is the most common life-long brain disease and its diagnosis remains challenging needing the application of multiple criteria including patient history, seizure type and electroencephalography (EEG) recordings. The most reliable method is long periods under video surveillance during continuous EEG monitoring which is costly...

• Disease gene independent generic suppression-based therapies for retinal disorders

  Multiple mutations in over 200 genes can cause retinal degeneration, a group of diseases that result in the death of light detecting photoreceptor cells in the retina. Mutations in more than 30 genes can also cause optic neuropathies, a group of disorders that affect retinal ganglion cells, causing the optic nerve to be less capable of...

• PAPRICA: Protein biomarker assays for psoriatic arthritis - Clinical evaluation and validation of multiplexed panels for diagnosis and prognosis

  During the treatment and management of disease important clinical decisions are made, including deciding whether a patient has a particular illness and whether they may benefit from a specific treatment. These decisions are often made with the assistance of information from different measurements including patient details, scans,...

• Targeting dysregulated bioenergetics in the inflamed RA joint

  Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a form of inflammatory arthritis that affects approximately 45,000 people in Ireland and bears a high personal, social and economic cost. It is estimated that the cost of treating patients with RA in Ireland is approximately

• Building a self-management programme for living well with and beyond head and neck cancer

  We propose to develop a new programme that empowers survivors of head and neck cancer (HNC) to better manage problems associated with their illness and live well with and beyond HNC. This is important because HNC survivors have many documented unmet care needs and can face significant challenges associated with their condition and its...

• Targeting NK cells to improve HCV vaccine immunogenicity

  Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infects over 170 million people in the world. Most individuals go on to develop a chronic lifetime infection that is associated with progressive liver disease. While new drugs have recently been developed, they are very expensive and are not a treatment option for developing countries. In addition, there are...

• Behavioural changes in ALS : What families and healthcare professionals need to know

  Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS ) (or Motor Neuron Disease (MND)) is a rapidly progressive neurodegeneration associated with loss of muscle power. Until recently, thinking and behaviour were considered unaffected, but we have shown that up to 50% of people with ALS/MND experience changes in their ability to plan complex tasks, and...

• Evidence based oral healthcare for older adults

  The World Health Organisation has highlighted the paucity of research into the oral health needs of older adults. The Health Research Board has recognised this and have funded a number of studies in recent years addressing this topic. Unfortunately there is a delay between the completion of studies and the publication of results in...

• Cracking cancer with science; an educational outreach campaign for primary schoolchildren

  Breast cancer remains a significant disease in Ireland. Our laboratory is investigating novel therapies to target a sub-group of aggressive breast tumours. This work feeds into two larger efforts. The first is to help personalize cancer therapies for patients. The second is to provide new insight into how specific tumours develop, in...

• Breast cancer risk: The influence of blood selenium status and interactions between selenium supply biomarkers and genetic variations in the selenoprotein gene pathway

  Hormonal, reproductive, and dietary factors play an important role in the aetiology of breast cancer (BC). Selenium (Se) is an essential micronutrient thought to aid cancer prevention via its incorporation into selenoproteins which help counter oxidative damage to DNA, proteins, and lipids. Such DNA damage also appears to play a...

• Cold air plasma to enhance hospital hygiene leading to reduced surface bacterial counts and patient acquisition of vancomycin-resistant enterococci and Clostridium difficile infection

  Healthcare-associated infections (HCAI) affect 5-10% of patients admitted to an acute hospital but it is about three times higher in intensive care units (ICUs). Prevention involves many strategies but environmental hygiene is important as many bacterial causes persist on horizontal surfaces, e.g. methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus...

• SOLAS.net: Development and pilot implementation of an e-learning physiotherapist training programme for self-management of chronic musculoskeletal pain in primary care

  As part of the original award, an evidence-supported group treatment approach for clients with persistent musculoskeletal pain termed SOLAS: Self-management of Osteoarthritis and Low back pain through Activity and Skills was developed. Also, a two day face-to-face physiotherapist training programme was developed and delivered to HSE...

• Applying health: Using healthcare technology to enhance the delivery of rehabilitation programmes in cancer survivors

  Recovery following oesophageal cancer (cancer of the food pipe) can be challenging. Cancer rehabilitation, which may involve exercise, advice from a dietitian, education or other therapeutic interventions, can help patients make an optimal recovery. The research team is currently investigating the effect of a 12 week rehabilitation...

• Irish Dystonia Research Group: Innovation through collaboration

  Our research group of Irish consultant neurologists (with an interest in movement disorders) and laboratory based scientists (engineers in the Department of Neural Engineering in Trinity College Dublin) have been involved in finding the cause(s) of a movement disorder which affects about 600-800 individuals in Ireland. This...

• Defining host and microbe-derived immune targets for development of improved host-directed therapies and vaccines for TB

  Almost one third of the world's population is infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) with almost 2 million deaths to tuberculosis (TB) annually. Over 400 patients are treated for active TB annually in Ireland, with an increasing number of drug-resistant cases emerging. Currently treatment involves a multi-drug course for 6...

• Enhancing awareness of the socio-economic impact of inherited blindness

  In Ireland, many devastating diseases have an inherited cause and are passed onto further generations. Blindness due to inherited degeneration of the retina at the back of the eye is an excellent case-study with which to explain the basis of inherited disease, the socio-economic impact and the research required to generate new...

• Enhancing awareness of blindness resulting from diabetes. Understanding treatments & preventative interventions

  In Ireland, Diabetic Retinopathy is a leading cause of blindness. The number of people becoming blind due to diabetes is set to rapidly increase as the "diabetes epidemic" unfolds. In general, there is a lack of awareness as to the social, economic and health impact of diabetic blindness.
  Here, we generate short 3D-animations that...

• Baby steps towards STRIDER: support, website, information, dissemination, exchange

  This outreach programme will provide a dedicated public information and education resources on intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) and the STRIDER clinical trial, which aims to improve outcomes of pregnancies affected by IUGR with sildenafil citrate (Viagra). It will provide support to women and their partners experiencing IUGR by...

• Dysfunctional mItochondria proVokes Inflammation iN prEeclampsia; a novel medical interventional target to improve maternal and foetal diagnosis in preeclampsia. Short title: DIVINE

  Pre-eclampsia, a serious condition of late pregnancy, characterised by high blood pressure and proteinuria in the second-half of pregnancy, affects 5% of first time mothers and is associated with significant maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality. A quarter of babies born to women with pre-eclampsia do not grow properly, and a...

• Promoting positive mental health messages for the older population: The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA) films

  The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA) offers unique data on the challenges associated with ageing and how these can affect mood as we age: grief, retirement, poorer physical health. We have demonstrated that mood may be affected by loss of support networks such as adult children moving abroad. Over 10% of the older Irish...

• The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA) hypertension seminars for health professionals in primary and community care practice

  In April 2015 the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA) published research, funded through the active award, which indicates that approximately two thirds of older Irish adults have high blood pressure and close to half of them are unaware of their condition. High blood pressure is an important risk factor for heart disease and...

• A web-based resource and community of practice (CoP) to transform practices around 'talking about epilepsy'

  This knowledge exchange and dissemination (KED) initiative proposes to develop a variety of educational and informative resources using different technological media (audio, video and e-authoring tools) which will be delivered online in a designated website to support the translation of research evidence on childhood epilepsy...

• Parent-adolescent communication and negotiation of self-management responsibilities for adolescents' with Type 1 Diabetes

  Poor Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) self-care results in poor metabolic control and is particularly challenging during adolescent years. Good metabolic control of T1D is important to prevent long-term negative outcomes. With parents holding a central role in creating a safe learning environment and motivating adolescents to monitor food intake,...

