Research

Why are we doing this study

UK-EDI will explore the link between new-onset diabetes and pancreatic cancer with the aim of finding ways to diagnose pancreatic cancer earlier. Read our patient information

Blood samples and clinical information will be collected from participants at appointments every six months for two years. Appointments will be held at BMG York Bridge site and carried out by our Research Nurses - each visit will last about an hour.

What is involved in the study

• You will make 5 research visits to the clinic over 2 years. Expenses to cover travel to each clinic visit will be provided.
• You will be asked to provide information about your health.
• You will answer questionnaires about your health and diabetes.
• You will provide samples of your blood for research.

Who can take part?

• Patients aged 50 and over at the time of the study
• Patients with a new-onset type 2 diabetes diagnosed within 6 months of study entry.

We are looking for volunteers to take part in a study that will help identify who is at risk of developnig pancreatic cancer.

Most cases of Type 2 diabetes are due to lifestyle or genetic factors, but in approximately 1 in 100 individuals diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, the diagnosis is believed to be an early sign associated with the development of pancreatic cancer.

It is hoped that this research will eventually lead to improvements in detecting and diagnosing pancreatic cancer early.

Further information

• UK-EDI
• A study looking at finding pancreatic cancer early (UK-EDI)
• Contact us if you are interested in taking part

The Genetic Links to Anxiety and Depression (GLAD) Study, led by the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Mental Health BioResource and researchers at King’s College London, in collaboration with researchers at Ulster University, University of Edinburgh, and Cardiff University. 

Who can take part?

We are inviting all potentially suitable people to take part.

• Have experienced anxiety and/or depression during your life.
• Be aged 16 and above
• Live in the UK

More information

Find our more about the GLAD Study

If you decide to take part please select “Bay Medical Group” for where you saw this study.

Contact us if you are interested in taking part

Why are we doing this study?

Currently, there is no established treatment for Long COVID. Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine are conducting a clinical trial to assess whether Ashwagandha, a traditional Indian herbal medicine, can promote recovery from Long COVID.

Who can take part?

• Those aged 18 or over who have been diagnosed with Long COVID and are still experiencing symptoms that affect their day-to-day lives and live in the UK

More information

• About the APRIL Trial
• Contact us if you are interested in taking part

Loneliness and social isolation can affect people of all ages and from all walks of life.

The Measuring Loneliness (INTERACT) study aims to map loneliness at borough and city level to highlight the scale of the issue and help decision makers consider new ways to support individuals who are lonely, feeling socially isolated and who may be suffering in silence.

This study was developed in response to UK Government’s Loneliness Strategy.

Who can take part?

• Anyone can take part

More information

• Contact them if you are interested in taking part

Background and Study Aims

The DEFINE study will help health care professionals in GP surgeries provide a more personalised approach to managing patients’ asthma by using FeNO to guide decisions about their treatment.

Around 5.4 million people in the UK receive treatment for asthma. However, although more and more asthma medications are being prescribed each year, numbers of serious asthma attacks are not going down.

To help prevent serious asthma attacks, we need to make sure the right treatments are given to the right people in the right amounts.

Learn more about the study on the Oxford University DEFINE website

A new website called ‘Active Brains’ aims to help older adults to look after their brain and body health to prevent cognitive decline.

The website supports older adults to make simple behavioural changes such as increasing physical activity, playing brain training games and finding ways to eat more healthily. This study will trial the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of ‘Active Brains’.

The trial will recruit two groups of older adults:

1. those with signs of cognitive decline,
2. those without any cognitive decline.

Members of both of these groups will be randomly assigned to one of three trial groups:

1. care as they usually receive it from their GP practice, or
2. access to the Active Brains website, or
3. access to the Active Brains website plus brief support from a trained person (over the phone or by email).

The trial will last for five years. At the end of the first year the study team will compare participants’ cognitive performance in each of the three study groups. After five years the study team will compare the three study groups again and will collect medical records data about diagnosis of dementia. The findings will reveal whether the Active Brains website is effective and cost-effective for older adults to avoid or delay cognitive decline.

