‘Our Future Health’s data will move the needle for lung disease researchers like me’
While COVID-19 made all of us more aware of our lung health, we still don’t pay enough attention to it, according to Professor Jennifer Quint, Professor of Respiratory Epidemiology in the School of Public Health at Imperial College London.
“A large proportion of the UK population will develop a chronic respiratory condition in their lifetimes – as high as one in five people,” she says. “Asthma is the most common of these, but a lot of people also develop chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), bronchiectasis or interstitial lung disease.”
Lung diseases are the third most common cause of death across the UK, behind only cardiovascular disease and cancer. They’re estimated to cost the nation around £188 billion a year.
Jennifer recently became a Research Ambassador for Our Future Health. She plans to analyse the data we’ve collected to find out more about lung conditions and ways to improve our lung health. “What makes Our Future Health unique is that it will give us an understanding, at a mass general population level, of people’s health.”
“Lung conditions haven’t had the focus or the funding that create the big advances in knowledge that we’ve had in cardiovascular disease and cancer,” says Jennifer. But she’s hopeful that’s changing. “People are really starting to understand that lung health research is important.”
A bigger picture on patients
Jennifer first became interested in respiratory disease while training as a doctor. “I realised I wanted to do research that would lead to better guidelines and improve clinical practice. Respiratory diseases are so common that I knew this research would make a difference to a lot of people.”
Today, as well as her work at Imperial, Jennifer is Associate Director of Respiratory Data Catalyst, a joint initiative of Asthma + Lung UK and Health Data Research UK to improve lung data quality. She also chairs NHS England’s Respiratory Data Strategy.
“One of the reasons respiratory health is such an interesting area to work in is that lung health starts before you’re born and lasts your whole life,” she says. “For example, if either of your parents smoked during the time your mum was pregnant, it will affect how well your lungs develop and put you at higher risk of developing asthma.”
Her main interest is disease prevention. “In order to work out how to prevent disease, we need to look at lifestyle before the disease develops. Our Future Health’s data will hopefully help us to gain a better understanding of the triggers of asthma, or how to prevent COPD.
“For example, in the UK, we know the most common underlying reason for being diagnosed with COPD is smoking. But we need to know more about other contributors, including environmental factors such as mould and air pollution, as well as socioeconomic factors. “We already know people can improve their lung health by exercising regularly, by maintaining a healthy lifestyle and by not smoking,” she says. What we don’t know – and she says Our Future Health will help find out – is how each factor affects specific lung diseases.
Taking a first look at Our Future Health data
“We’re looking to see if there are differences between men and women when it comes to respiratory disease,” says Jennifer, “for example, whether diseases are happening at different ages for men and women.
“To work out how you’re going to prevent a disease, you need to understand what happens before a disease is diagnosed. Our Future Health has asked volunteers some very useful and detailed questions on diet, exercise, and their environment in the questionnaire. We can look at people’s de-identified medical records to see exactly when they’re diagnosed with a disease, and what happens afterwards. And we can combine this knowledge to try to understand what could have caused the disease.
“Using all that data, we hope to see whether the risk factors for respiratory diseases differ between men and women. Is it down to behaviours that differ between the two groups?”
Jennifer says this will help us find out who’s at greater risk of developing certain diseases, and if there are lifestyle modifications that could reduce their likelihood of developing those diseases. “Or, for people who already have a disease, if there are triggers that make symptoms worse, and if there are things they can do to help control or manage chronic conditions better,” she adds.
1 million – and beyond
Jennifer says our volunteers’ data will “move the needle” on our knowledge of lung disease. “It’s extremely exciting that Our Future Health now has 1 million participants – who’ve had their appointment, given blood and filled in their questionnaire,” she says. “This number of volunteers means we can ask new questions and find new associations between how people live and their risk of developing lung diseases.
“The more knowledge we have about how lung conditions develop, the more we can show people that looking after their lung health is important throughout their life.”
Let’s prevent disease together
By volunteering for Our Future Health, you can help health researchers discover new ways to prevent, detect and treat common conditions such as diabetes, cancer, heart disease, stroke and Alzheimer’s.