• Profiling receptive and expressive prosodic skills in children with spina bifida and hydrocephalus

  This project will advance current knowledge about communication difficulties in children with spina bifida and hydrocephalus (SBH). This condition affects the normal development of the spinal cord and brain and is particularly relevant to the Irish context because of the high incidence in the country - currently at least 500 children...

• Urine soluble CD163 as a biomarker of crescentic glomerulonephritis

  Crescentic glomerulonephritis (CGN) is a severe form of kidney failure that leaves about one third of sufferers dependent on dialysis or needing a kidney transplant. It is currently difficult to assess the condition without performing a kidney biopsy, which is uncomfortable, expensive and occasionally dangerous to the patient. We have...

• Ethnic Minority Health in Ireland - Building the evidence base to address health inequities

  International evidence shows that minority ethnic groups have poorer health and more difficulties accessing healthcare than majority ethnic groups. Analysis of existing health datasets and the use of ethnic identifiers in health care systems are promoted internationally as valuable ways to address these differences. It is not possible...

• Healthy pregnancy in Ireland

  The HRB Ireland Perinatal CTN is an all-island of Ireland clinical trial network for mothers and babies representing a new and exciting collaboration between two established research groups; the Irish centre for Foetal and Neonatal Translational Research (INFANT) and Perinatal Ireland. The 'Healthy Pregnancy in Ireland' initiative is a...

• Innovative dissemination of IDS-TILDA Wave 2 - Advancing years, different challenges

  The IDS-TILDA study is designed to better understand experiences and challenges for adults with an intellectual disability (ID) as they age. 753 persons aged 40+ started in the study. There have been two waves of data collection, with waves three years apart and 94% of people who answered at Wave one participated again at Wave two. We...

• Development of The STOP-HF network for community based prevention of Heart Failure

  STOPHFnet will create a virtual community of practice which will utilize the results of research from our HRB funded Natural History of Diabetic Cardiomyopathy grant to allow rapid dissemination to general practitioners in the community. This is particularly timely as diabetes will for the first time be nationally managed by GPs under...

• Understand my pain: Educational tools for chronic pain

  Based on the findings of the research during our HRB ICE award, we will develop two educational tools.
  Activity A will involve the creation of a free video that explains how chronic pain impacts on children and their families. This activity is vital based on our new understanding of the numbers of primary school children who live...

• Development and launch of Irish guidelines on the management of Helicobacter pylori Infection

  Helicobacter pylori infection is a public health issue. It remains one of the most common infections in adults in Ireland and is the primary cause of stomach ulcers and stomach cancers. Our recent findings have indicated that the eradication rate for standard first-line triple therapy for H. pylorihas fallen to unacceptable levels....

• Spectroscopic imaging for prognostic applications in breast and oesophageal cancer treatment (SPECPREDICT)

  Each cancer patient has a unique response to cancer treatments such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy. An individual patients response to cancer treatment is to a significant degree determined by their own biology (genetic profile) and other environmental factors such as diet and lifestyle. With the evolution of technologies such as...

• Towards a survivorship care plan for breast cancer for post-menopausal women in rural settings

  There are increasing numbers of breast cancer survivors in Ireland and worldwide due to improvements in screening and advances in adjuvant treatment. There is a growing recognition of cancer survivorship as a distinct phase in the cancer trajectory. The development of a comprehensive approach to survivorship care that meets the needs...

• NIMBUS group: Neonatal Inflammation and Multiorgan dysfunction and Brain injUry reSearch group

  Neonatal brain injury has a many causes and may result in cerebral palsy. Cooling therapy is the only established treatment but 50% of babies treated will die or have disability and so new therapies to reduce brain injury are urgently needed. New-borns who are severely affected also have problems with their heart, liver, lung and...

• ICORG communications manager

  2016 will mark the 20th anniversary of ICORG's formation. There are a range of public engagement activities on the agenda but in order to co-ordinate them ICORG will need an in-house communications function.
  Activities will include;
  1. Short documentary-style videos on patient experience, innovative research activities and new...

• Development of an online training and accreditation resource for a novel outcome assessment tool in high risk infants: the Babyscreen app

  The HRB funded BiHiVE2 study has focused on predicting long term learning disability in children following birth related brain injury. Unfortunately there are, currently, no reliable methods of assessing learning ability in children at a young age. Current developmental assessments focus on developmental milestones. They are not true...

• Thrombosis risk in pregnancy: what you need to know

  Venous thromboembolism (VTE; deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism) remains a leading cause of death in pregnant and recently delivered women. Surviving mothers may have long-term disability. If VTE risk factors are identified, then preventative measures may be put in place . These interventions can be potentially life-saving....

• Translating critical care research into clinical practice

  We are currently funded by the HRB to conduct clinical trials to determine which treatments may help patients who are critically ill. We have recently completed important research and the results will be published in a highly regarded medical journal in October. However it can take a long time between publication and improvements in...

• INCA: interaction analytics for automatic assessment of communication quality in primary care

  Communication between physician and patient is crucial to the overall quality of primary care. An important element of this interaction is the physician-patient interview. While there are various opinions on what constitutes effective communication in a medical interview, sometimes supported by formal (qualitative and quantitative)...

• Towards increased awareness and understanding of the risk of thrombosis in gynaecological cancers

  All cancers are associated with an increased risk of clots to the legs and lungs however gynaecological cancers have a particularly high risk. Clots can occur after surgery or during chemotherapy and can be life threatening if they are not treated in time. A recent survey of patients who suffered a clot during their cancer journey...

• Viral hepatitis C associated neurocognitive dysfunction in Ireland in the DAA era

  Approximately 30,000-50,000 people in Ireland have hepatitis C. Although the virus mainly affects the liver, in up to 30% of infected people the virus also affects the brain causing poor concentration, difficulties in concentrating, poor memory. Patients often describe this as a "brain fog". These symptoms may lead to forgetting...

• What is Alpha-1?

  Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (Alpha-1) is a genetic disorder that affects the lungs. Typically people with Alpha-1 present with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or severe asthma. Ireland has one of the highest rates of AATD in the world. 1 in 25 Irish people are carriers for the condition and are at risk of lung disease,...

• A moment for hand hygiene in the Intensive Care Unit: How Can Compliance be Improved?

  Healthcare Associated Infections (HCAIs) such as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) represent the most frequent complications experienced by hospital patients. Effective hand hygiene practices are considered to be the most important strategy for preventing HCAIs. However, compliance with good hand hygiene practices has...

• Cancer immunology research saves lives: Find Out

  The treatment of cancer is being revolutionised by cancer immunology. However cancer immunology is poorly understood by healthcare workers, patients and the general public. Here, in collaboration with the Irish Cancer Society (ICS), we aim to use the expertise and discoveries generated by HRB and ICS funded research projects to...

• DEDIPAC Ireland: National one day symposium on determinants of diet and physical activity

  DEDIPAC (Determinants of Diet and Physical Activity; Knowledge Hub to integrate and develop infrastructure for research across Europe) is a collaborative European project, where Irish researchers play a major role in defining and understanding dietary and activity factors that influence health.
  The aim of this application is to...

• Happy mothers...happy babies

  Pregnancy is the highest risk period in a woman's life for developing clinical depression. Depression and anxiety during pregnancy are common experiences. Women are usually anxious about the pregnancy and the delivery, about how they will cope with motherhood and the impact of the changes that having a baby will make on their lives. We...

• Research in depression: endocrinology, epigenetics and neuroiMaging: the REDEEM study

  Depression is the most common psychiatric disorder in the world, accounting for approximately 90% of deaths by suicide. Rates of depression are rising alarmingly in the OECD countries. Although depression is considered to be a single clinical disorder, it has many underlying causes ranging from childhood abuse through to purely genetic...