Who can take part?

• Aged between 60 and 85 years old inclusive
• Not have an existing diagnosis of dementia

Learn more about the Active Brains study

This study is investigating whether low-dose aspirin (75mg) reduces the chance of a first heart attack or stroke in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD).

Until we complete the research, we will not know whether taking aspirin benefits people with CKD, but we believe that the results of this trial will be extremely important for the NHS. If the benefits of aspirin are shown to outweigh the risks, then treatment will be available immediately to about 3 million people with CKD.

Why are we doing this study?

We are doing this research to find out whether people with CKD should take daily low-dose aspirin to reduce the risk of a first heart attack or stroke.

Heart attacks and strokes are usually caused by small blood clots. Aspirin thins the blood so reduces the chance that clots will form but it also increases the chances of bleeding.

Studies in people who have already suffered a heart attack or stroke show that aspirin reduces the risk of further attacks, and that these benefits are much greater than the risks of bleeding.

People with CKD are more at risk of a heart attack or stroke than the general population, and aspirin may therefore by beneficial, but the risks of bleeding may also be higher.

Before we can recommend aspirin treatment to help a first heart attack or stroke in people with CKD, we need to be sure that the benefits of treatment outweigh the possible risks, and that it why we are doing this study.

Currently, around 1 million people in the UK with CKD are already taking aspirin for this reason and around 3 million are not.

The results of this study will tell us whether taking aspirin is better for patients with CKD.

Who can take part?

We are inviting all potentially suitable people to take part.

• This includes people aged 18 or over who have had blood or urine tests that indicate they have kidney disease and who have not previously had a heart attack or a stroke. This is something you may be aware of or it may be new to you.
• It is entirely up to you to decide whether you would like to take part, but if you think you might be interested, please return the reply slip to the research team in the envelope that was provided with the invitation letter, and one of our team will contact you.
• If you do take part, you will be free to withdraw from the study at any time without giving a reason. Withdrawal from the study will not affect the standard of care that you receive in any way.
• This research is being carried out by the University of Southampton.

More information

• About Attack
• Attack Trial - Information for Patients
• Contact us if you are interested in taking part

This trial is looking at a drug called Spironolactone to see whether it helps reduce heart disease and kidney damage in people with chronic kidney disease.

The trial is currently in the long term follow up stage of recruited participants.

The results of this research trial will be published in a scientific medical journal and on the study website.

Thank you to the 9 patients from BMG who have taken part in Barack-D.

This research is about finding what symptoms and examinations are best for predicting lung and bowel cancer.

20,000 people with lung and bowel symptoms will be asked to take part in this research, half with lung and half with colorectal symptoms.

Find more information about the study on the University of Southampton website

This study is testing an online programme called Renewed for people who have finished treatment for cancer or are on active surveillance.

Renewed aims to help people improve their wellbeing and physical health.

How effective is Consent for Contact in increasing opportunities to participate, and patient recruitment to Irritable bowel syndrome clinical trials

IBS is a common condition of the digestive system causing episodes of stomach cramp, bloating, diarrhoea and constipation. The study team want to engage with adults who are interested in participating in research. To do this they are testing a range of approaches to consent for contact whilst developing a dedicated IBS register. Consent for contact is a process that allows interested people to give their permission to be contacted about research opportunities without obligation to participate.

Learn more about the study on the ContactME-IBS website

Thank you to the 70 BMG patients who have taken part in this study.

Problems with the muscles and joints of the body are the main cause of pain and difficulty with daily activities for people in the UK. They often result in many people seeking help from their GP and sometimes also result in referral to hospital for further investigation.

Many people want to see their GP for these and other problems, but due to very high demand, it can often be difficult to get an appointment with a GP without having to wait.

One idea that is being tried in some GP surgeries is called First Contact Physiotherapy. This means that when you have a muscle or joint problem instead of seeing your GP, you will see a specialist physiotherapist who will assess you, tell you what they think is wrong, and discuss the best way to manage your problem. In some cases they may also prescribe medicines or refer you for further investigations.

