Spotting signs of disease in kids

Researchers at Cambridge University are helping to create the biggest health initiative of its kind in this country and, in a world first for children and young people, to link our DNA code and the environment we grow up in with disease risks and health outcomes. Anna Moore is the clinical lead on the study…

Anna - We've got this fantastic opportunity to tackle some of the most pressing, healthy challenges that are facing the NHS. And that's by carrying out pioneering groundbreaking research, which is going to help us to understand the origins of disease, but also to develop new treatments for children, but also for adults throughout their life, of course. So even on to older age. So one of the things that I find most fascinating about this is that if we look at the origins of disease, most of the diseases that we all suffer from start in the first 20 years of life. And yet if we look at the research that's done, it's all predominantly done in adults. And because of this we are missing this huge opportunity to really tackle some of the challenges, develop new treatments, and solve some of the problems that are facing us all, but in particular our children.

Chris - Can you tell us about the nuts and bolts of the study? What are you actually doing and with whom?

Anna - Well, it's with the NIHR BioResource and it's called the DNA Children and Young People's Health Resource or DCYPHR. And what we're doing is we're encouraging children from 0 to 15 to get involved, to become heroes for Healthcare Research. So we're asking them to join DCYPHR to spit into a tube and to answer some questionnaires and then start to become this community of young people who are going to really help us transform health by developing this understanding of the origins of disease and developing these new treatments.

Chris - So this is a follow-up study in the sense that by getting them to spit, you get their DNA code, I presume. And then by joining your community, you can watch what happens to them and presumably you'll know something about their lifestyle, their environment, and so on, so you can begin to unite what happens to them with that DNA code.

Anna - Exactly. And also the other thing that's really critical about BioResource is it's a research resource that can enable new studies. So rather than just being a biobank, which they're incredibly valuable, fantastic data, these are people who are joining who want to contribute to health research. So by joining, they're saying that they're willing to be contacted up to three times a year to get involved in ethically approved health research that can really help us transform the kind of speed at which we're able to answer some of these questions. And young people can get involved in as many of those studies as they want to, or they can decide that none of them are for them. That's absolutely fine.

Chris - What are the big challenges when it comes to children and young people's health that you are hoping to get at with this that we can't get at with? Because there are rival biobank studies that, as you pointed out earlier, have looked at adults and united Adults health outcomes with their DNA and so on. So what are you going for with this specifically?

安娜-有几个机会,真的。So one is to intervene early, to identify problems early. So if we can understand the relationship between environment, genetics and our health, then we've got this first opportunity to really be able to spot diseases quickly, diagnose early, possibly to prevent, but to create treatments that are able to have an impact in the very early years. And we're hoping, or we expect, that that will have a really significant impact on long-term health conditions. So, and this is really important at the moment, there was a health report that was published by the Health Foundation just this week that showed we've got this real race against time at the moment. So two and a half million extra people are gonna have long-term illnesses by 2040. But on top of that, if we also look at the health of children in the UK compared to those in Europe, they're much, much worse. So, we really need to take the opportunity that we have presenting ourselves now to tackle some of these issues, not only for the individuals involved, but also so that we can tackle some of the challenges of the NHS in the future. It's really important.

Chris - Often though many diseases don't manifest until we're old, but the seeds are sown in our youth. You're not going to have to wait a really long time. Well, as in you and me might well be taking our pension hopefully by the time some of these things manifest. So is this a long-term viewpoint you're taking here?

Anna - There's going to be different elements of it. So there are going to be elements where we are looking at what happens over time, but there's going to be the opportunity to develop treatments really early. So the whole genetic commitment. So one of the things that I think about is type one diabetes diagnosed in childhood from day one. Children and young people have to have multiple injections a day. It's miserable for them, it's miserable for their families. But now we've discovered that there's a subtype of type one diabetes that is particular to children and older people who have a particular genetic subtype. And actually now they can have a treatment, which is a tablet, which is transformative for them. So this isn't just about understanding what happens later, it's also about developing personalised treatments, which we can give to people early in order to have better long-term outcomes. So it is about the long-term, but it's very much about developing personalised preventative treatments for earlier in the disease course as well.