• CERVIVA: Making connections and creating impact

  The goal of CERVIVA's education and outreach programme is to create awareness, inform and effectively engage the public, health care professionals and healthcare providers on public health issues related to HPV associated diseases and on the specific research programmes underway within CERVIVA, which are addressing some of these...

• Medically licensed mesenchymal stem cells for the treatment of systemic sepsis

  Systemic sepsis is a severe condition arising from a bacterial or fungal infection of the blood or lymph. It commonly leads to overwhelming inflammation and multiple organ failure and can kill up to 50% of sufferers. Toxins produced by bacteria are the major trigger for these responses in the patient. There are currently no specific...

• Diet, health and sustainability - narrowing the gap between what we know and what we do

  Knowledge translation in the area of diet and health is challenging due to the range of vested interests in the food sector and the contested discourse on food, diet and health among policy makers, practitioners, media and the general public. There is considerable agreement on key food policy measures open to government with potential...

• Prevention of postoperative persistent bowel symptoms in patients with Hirschsprung's Disease

  Hirschsprung's disease (HD) is a relatively common cause of intestinal obstruction in the new-born, occurring in 1 in 4,000 live births. It is characterised by abnormal development of the nerve supply to varying lengths of the large bowel prior to birth. The gold standard treatment for HD is an operation to remove the diseased bowel...

• A translational systems biological study to identify molecular predictors for responsiveness to TRAIL-receptor agonists in colorectal cancer

  Many patients that suffer from cancer of the colon require chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is supposed to induce the death of cancer cells by a molecularly controlled death process called apoptosis. Apoptosis in response to chemotherapy requires the activation of cell death genes, but colon cancer cells often can prevent these genes from...

• Evaluating metabotropic glutamate 5 receptor-selective drugs as a novel therapeutic strategy for Alzheimer's disease

  Clinical dementia, the majority of cases being caused by Alzheimer's disease, seriously impairs the lives of over 50 million people worldwide currently (costing ~1% of the aggregated global gross domestic product). There are approximately 48,000 people with dementia and 50,000 dementia carers in Ireland. At present the lifetime...

• A user-friendly database of genetic dependencies in cancer

  A major challenge in cancer therapeutics is to kill tumour cells without harming other cells in the body. One means to achieve this is to exploit the genetic changes that distinguish cancer cells from normal cells and that may leave them vulnerable to targeted treatments.
  A promising approach to developing such targeted treatments...

• Traumatic spinal cord injury in Ireland: service planning for changing epidemiology

  This project will examine several aspects of traumatic spinal cord injury in the Irish population. The project will look backwards (retrospective) and forwards (prospective). For the years 2010 - 2014 inclusive, the medical records of all patients with traumatic spinal cord injury discharged from the National Rehabilitation Hospital...

• Together against HIV: raising awareness and knowledge through documented real-life experiences and research discovery

  There were approximately 2 million new HIV infections and 1.5 million HIV-related deaths worldwide in 2013, demonstrating the need for educational campaigns that raise awareness and prevent its spread. Current treatments suppress HIV, but do not totally clear it; however, a significant proportion of society believe these drugs cure...

• Progressing universal health care: informing citizens by pooling and disseminating research and generating debate

  There is little informed public discussion and debate around Universal Healthcare (UHC) in Ireland. There is also much confusion in political discourse between UHC and universal health insurance notwithstanding a recent policy shift towards UHC. This KEDS project aims to build on the Pathways to UHC research by educating the public...

• Preclinical characterization of fingolimod as a potential therapeutic agent for stroke

  Stroke is usually caused by the occlusion of a brain artery with a clot. It is the third most common cause of death and the most common cause of acquired physical disability in Ireland. The only available drug is only used in ~5% of patients (because most patients are either too far, or arrive too late to a specialized treatment...

• Oral flucloxacillin alone versus flucloxacillin and phenoxymethylpenicillin for the emergency department outpatient treatment of cellulitis: a non-inferiority randomised controlled trial

  Acute bacterial skin and skin structure infections (ABSSSIs) are commonly encountered in Emergency Departments (EDs). In Ireland, the most common ABSSSI is cellulitis, which is a spreading bacterial infection of the skin and tissues beneath the skin. Approximately 12 in every 1,000 ED patient attendances in Ireland is due to...

• Preclinical evaluation of a novel therapeutic strategy for Ulcerative Colitis

  Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) is a chronic relapsing intestinal inflammatory condition comprising of separate disease manifestations known as ulcerative colitis (UC) and crohns disease (CD). Despite significant advances in our understanding of the basic mechanisms which promote these diseases, current treatment strategies usually...

• Development of a health promotion programme for breast cancer awareness for women with mild cognitive impairment

  Recent studies of the population suggest trends that the number of people with an intellectual disability (ID) is increasing with a corresponding increase in the elderly demographic. Consequently this minority of society have been found to be naive to personal health care management and are at risk of failing to detect problems early....

• Towards treatment stratification for successful smoking cessation: Harnessing predictive neurocognitive models

  Smoking is the single biggest preventable cause of death in Ireland. There are many reasons why someone might remain addicted to nicotine and many factors affecting each individual's response to withdrawal. For example, socioeconomic status, gender or life stress can all play a role. Ultimately, nicotine has its effects by altering...

• Telephone interventions, delivered by healthcare professionals, for informal caregivers of adults with diagnosed medical illnesses

  Many people with diagnosed medical conditions are dependent upon family members and informal/lay caregivers to provide support and care. The care provided varies according to the individual's care needs, however, in many instances, people unexpectedly find themselves in a caring role for which they are ill prepared (Corry, 2015)....

• Cancer Prevention Fellowship 2015

  Research Programme for mid-career researchers working in Republic of Ireland (RoI) to become NCI Cancer Prevention Fellows at the prestigious National Cancer Institute (NCI) in the USA.

  This programme provides training at post-doctorate level from the health professions, biomedical, and behavioural sciences to become...

• Interventions for preventing falls in Multiple Sclerosis

  Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is one of the most prevalent diseases of the central nervous system (CNS) and directly affects an estimated 2.5 million people worldwide (MS International Federation 2013) including approximately 8,000 people in Ireland (MS Ireland 2014). It is the most common disabling neurological disorder among young people...

• Methods to influence the completeness of response to self administered questionnaires

  Questionnaires are one of the most widely used means of collecting data. Self-administered questionnaires are used widely in research as they offer an efficient and cost effective means of collecting data in large target groups. Problems with rates of questionnaire return can pose serious problems for researchers. The issue of overall...

• Left atrial appendage closure for the prevention of stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation

  The review will assess the effectiveness of left atrial appendage closure (LAAC) for the prevention of stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation (AFib) compared to oral anticoagulation. The review question was chosen because AFib is a common and serious condition. It is the most common arrhythmia seen in clinical practice and is...

• Interventions targeted outside of workplace settings for reducing sedentary behaviour in adults under 60 years

  Research into sedentary behaviour (SB) in adults is growing rapidly, both in volume and sophistication. SB is defined as waking activity characterised by an energy expenditure ? 1.5 metabolic equivalents and a sitting or reclining posture. A recent overview of systematic reviews concluded that there is strong evidence for a positive...

• Professional interventions to improve the detection of depression among adolescents in primary care

  Depression is common in adolescence - studies show that 3% - 8% of adolescents suffer from depression at any one time, and that there is a lifetime prevalence of approximately 20% by the end of adolescence, which is similar to that of adulthood. Adolescent depression is associated with considerable impairment in social, academic and...

• Validation of FcgRlla as a potential drug target in sepsis

  WT Scheme: Seed Award in Science.
  
  Sepsis is characterised by a severe coagulopathy which is responsible for the high mortality in this disease. This coagulopathy is due to extensive platelet activation and consumption which leads to bleeding due to the subsequent thrombocytopenia and thrombosis due to the platelet...