The study team want to find out if there are any benefits of this new approach compared to seeing the GP for the same condition. They also want to know whether patients think it is a good idea.

Thank you to the 14 patients from BMG who have taken part in this study.

Bay Medical Group was selected to take part in an important study to test the use of a self-sampling device in the NHS Cervical Screening Programme in England.

HPValidate was a study led by Public Health England which compared self-taken samples with samples taken by a doctor or nurse.

This will help the NHS Cervical Screening Programme to decide what device/s could be used for HPV self-sampling in the future.

Mobile Health Biometrics to Enhance Exercise and Physical Activity

6-Month home-based exercise study

Being physically active and exercising is important for the treatment of Type 2 diabetes as it helps control blood sugar and improve physical function. Lots of people find it hard to be physically active and sticking with exercise is difficult for most people. In this project we will investigate two strategies to support people with Type 2 diabetes to increase and then maintain a physically active lifestyle, which includes exercising regularly.

Participants in one group (Exercise Counselling) will complete a 6-month structured exercise and physical activity programme supported by regular (virtual) contact with an exercise specialist.

Participants in the second group (Mobile health technology (mHealth)) will receive the same 6-month exercise and physical activity programme supported by an exercise specialist, but participants in this group will also receive a fitness watch that links to a mobile phone application (App). The fitness watch and mobile App will allow the exercise specialist to provide greater support and feedback throughout the programme.

This study wants to find out the best ways to support people with type 2 diabetes increase their everyday physical activity to improve their diabetes control, particularly in the months after diagnosis.

It is being carried out by a team of researchers Liverpool John Moores University

Who can take part?

• Clinical Diagnosis of T2D within the previous 5–24 months
• Male or Female
• Aged 40-75
• Treating diabetes with only Metformin or lifestyle modifications (diet and exercise)

Learn more about the Motivate T2D study

An online parenting intervention to prevent affective disorders in adolescents

Why are we doing this study?

Depression and anxiety have a very large impact on the health and wellbeing of young people. For many people, they first start in early adolescence, so efforts to intervene early or to try to prevent depression and anxiety in this age group are extremely important. Researchers have tried to design ways to improve adolescent mental health by working with young people directly; but approaches that target the parents or carers to try to address parenting skills also appear to reduce depression and anxiety in their adolescent children, both in the short and long term.

Who can take part?

We are inviting all potentially suitable people to take part.

• Adolescents aged between 11 to 15 years old and their families

More Information

Contact us if you are interested in taking part

Patient-reported outcome measures for monitoring primary care patients with depression – randomised controlled trial.

The PROMDEP RCT will look at whether giving personal feedback to people being treated for depression might help them get better more quickly. This will be done by using the PHQ-9 depression symptom questionnaire as a patient reported outcome measure (or 'PROM') and feeding back the results to the patients themselves, and the practitioners looking after them, together with brief suggestions for treatment relevant to the severity of the patient’s depression.

The aim is to answer the following research question: What is the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of assessing primary care patients with depression or low mood soon after diagnosis and again at follow-up 10-35 days later, using the PHQ-9 questionnaire combined with patient and practitioner feedback and guidance on treatment?

This is a cluster randomised controlled trial so whole practices will be randomly allocated to either:

1. Intervention arm, where patients will complete the PHQ-9, to inform treatment.
2. Control arm, where participants will receive usual treatment, but will not use the PHQ-9.

Who can take part?

• Patients presenting with a new episode of depression
• 18+ years of age
• Sufficiently fluent in English to participate

Learn more about the PROMDEP study

The REVERSE study investigated whether self-monitoring is practical and acceptable for people with raised blood pressure (pre-hypertension, PHT), and health care professionals within primary care.

Supporting people with type 2 diabetes in effective use of their medicine through a system comprising mobile health technology integrated with clinical care compared with usual care: a randomised controlled trial

Type 2 diabetes is a common disease, however, the risk of serious complications can be reduced through use of effective treatments and active self-management. People are often concerned about their medicines and face difficulties in taking them regularly. We have developed brief mobile-phone based text messages that aim to support patients’ self-management of type 2 diabetes in the use of medications and other aspects of self-management. The aim of this trial is to compare the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of brief messaging to support patients with type 2 diabetes taking diabetes medicine (glucose, blood pressure, or lipid lowering) in reducing risk factors for diabetes complications, with usual care.

This is a randomised controlled trial.

Who can take part?

Participant is willing and able to give informed consent.

• Male or female, ≥35 years of age.
• Type 2 diabetes.
• Taking oral glucose lowering treatment, blood pressure lowering treatment or lipid lowering treatment (diabetes treatments) either alone or in combination
• Has access to a UK registered mobile phone and is able, if necessary, with help
• (e.g. relative, friend, neighbour), to send, understand and retrieve brief SMS
• text-messages in the English language.
• The participant's practice is participating in the trial.

Learn more about the SuMMiT-D study

Therapies for Long Covid explored the needs of people living with Long COVID who did not go into hospital.

Principle is a UK-wide clinical study from the University of Oxford to find COVID-19 treatments for recovery at home.

Who can take part?

We are inviting all potentially suitable people to take part

• Patients currently experiencing COVID-19 symptoms for 14 days or less
• Patients who have had a positive test for COVID-19 in the last 14 days
• Aged 18 and over

More information

• Join the PRINCIPLE Trial
• Contact us if you are interested in taking part

Panoramic

Panoramic is a national trial sponsored by Oxford University, aimed at finding new antiviral treatments for COVID-19.

If you are interested, our local recruiting hub practice is Lancaster Medical Practice.

Find out how to join

227 women took part in the HPValidate study.

The study found that the experience of people completing a self-sample in a primary care setting was overwhelmingly positive.  All 3 devices used in HPValidate could be considered for future use from an acceptability perspective. The HPValidate findings will contribute to the widening evidence on the use of HPV self-sampling in cervical screening. 

Here at BMG, we used the FLOQSwabs cobas tested at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust.  Women who used the HPV self-sampling kits at GP Surgeries had very positive feedback.  Nearly all said they had an excellent experience (75%) or good (23%)

Nearly 85% of women said they would like to be offered the choice of HPV self-sampling kits or clinician taken screening test, 23% said it would be difficult to choose and 15% would worry about making the choice.

Nearly half would prefer to be given a recommendation.

This adds to the growing evidence supporting HPV self-sampling but more research is needed to find out how women and people who have never or rarely attended cervical screening find HPV sampling.

Learn more about the study and their findings on the Gov.uk website

53 Bay Medical Group patients took part in this study from 2017 to 2021 which aimed to determine whether allopurinol therapy improves major cardiovascular outcomes in patients with ischaemic heart disease.

The study concluded: In this large, randomised clinical trial in patients aged 60 years or older with ischaemic heart disease but no history of gout, there was no difference in the primary outcome of non-fatal myocardial infarction, non-fatal stroke, or cardiovascular death between participants randomised to allopurinol therapy and those randomised to usual care.

Read the full research article

5 Bay Medical Group patients took part in this study which aimed to find out if flare-ups of COPD can be prevented by using a tablet called bisoprolol. Bisoprolol is a beta-blocker that has been widely used for a long time to treat heart problems, but it now seems that bisoprolol might also reduce flare ups of COPD regardless of heart problems.

In total 515 participants were recruited to the study from 76 primary care sites and secondary care research sites across the UK between October 2018 to March 2020 when recruitment to the study was paused due to COVID-19. A further 90 patients were recruited between August 2021 to May 2022.  Despite not fully recruiting the trial has shown that bisoprolol does not reduce the likelihood of exacerbation in people with COPD and should not be routinely used for the treatment of COPD. 

However the trial has also shown that Bisoprolol is safe to use in people with COPD (if tolerated). 