• Electrophysiological investigations on the molecular mechanisms underlying gut-to-brain signalling evoked by colonic microbiota

  WT Scheme: Seed Award in Science.
  
  The concept of the 'microbiota-gut-brain' signalling axis has been proposed recently, with headline-grabbing studies demonstrating how altering the intestinal microbiome with commensal probiotics has beneficial effects both on gut function but more intriguingly, on central nervous system (CNS)...

• Individual and Area Level Determinants of Self-Harm and Suicide in Ireland: Enhancing Prediction, Risk Assessment and Management of Self-Harm by Health Services

  In Ireland, the National Registry of Deliberate Self-Harm (Registry) has identified significant variation across hospitals in the assessment and management of patients presenting to hospital for self-harm with a significant number of patients leaving without a care plan. Prof Arensman intends to improve the care provided in Irish...

• Statistical epidemiology in population health and health services research: Quality and patient safety in medicines

  The Irish population is getting older and this is leading to an increase in the use of medications. The number of elderly people on 5 or more regular medicines increased greatly from 1997 to 2012. It is known that an increase in the number of prescription medications leads to potential problems of drug interactions, problems taking...

• The StrokeCog study: modelling and modifying the consequences of stroke-related cognitive impairment through intervention

  Stroke is one of the leading causes of death and disability in Ireland. Many people are aware of the physical disabilities caused by stroke, but are far less aware of the cognitive and mood problems that people experience following an attack. Cognitive problems include difficulties with memory, concentration and abstract thinking. Mood...

• Designing, evaluating and implementing a pilot complex intervention in childhood obesity

  Childhood obesity is a serious problem in Ireland as well as internationally. Early infant feeding practices (aged 0-2 years), including when and how parents introduce solid foods to infants, can impact overweight and obesity in childhood and later life. 
  In this project, a team of researchers from UCC, National University of...

• Collective leadership and safety cultures (CO-LEAD)

  There is a growing body of evidence of how poor leadership has contributed to system failures that have resulted in a range of errors from misdiagnoses to failure to recognise and respond to patient deterioration. A key challenge for healthcare organisations is to develop and support cultures that ensure the delivery of continuously...

• The Intellectual disability supplement to the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA) Waves 3 and 4

  Similar to the general population, marked changes in the life expectancy of persons with intellectual disability (ID) have occurred among all age cohorts but in particular, among those aged 55 years and over. Almost half of people with a moderate, severe, or profound intellectual disability are aged 35 years or over. However, their...

• Provision of statistics and data management services to Irish Clinical Oncology Research Group Limited by National University of Ireland, Galway

  In order to fulfil the regulatory and quality control requirements for high-quality statistics and data management for cancer clinical trials activities ICROG and the HRB have contracted National University of Ireland, Galway to provide this service. Initial data management activities including protocol input, development of a Case...

• From episodic care to disease prevention and management: Developing analytical skills and interdisciplinary learning from the case of HPV related cancers

  This study will develop analysis techniques and interdisciplinary learning from cases of Human Papilloma Virus [HPV]-related cancers, specifically cervical pre-cancer/cancer and head and neck cancer. During this proposal the team of research fellows will be able to further develop and help to build the future research leaders in this...

• National Centre for Social Research on Dementia (NCSRD)

  The research programme at the National Centre for Social Research on Dementia (NCSRD) is concerned with strengthening social research on dementia in Ireland. It will focus on identifying the most appropriate mix of biopsychosocial services for people with dementia, from diagnosis to end of life, taken from the patients point of view or...

• Connected HEalth Supporting home Stay with dementia (CHESS)

  Dementia is an umbrella term for a condition in older people where memory loss, deterioration in mental function and ability to make decisions or carry out activities of daily life independently and safely occurs. When dementia progresses, care in a nursing home may be necessary, but most people with dementia and their caregivers want...

• A comprehensive resilience-building psychosocial intervention (CREST) to improve the quality of life of people with dementia and their carers

  In Ireland almost 48,000 people have dementia; of these, more than 26,000 live in the community being cared for by family and friends. Current health care strategies are insufficient to cope with this. The Irish dementia strategy identifies better understanding of dementia in society, reducing the stigma associated with dementia as...

• Towards resilience in family caregiving for people with dementia

  Dementia affects almost 47,000 adults in Ireland. Dementia affects a person's mental and social abilities, including the ability to think clearly, remember, form lasting relationships and has a subsequent decline in physical health. Most people with dementia are cared for at home by a family member. Caring for someone with dementia can...

• The Irish Network for Research in Dementia and Neurodegeneration (INRDND) and the Structured Population and Health-Services

  The Irish Network for Research in Dementia and Neurodegeneration (INRDND) and the Structured Population and Health Services Research Education (SPHeRE) propose a partnership approach to enhancing research cooperation and coordination across the island of Ireland in the area of dementia and neurodegeneration (ND) research. With enhanced...

• Dementia friendly Irish hospitals: Opportunities, barriers, costs and solutions

  Hospitals can be very complex and confusing environments for people with dementia, and may add to their distress, disorientation and suffering. To date, academic and pragmatic discourse on dementia-friendly design of Irish hospitals has been lacking in expertise from the perspective of design and architecture, and in particular the...

• Validation of the Profile for Communication Abilities in Dementia (P-CAD)

  Communication difficulties are associated with dementia. These communication difficulties cause frustration, anger and anxiety not only for the person with dementia, but also for caregivers, friends and family. Communication difficulties increase as dementia progresses. The person with dementia can lose confidence, withdraw from social...

• The genomic architecture of human nucleolar organizer regions and its role in nucleolar biology

  WT Scheme: Investigator Award in Science.

  
  The nucleolus is the largest functional domain in the nucleus of all human cells. Its primary role is the biogenesis of ribosomes, the complex machines that translate the language of nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) in to proteins. Nucleoli form around arrays of genes that encode the...

• HRB Clinical Research Coordination Ireland

  Clinical Research Facilities and Centres (CRF/Cs) have been developed in each of the five applicant universities, providing the infrastructure and specialist staff to facilitate collaborative research but they lack an overarching support structure with which to coordinate multicentre clinical trial activities. One key exception is...

• Making the patient a member of the healthcare team in chronic disease management: An ethnographic and participant action research analysis of living with epilepsy in Ireland (E-PIC: Epilepsy Partnership in Care)

  Patient-centeredness is a core value of current and emerging health service reforms.  Patient-centred care (PCC) recognises people within the full context of their lives, not just their health condition. Its principles include: informing and involving patients, encouraging self-management and informed decision making, eliciting...

• What are the clinical effectiveness and cost effectiveness of different models of community specialist palliative care (CSPC) provision in Ireland?

  Changing demographic trends including an ageing population, increased life expectancy for individuals with life limiting conditions, and the impact of illness on an individual's physical, psychological and social wellbeing means that the demand for high quality palliative care services is increasing. Palliative care is defined by WHO...

• Irish Platform for Patients Organisations Science and Industry

  The Irish Platform for Patients' Organisations, Science and Industry (IPPOSI) is a unique organisation in Ireland and abroad. The platform brings together patient groups, scientists, clinicians, industry and other key decision makers to discuss and build consensus on issues relevant to all involved in delivering treatments to people...

• Exploring clinical learning environments for postgraduate medical education and training

  After graduation from medical school, doctors continue to train under the supervision, for several years, until they are ready to practice independently. These trainee doctors learn while they work, providing care to patients. Their working environments, therefore, need to support learning. It is difficult for those charged with the...

• Neuroexercise: The effects of an extensive exercise program on the progression of mild cognitive impairment (MCI)

  Joint Programme on Neurodegenerative Disease (JPND)
  
  A lack of physical exercise plays a major role in the pathophysiology of vascular, metabolic, and metastatic diseases. Regular physical exercise has been successfully proven to counteract this deconditioning. Human and animal studies have demonstrated that regular...

• Neuroexercise: The effects of an extensive exercise program on the progression of mild cognitive impairment (MCI)

   

  Joint Programme on Neurodegenerative Disease (JPND)
  
  A lack of physical exercise plays a major role in the pathophysiology of vascular, metabolic, and metastatic diseases. Regular physical exercise has been successfully proven to counteract this deconditioning. Human and animal studies have demonstrated that...

• Imbuing Medical Professionalism (IMP)

  This project aims to encourage and support medical graduates to become good doctors. Medical professionalism is essentially a set of values, enacted through behaviours and relationships, which underpin the public's trust in doctors. Employers and healthcare organisations govern the settings where doctors train and work and they have a...

• Can implementation of an emergency department monitoring and escalation protocol of adult patients in a large teaching hospital reduce the number of critical incidents and improve timely intervention in patients requiring a high level of care and improve

  The HIQA Report on the investigation into the quality, safety and governance of the care provided by Tallaght Hospital for patients requiring acute admission has recommended that an Emergency Department-specific system of physiological monitoring and triggered responses comparable to the National Early Warning Score (NEWS) should be...

• Supporting work participation through early intervention in patients with regional MSK pain

  Background: Patients with regional musculoskeletal pain (RMSKP) are at risk for work disability and instability and associated social and financial deprivation. Early intervention targeting prevention of work disability has potential to enhance patient outcomes and the effectiveness of care, with positive spill over effects for...

• Irish cancer survivors' knowledge and perceptions of their lifestyle risk factors for cancer

  The cancer landscape is changing and the picture emerging is a complex one that recognizes that some types of cancer are preventable. Empiric research has identified a number of lifestyle risk factors for cancer. Previous international and Irish research has explored the public's knowledge of cancer lifestyle risk, but to our knowledge...

• The cognitive thalamus: more than a relay.

  WT Scheme: Investigator Award in Science.
  
  How do brain circuits support different but complementary aspects of event memory? The answer lies in distributed networks across the medial temporal lobe, prefrontal cortex and parietal cortex. Via their widespread connectivity, nuclei within the rostral thalamus support these memory...

• The impact of genetic heterogeneity on synthetic lethality in cancer

  WT Scheme: Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship
  
  Synthetic lethal interaction occurs when the function of one gene only becomes essential for viability in the presence of a mutation in another gene. In cancer treatment this phenomenon can be exploited to selectively kill tumour cells that have specific genetic mutations....

• Inequalities in access to GP care in Ireland: An analysis using longitudinal data

  The principle of equal treatment for equal need is a key component of health policy. However, Irish and international evidence shows that factors other than health need are important in determining healthcare use. For example, there is extensive evidence that those who must pay for general practitioner (GP) care have fewer visits than...

• Genetic basis of reflux nephropathy-related hypertension and renal failure in children

  Vesicoureteric reflux (VUR) is the backflow of urine from the bladder towards the kidneys. It is a common disorder in children, but is often not diagnosed because it may have no symptoms. In some children, it stops happening as they grow, and they suffer no ill effects. However, it can be associated with kidney damage, and is a major...

• The CHARMS Intervention to improve sexual assessment and counselling in hospital cardiac rehabilitation: A pilot study

  Sexual problems are particularly common among people with cardiovascular disease, and have been shown to negatively impact quality of life, psychological wellbeing (anxiety and depression) and relationship satisfaction.

• A prospective assessment of the biological burden of stress in caregivers: Impact on cognitive performance, mood and the benefits of mindfulness

  The age structure of the population in Ireland is changing rapidly and the HSE predicts that the 65+ year old age group will contribute 20% of the population by the year 2036. Already, nearly 5% of the population are engaged as caregivers for ill elderly relatives and this is particularly stressful for those whose spouses or parents...

• INCA SUn: A prospective randomised multicentre study to optimise the management of symptomatically uncontrolled asthma.

  Inhalers are used in the treatment of patients with severe asthma. About 10% of people with asthma fail to achieve control of their asthma symptoms with inhalers. These patients with severe asthma, are often treated with extra medications or have severe attacks. One reason why these patients may not achieve control of their asthma is...

• Examining the effects of S1P receptor drugs in Alzheimer's disease

  Alzheimers disease (AD) represents one of the major brain illnesses that we now face. Treatments against this disease are limited and offer little in terms of cure. With the global population age now rising, AD is suggested to affect 1 in every 3 people. If left untreated, AD has potential to bring about collapse in healthcare,...

• The heme oxygenase system as a therapeutic intervention for psoriasis

  Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin disease that causes cells to build up rapidly on the surface of the skin, forming thick silvery scales that become itchy, dry and sometimes painful. Current treatments for psoriasis depend on disease severity and include topical ointments, light therapy and systemic medications which are...

• HRB Centre for Primary Care Research

  The HRB Centre for Primary Care Research (CPCR- www.hrbcentreprimarycare.ie) is focussing on improving the quality and safety of medicines to vulnerable patient groups in Ireland, building upon observational epidemiology completed and published during the first phase of funding. Information and Communication Technology (ICT)...

• Single blind randomised trial of supportive text messages for patients with alcohol use disorder and a comorbid depression

  Most patients who present with problem drinking also present with mood problems. Problem drinking and mood problems co-occurring together in individuals lead them to have more severe symptoms, greater disability and poorer quality of life than individuals with only problem drinking, and they pose a greater economic burden to society...

• Functional as well as structural brain connectivity and epigenetic changes in major depressive disorder associated with remission and persistence of symptoms over a 5 year course

  Still less than one third of patients with MDD achieve remission with an adequate trial of a standard antidepressant after 10 - 14 weeks of treatment. This project will provide a crucial part of the research required for the development of more effective therapy strategies and for understanding the backgrounds for achieving remission...

• Unlocking HIV-1 latency with metabolic cues

  With 35 million people currently leaving with HIV and 1.6 million people worldwide who died from HIV in 2012, the AIDS pandemic is a major health crisis. In Ireland, the HSE and the HSPC have made HIV/AIDS a notifiable disease and a major public health importance. 30 years of intense HIV/AIDS research have provided efficient...

• A multi-pronged translational approach towards testing a novel JAM-A inhibitor to reduce aggressive HER2-dependent breast cancer progression

  Although breast cancer surgery and treatment have greatly improved in recent years, certain types of tumours are much more aggressive than others and therefore represent a greater risk to the patient. One such type of breast tumour is identified by the fact that it has high levels of a specific tumour marker called HER2. Therapies...

• Rehabilitation following oesophageal cancer: Idenfitying rehabilitative needs and strategies

  The treatments used to cure cancer of the oesophagus (food pipe) are usually twofold. Patients may first receive chemotherapy (drug treatment) to shrink the cancer followed by surgery to remove the oesophagus from the body. Patients who undergo this treatment for oesophageal cancer experience a number of weakening side-effects which...

• The STRIDER Trial: A randomised controlled trial of sildenafil therapy In dismal prognosis early-onset intrauterine growth restriction

  Severe early-onset in utero growth restriction (IUGR) affects babies in womb and is caused by reduced blood flow through the placenta. There is no treatment or cure for IUGR and the current clinical management involves intensive fetal surveillance with elective delivery performed when there is evidence of fetal distress and before the...

• Hypotension, vasoreactivity and white matter intensities in the ageing brain: The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA).

  High blood pressure (hypertension) is known to cause brain ageing, from memory problems through to frank dementia, and is common in older age, affecting 70% of people over 70 years of age. Low blood pressure (hypotension) may be an even greater risk factor for cognitive decline and dementia; as it is an easily treatable condition this...