Read the full research article

2 Bay Medical Group patients took part in this study which aimed to evaluate online interventions to support patients and General practitioners in the reduction of long-term antidepressant medication for depression with some telephone support to patients.

The study question :  Is adding internet and telephone support to a GP review to considering discontinuing long term antidepressants safe and more effective than practitioner review alone?

Study findings:  Scientists at the University of Liverpool found that more than 40 per cent of people who were well and not at risk of relapse managed to come off their antidepressant medication with advice from their doctors and that remote support provided small additional benefits.

Read the full research article 

In summary the study found that advice to use commonly available nasal sprays (at the first sign of a cough, cold or Flu) reduced days of illness. The two sprays used were Vicks Frist Defence and a salt water spray. The study showed that both the sprays and a website designed to help people get more active and manage stress led to less severe illness and less antibiotic use.

The finding of less antibiotic use is very important, because antibiotic resistance- where over- use result in some infections not responding to antibiotics -is a growing worldwide problem. If these simple interventions were more widely used, patients would benefit, winter pressures in the NHS could potentially be reduced, and we would have a useful weapon in the battle.

Read the full research article

20 Bay Medical Group patients took part in this study from 2017-2018 which aimed to determine whether statins cause muscle pain, thus allowing patients to make well-informed decisions whether to stop them or not.

The study concluded: The key result of this work is that patients reported no difference, on average, in their muscle symptoms between periods when they were taking a statin and periods when they were taking a placebo. We also assessed impact on the patient’s quality of life by looking at how statins effected the following areas: general activity, mood, walking ability, normal work, relations with other people, sleep, and enjoyment of life. As with muscle symptoms, there was no evidence of a difference between statin and placebo periods. The majority of patients who finished the trial decided to continue using statins after the trial. Future research should be done to assess different statin doses – notably the higher doses often used following a heart attack. In addition, further work is needed to see how the approach we used could be adopted into everyday clinical care.

Read the full research article

The DARE Study is a community wide collaboration between patients and professionals to provide a research resource to enable further study into the causes and complications of diabetes.
Since the study started in 2007 over 12,000 people have volunteered within the Exeter area and greater than 60,000 nationwide.

The DARE Study will continue as planned to follow up those participants already taking part and to carry on with extensive data analysis.
Thankyou to all the BMG patients that took part.

Find more information at Diabetes Alliance for Research in England (DARE)

The purpose of this study is to record how patients with atrial fibrillation (an irregular heartbeat) are treated by their doctor: the types of medication, tests, procedures or interventions they receive for their atrial fibrillation; what other medical conditions they have in addition to atrial fibrillation; if they are admitted to hospital for any reason, and to compare current treatment with the guidelines doctors are supposed to follow when they treat and manage patients with atrial fibrillation

The study concluded: Published results will be available here

Aspirin is a valuable drug, often prescribed at low doses to reduce the chance of heart attacks and strokes. However, aspirin can sometimes cause internal bleeding from ulcers. We are trying to find out whether this occurs more in patients who carry the bacteria Helicobacter (H.) pylori. This bacteria is present in the stomach of more than half the world’s population who usually do not know they have it because it seldom causes symptoms. We are conducting a study to find out whether getting rid of the bacteria with antibiotics reduces the chance of ulcer bleeding.

The study concluded: The study is still in the final stages of data analysis- we will publish the results as soon as they are available.

BMG took part in a study about how diarrhoea/diarrhoea and vomiting (D&V) is diagnosed and managed in the community. of the project. In total nearly 2,000 people across the North West of England joined in, which makes this one of the biggest research studies of its kind.

We were able to increase the percentage of cases of D&V that were diagnosed from around 12% using traditional laboratory tests to nearly 50% using modern technology. This represents a huge leap forwards. We were also able to show that using modern technology in the future would be cost-effective for the NHS. We should like to thank all the BMG patients who took part in the above research project, which was funded jointly by the Department of Health and Social Care and the Wellcome Trust. We could not have done it without your help.

Find out more about the Ontology to Improve Transparency in Case Definition and Increase Case Finding of Infectious Intestinal Disease