• Proof of concept studies to validate clinical microsensors for the real-time detection of oxygen and pH

  Currently there is no efficient method of continuously measuring oxygen or pH in real-time in hospitals. Existing techniques suffer from slow, indirect recordings and require the undesirable removal of a blood sample from patients. Doctors are extremely interested in measuring both of these parameters since they provide important...

• Alendronate for Prevention of AntiRetroviral Therapy-associated bone loss (APART study)

  Over six thousand people have been diagnosed with HIV infection in Ireland. People living with HIV are now living longer because of effective therapy. However, therapy is life-long and is associated with significant side effects. In addition, immune damage induced by HIV persists even with effective therapy. As a result, people with...

• Investigate the impact of bile aspiration on chronic respiratory infection - bile paradigm

  This study proposes to investigate the unexplained link between gastro-oesophageal reflux (GOR) and severe respiratory disease. During GOR, bile, normally found in the duodenum and stomach, is refluxed to the throat and subsequently aspirated into the airways and lungs of patients. A high prevalence of this phenomenon is seen in...

• Ketamine for depression relapse prevention following electroconvulsive therapy: A randomised pilot trial with blood neuroplasticity biomarker evaluation

  Depression affects up to 20% of people in their lifetime and can be a severe debilitating illness. Indeed, the World Health Organisation has estimated that depression will soon be the second leading contributor to the burden of disease worldwide. One of the big problems for patients and doctors is that currently available...

• An antimicrobial susceptibility testing-based approach for Helicobacter pylori eradication: will tailored therapy overcome the increasing failure of standard empirical therapy?

  Helicobacter pylori infection is a public health issue. It remains one of the most common infections in adults in Ireland (22%) and is associated with significant morbidity and mortality as the primary cause of stomach ulcers and stomach cancers. Infection is more common in lower socioeconomic groups and increases with age. Despite...

• Identification of drugs that can safely and effectively maintain visual function in models of inherited retinal degeneration

  Inherited Retinal Degenerations (IRD) are a diverse group of conditions resulting in blindness. This is often traumatic to the affected patient and families, and can cause significant socio-economic impact. Gene or stem-cell therapy show promise as treatments for IRD. However, these approaches are hampered by high costs and treatment...

• Inherited retinal degenerations: All Ireland Retinal Degenerations Partnership (AIRDP)

  Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) is the most common inherited disorder of the retina affecting approximately one in 4000 people. The symptoms of RP are night blindness, tunnel vision and reduction of central vision. Although the symptoms of RP are broadly similar in most people, the genetic causes are complex with over 50 genes being...

• Evaluating the impact of the systematic implementation of advance care directives and palliative care education on quality of care at end of life in long term care settings

  It is essential that nursing home staff are equipped to provide high-quality end-of-life care, while it is also essential that the wishes of the older person about their care are taken into account. Many nursing home residents develop dementia, which can interfere with their ability to make healthcare decisions and to communicate...

• Disease modification in rheumatoid arthritis using AMPK directed therapies: Resoring metabolic balance to innate immune pathways

  Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory disease affecting 1-2% of the population. Over time, RA causes joint destruction, chronic pain and lifelong disability. In addition to these effects, increased resistance to the effects of insulin and alterations in glucose handling mimicking effects seen in type II diabetes occur in...

• Resistant hypertension in general practice: prevalence, prognosis, description and development of platform cohort for future research

  High blood pressure causes, or helps to cause, almost two-thirds of all strokes and half of all heart attacks. Most people with high blood pressure can be treated by changing what they eat, doing more exercise or taking medications. However, among people with high blood pressure are some whose blood pressure remains too high despite...

• Preventing chemotherapy resistance in triple negative breast cancer

  Background: Breast cancers that lack the three molecules used to classify breast cancers; the oestrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), are described as triple negative breast cancers. Approximately 15 per cent of all breast cancers are triple negative. Triple negative...

• STandaRd Issue TrANsfusion versuS Fresher red blood cell Use in intenSive carE (TRANSFUSE) - a randomised controlled trial.

  Red blood cell (RBC) transfusion is required to treat a number of life threatening conditions within the general hospital setting and Intensive Care Units (ICU). Red blood cell units represent a very limited but essential resource. Given the value and relative scarcity of RBC, it is important to ensure its use in the optimal way. A...

• Development of bioactive therapeutics harnessing stem cell mechanobiology

  Tissue engineering is an emerging field of medicine that aims to treat diseased or damaged tissue through regeneration, rather than replacement. In order to achieve this, implantable scaffolds, that act as templates for tissue formation, are designed so that they not only provide structural support but also provide signals to cells...

• Splintcost - Sensor providing longitudinal information on nocturnal toothgrinding and compliance of splint therapy

  Many people grind their teeth at night, and may not be aware of it. Tooth grinding can cause headaches, facial pain or severe damage to the teeth. To prevent these problems, dentists often prescribe a mouthguard to use at night. Mouthguards are effective but few patients use them enough. Patients often wrongly believe that their...

• Altered lipid raft cholesterol content contributes to the dysregulated activity of neutrophils in alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency

  Alpha-1-antitrypsin (AAT) deficiency (AATD) is largely unrecognized and under diagnosed. This hereditary disorder results in the rapid progression of lung disease, especially in smokers. Specific treatment for this disorder is available in the form of weekly intravenous injections of AAT. This is referred to as augmentation therapy...

• Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency: Which is important phenotype, level, activity or all three?

  Alpha-1 antitrypsin (AAT) deficiency (AATD) is generally regarded as a rare condition but more recently, evidence points towards it being a condition that is relatively common but rarely diagnosed. The most severe form of this genetic disorder, where people carry two bad AAT genes (Z) is known as ZZ-AATD and this affects around 2000...

• The Low Von Willebrand factor Ireland Cohort (LoVIC) study.

  Von Willebrand factor (VWF) is a large plasma protein that plays an essential role in normal blood coagulation. Inherited VWF deficiency is responsible for the commonest inherited bleeding disorder (von Willebrand disease or VWD) that affects up to 1% of the general population. Although substantial progress has been achieved in...

• Sodium inTake In Chronic Kidney disease (STICK): A randomised controlled trial

  Chronic kidney disease, which affects an estimated 300,000 people in Ireland and over 50 million people in the developed world, is responsible for a considerable burden of premature mortality and morbidity. All patients with chronic kidney disease are recommended low salt diets, i.e. less than a teaspoon of salt per day (which is 5-6g...

• Modelling cystinosis with human stem cells and the therapeutic potential of aspartate

  Cystinosis is a rare genetic disease that causes the amino acid cystine to accumulate in the body due to mutations in the CTNS gene. In its severest form, cystinosis causes kidney failure before the age of 10. Treatment is limited to cysteamine, a cystine-depleting drug, but this only slows the progression of the disease. The toxic...

• Drug eluting contact lenses for cystinosis therapy

  Cystinosis is a metabolic disease characterized by accumulation of cysteine crystals in various tissues including cornea. Cystinosis patients begin showing ocular symptoms at the age of 16 months and without appropriate treatment, the entire peripheral stroma and endothelium can be packed with crystals. Eventually complications such...

• Effect of glucagon like peptide-1 therapy on obesity driven inflammation and co-morbid inflammatory conditions.

  Obesity has been shown to cause and worsen diseases such as diabetes, psoriasis, arthritis, asthma and cancer. Increased inflammation is the basic process, which causes obesity related diseases. Inflammation is the body's normal way of dealing with an infection or injury, but is usually specific and short lived. However, in obese...

• HRB Centre for Health and Diet Research

  The vision for the Centre for the next five years:
  The overall vision for the CHDR over the next five years is to contribute to the promotion of the health and wellbeing of the population through the development of a sustainable and internationally competitive National Research Centre for Public Health Nutrition which will:
  ...

• A systems-based patient stratification tool of Bcl-2 family protein interactions to evaluate acute treatment responses in rectal cancer patients

  Cancers of the rectum (the lower part of the large intestine where the body stores stool) are a common cause of cancer-related death in Ireland and cause a significant burden to the quality of life of affected patients. Surgery is the mainstay for the treatment of rectal cancer, but surgeons often prefer to 'downstage' or 'shrink' the...

• Enhancing the antimicrobial efficacy of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) for eliminating sepsis induced acute lung injury (ALI) using a novel combination of immune-stimulants

  Despite advances in medicine, pneumonia is still a common disease accounting for 5% of deaths in Ireland and is the most common cause of acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome where there currently remains no specific therapy. Studies carried out by this and other research groups have recently shown that bone-marrow...

• The natural history of cystic fibrosis liver disease - refining the phenotype

  The incidence of Cystic Fibrosis (CF) is very high in Ireland. Survival has improved greatly over the past 30 years. However as longevity has increased so has the development of complications including liver disease. The diagnosis and treatment of liver disease in CF is particularly challenging. We do not understand the cause of liver...

• Inhibiting XBP1s production as a novel therapeutic strategy in sepsis

  Sepsis accounts for over 18 million deaths annually and is characterised by a severe/hyper activation of the immune system, also referred to as a cytokine storm, which is triggered by infection. In its most severe form sepsis manifests as septic shock and can lead to hypotension and multi-organ failure leading to death. The incidence...

• An inter-sectoral analysis by geographic area of the need for and the supply and utilisation of health services in Ireland

  The objective of this study is to provide an understanding of the supply of and interaction between health and social care services delivered in different sectors (acute hospitals: primary and community care; long-term care; informal care at home) in Ireland to inform the Governments policy of transferring activity and resources from...

• Acute kidney injury (AKI) in the Irish health system; Incidence, severity and clinical consequences

  Acute Kidney Injury (AKI), previously called acute renal failure, occurs when kidney function deteriorates rapidly over hours or days and elevated levels of waste products accumulate in the blood. AKI is most common in people who are hospitalized, particularly in critically ill people who need intensive care. AKI may occur in multiple...

• Mapping the pathway to universal health care in Ireland

  The current Irish Government has committed itself to achieving universal access to health care, free at the point of delivery, by 2016. Yet, at the moment, timely access to essential healthcare in Ireland is often determined by ability to pay, such as with private insurance. Further, those without medical cards or GP visit cards face...

• Galactosaemia, translating novel monitoring approaches into improved clinical practice

  Galactosaemia is an inherited condition caused by a lack of an enzyme (catalyst) which normally breaks down galactose (the sugar found in milk products). This affects on in 16,000 births annually in Ireland (the highest incidence worldwide), and is screened for by the National Newborn Screening Programme.
  When an affected infant is...

• Restoring immune balance in patients with patients with primary Sjogrens Syndrome (pSS) by modulating microRNA expression

  Sjogren's Syndrome (SS) is an autoimmune disease which affects 0.3-0.5% of people in the developed world. SS can occur at any age but is most common between the ages of 40 and 60. Women are 9 times more likely to suffer from SS than men. Specialised secretory glands that produce saliva, tears, and bowel secretions are targeted for...

• HRB Trials Methodology Research Network

  These are exciting and challenging times for clinical trials. The number and variety of treatments continues to grow, increasing pressures on researchers to determine how these compare to current treatments, while rising costs and regulation can make trials expensive and complex. However, as pressure on resources grows, there is more...

• The role of angiopoietins and their mediators in symptomatic gastrointestinal angiodyslasia; novel diagnostic and therapeutic targets in chronic anaemia and obscure gastrointestinal bleeding

  Background: Approximately 5% of patients with gastrointestinal bleeding have no source identified on standard endoscopy and are classified as having obscure gastrointestinal bleeding, of which Small Bowel Angiodysplasia (SBA) accounts for more than 50% of cases. Due to limited understanding of the pathophysiology behind SBA no specific...

• Overcoming mechanism of treatment resistance in castration-resistant prostate cancer: Defining a new treatment paradigm

  Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of male cancer mortality in Ireland: in 2012, 533 men died from this disease.Prostate cancer growth is stimulated by male sex hormones (androgens) e.g. testosterone. The mainstay of initial treatment is to block gonadal production of these hormones. However, with time, cancers develop other...

• An analysis of genetic and environmental modifiers of breast cancers risk

  Breast Cancer Susceptibility Genes (BRCA) 1 and 2 are tumour suppressor genes that maintain genomic stability by repairing damaged DNA. Pathogenic mutations in these genes disrupt their role as tumour suppressors and can predispose to various malignancies, in particular those of the breast or ovary. Single gene mutations in BRCA 1 or...

• Irish Platform for Patients' Organisations, Science and Industry

  The purpose of this award is to enable IPPOSI to undertake a work programme providing a forum for patient organisations, scientists and industry to inform and support the advancement of health research for the development of therapies and cures for unmet medical needs specifically but not limited to:
  - Providing information for...

• Cancer Prevention Fellowship 2013

  Research Programme for mid-career researchers working in Republic of Ireland (RoI) to become NCI Cancer Prevention Fellows at the prestigious National Cancer Institute (NCI) in the USA.

  This programme provides training at post-doctorate level from the health professions, biomedical, and behavioural sciences to become...

• Antiviral agents for infectious mononucleosis

  Review objective: To assess the effectiveness of antiviral therapy in improving outcomes for patients with Infectious Mononucleosis (IM). IM is a clinical syndrome that is usually associated with EBV infection. Although generally not considered a serious illness, IM can lead to significant loss of time from school or work due to...

• Institutional smoking bans for reducing smoking prevalence and tobacco consumption

  Review objective: The objectives of this new review are twofold. The proposed new review will explore evidence specifically focusing on the impact of institutional smoking bans in workplaces, health care facilities and in other public places, so-called meso-level data. The update of the original review will assess the evidence since...

• Aspirin and anti-inflammatory drugs for the prevention of dementia

  Review objective: To evaluate the effects of aspirin and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs in the prevention of dementia. In view of the perceived association between inflammation and Alzheimer's disease and stroke or multiple strokes arising from multiple infarcts in vascular dementia, research has focused on assessing...

• Wound cleansing for treating venous leg ulcers

  Review objective: To explore the impact of wound cleansing on the healing rate of venous leg ulcers. Leg ulcers are a major health care problem, in terms of treatment, cost, recurrence and chronicity (Posnett and Franks, 2008). Indeed, for venous leg ulcers, with a prevalence of 49,000-1.3 million in the EU 27, the annual associated...

• Interventions to improve end-of-life care in dementia

  Review objective: To determine the effectiveness of interventions to improve end-of-life care for people with dementia. For the purposes of this review, end-of-life care is defined as the care required when death is imminent for those with advanced dementia and for those with dementia of any severity who are in the terminal phase of an...

• Interventions for breast cancer awareness amongst women of all ages

  Review objective: To assess the effects of interventions to develop breast cancer awareness amongst women. Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer and the leading cause of cancer death in females globally (Jemal et al., 2011). Early diagnosis of breast cancer is linked to more favourable outcomes and longer survival...

• Patient Education for the prevention of venous leg ulceration

  Review objective: To determine the impact of patient educational interventions on the prevention of venous leg ulceration. The population for this review will include people over 18 years with a history of venous leg ulceration in any healthcare setting. Venous leg ulceration occurs as a result of impaired return of venous blood from...

• Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) for perineal pain in the early postpartum period

  Review objective: To determine the efficacy and safety of Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) in relieving perineal pain in the early postpartum period. Perineal pain is commonly experienced by women after childbirth, particularly, although not exclusively, following episiotomy, spontaneous tears or bruising (Lawn and...

• Irish Platform for Patients Organisations Science and Industry

  IPPOSI brings together patient groups, scientists, clinicians, industry and other key decision makers to discuss and build consensus on issues relevant to delivering treatments to people with unmet medical needs. On behalf of the DOH, the HRB has been co-funding IPPOSI with between 40-50% of their annual income since 2007. The...

• ER stress induced microRNAs in insulin resistance

  The obesity epidemic has caused in a substantial increase in the incidence of type two diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Approximately 2.4 million people in Ireland are overweight/obese. Diabetes and its complications take a significant portion of the healthcare budget annually. T2DM results from the inability of the beta-cells of the pancreas...

• The efficacy and effectiveness of capnogaphy monitoring during intravenous conscious sedation with midazolam for oral surgery

  Dentists use sedation to help patients accept difficult procedures and to relieve anxiety. During sedation, the well-being of the patient is monitored by the dental team. When carried out according to recognised guidelines, intravenous dental sedation is considered to be very safe. For some patients, dental sedation is a useful...

• Direct acting antivirals in Hepatitis C: developing a personalised model of care

  Hepatitis C virus infection, which affects 170 million people worldwide, is a major global health problem, and is a leading cause of chronic liver disease, liver cancer and cirrhosis. The current treatment options for Hepatitis C infection fail to clear the virus in about 50% of patients. Two new antiviral drugs have just been licensed...

• Multimodal characterisation of the benign prostate

  Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH) is a condition that will affect most men as they age, resulting in swelling of the prostate and causing problems when they try to pass urine. It is rare in men less than 40 but can be found in over 70% of men over the age of 70. Current treatment for BPH involves either tablet medication or surgery....

• A randomised controlled trial to measure the effects of an augmented prescribed exercise program on mobility, quality of life and healthcare utilisation for frail hospilised older medical in-patients

  Older people can become less physically independent following a hospital stay. Up to one third become newly dependant on walking aids and others remain more dependent in the long-term, affecting physical and psychological health and increasing the burden on carers and healthcare. Although many factors can influence this deterioration,...

• Concealed pregnancy in 21st century Ireland. Concealing and revealing by explaining: the care study

  There are many reasons why women choose to hide their pregnancy from friends and family and this study is trying to out why. Women who conceal a pregnancy are particularly vulnerable and may conceal right until, or even after, birth and as such represent an important issue for society. Risks of concealment are huge in terms of maternal...

• Nervous system sensitisation in people with osteoarthritis of the knee: A prospective cohort study

  Osteoarthritis is a degenerative disease commoningly affecting the large joints such as the hip or knee. Ostheoarthritis is one of the ten most disabling diseases in developed countries according to the World Health Organisation. Pain and loss of function are the main symptoms. Current treatments including anti-inflammatory drugs,...

• Maternal health And Maternal Morbidity in Ireland (MAMMI) - Sexual Health Strand

  The aim of this study is to identify if, and how women having their first baby in Ireland experience sexual health problems (SHPs) while pregnant and up to 12 months after childbirth. Within this aim are several objectives: a) To correctly estimate the number of women experiencing SHP while pregnant and up to 12 months after childbirth...

• Functional capacity and thought disorder in first episode psychosis: an investigation of their clinical correlates and predictors over the first year of illness

  Psychosis is an illness that affects up to 3% of the population and it can often impact severely on an individual's mental health, quality of life and productivity. It is characterised by symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations in addition to lack of motivation and general withdrawal. If identified and treated at an early stage,...

• The ability of urinary albumin excretion and estimated kidney function to predict short term all cause and cardiovascular mortality in community dwelling individuals

  Cardiovascular (CV) events such as stroke, heart attack and heart failure are the most common causes of death and adult disability. A priority in population-health is to accurately identify patients who are at increased risk of CV events, so that we can introduce effective preventative therapies in appropriate populations. Kidney...

• Natural honey to eradicate nasal MRSA - a randomised control trial

  Staphylococcus aureus (S.aureus) is a frequent coloniser of normal skin and a common cause of blood stream infection "sepsis". The widespread use of antibiotics has led to the emergence of bacterial resistance to antibiotics. Meticillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is the term used to describe S.aureus bacteria resistant to...

• Does early detection and treatment of psychosis improve employment outcomes?

  A recent development within the mental health services is the focus on early detection and treatment, referred to as early intervention. This change in approach is most advanced in the treatment of psychotic conditions like schizophrenia. Evaluation of early intervention for psychosis services have shown that they are superior to...

• Role of extra-oesophageal reflux in the development and severity of non-cystic fibrosis bronchiectasis

  Bronchiectasis is a chronic debilitating respiratory disease characterised by severe, recurrent chest infections with resultant high rates of morbidity and mortality, escalating public health costs and profound reductions in productivity and quality of life. In approximately 50% of cases, the cause of bronchiectasis is unknown...

• Probing the metabolic response to vasculitic injury: towards a tool for non-invasive monitoring of immune activation in ANCA vasculitis

  A major unmet need in the care of patients with glomerulonephritis (GN) is a sensitive and specific means of identifying both the presence and absence of active vasculitic injury. I propose to undertake an in-depth PhD programme involving research that will incorporate pre-clinical and clinical tools to study the urinary metabolomic...

• Structured Population and Health-services Research Education (SPHERE) Programme I

  The SPHeRE Programme was established to respond to an identified need to strengthen population health and health services research (PHHSR) capacity in Ireland in order to lessen the gap between research findings, health policy and health outcomes. The HRB-funded SPHeRE Programme is driven by three core institutions (RCSI, TCD and UCC)...

• Designing and implementing effective behaviour change interventions to improve population health and health services in Ireland

  Priority issue: To improve population health by developing, using and advocating use of scientific methods for studying behaviour change.

  Key objectives of the proposal:

  1. To establish the Health Behaviour Change Research Cluster/Centre (HBCRC) at NUI Galway. 
  2. To establish expert working groups in 3...

  3. Economics of Personalised Heath

     Advances in science have increased the prospect of diagnosing, treating and preventing illness in a more personal way. Improved understanding of how individuals may benefit from tailored therapies will permit a better match and more informed choice by users and health care professionals. However, the discovery of personalised health...

  4. Improving care for people with diabetes: A population approach to prevention and control

     Diabetes is a common, disabling and deadly condition. In Ireland it is estimated that nearly 1 in 10 adults have diabetes, many of whom are undiagnosed. Currently diabetes costs the state approx. €580 million per annum and this will rise significantly in coming decades. Major changes are underway with a move to providing more care of...

  5. Psychological therapies for chronic pain and adjustment difficulties in multimorbid health conditions

     A significant number of people have chronic (long-term) health problems and some of these have so-called 'multimorbidities' this means a number of physical symptoms or diseases occurring at the same time, for example arthritis and depression or high blood pressure, diabetes and chronic pain. In the first part of this study, we will...

  6. Health Economics: the development and analysis of the health technology assessment infrastructure in Ireland and an analysis of the quality

     The overall vision is to create conditions that will allow for a sea change in the quantity and quality of health services research in Ireland, addressing specific needs articulated in the policy documents of various stakeholder and; secure NUI Galway's role as a national resource supporting the application of economic methods to...

  7. Development of a Bayesian Unit for Health Decision Sciences

     This proposal will develop a Bayesian unit for health decision making. A Bayesian approach formalises the bringing together of data from structured sources/trials with existing knowledge and uses formal decision criteria to identify optimal courses of action for a given health related problem/question. The centre will prioritise three...