Innovative advances by Irish researchers form the core of this year's Health Research Board annual report, writes Áine Kerr
Innovative advances in the areas of cystic fibrosis, heart disease, cancer and diabetes by some 60 researchers working on 38 projects characterise this year's Health Research Board (HRB) annual report to be published today.
The report, entitled A Picture of Health, focuses on six key areas of Irish health research and details breakthroughs in cystic fibrosis, new treatments to prevent coronary heart disease and the need to introduce a primary care model for people with diabetes. These most recently completed research programmes attracted €5 million in funding from the HRB.
An estimated €45 million in funding is distributed among some 120 research projects by the HRB every year with around €100 million currently invested in projects which have a completion time frame which exceeds 12 months.
Around 700 applications for research funding are received each year and are assessed by a selection committee of international experts. The criteria applied to proposed research programmes centres on the need for the research to be innovative and relevant, while also displaying the potential to make a difference to the treatment and care of patients.
Funding is awarded to researchers who propose ideas for new research, in the form of fellowship programmes and infrastructure to support ongoing patient-orientated research.
In St James's Hospital, for example, the HRB recently funded a dedicated MRI scanner to use in conjunction with a research project.
The benefits and successes of funding health research is exemplified in today's reports by a project at NUI Galway which concludes that nitric oxide can have a significant impact on reducing coronary heart disease.
Researchers contend that by using advanced gene therapies, they might be able to encourage the cells in blocked arteries to produce more nitric oxide. This will, in turn, reduce the chance of arteries becoming blocked after conventional treatment, such as a stent or a bypass.
In a separate research project, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) and Beaumont Hospital identified two possible mechanisms which could, for the first time, treat the root cause and not just the symptoms of cystic fibrosis. Clinical trials have now commenced and the first results are expected in 2007.
In a worrying development, another HRB-funded cancer research study found that younger transplant patients can be 200 times more likely to develop skin cancer than healthy people at the same age.
As a category of people, their risk of cancer is higher because the drugs they take to prevent their bodies rejecting their transplant organs also stop their bodies repairing cells damaged by exposure to sunlight.
Dermatologist Dr Fergal Moloney has subsequently concluded that transplant patients should be applying factor 60 sun cream, even on overcast days.
Other HRB research programmes detailed in today's report have centred on how fish oils can play an important part in reducing or preventing neurological conditions and how older persons are the least likely to attend the dentist.
Dr Mairead O'Driscoll, acting director of research funding at the HRB, says the board is working to emphasise to the public the link between health research and people's health through publishing research results on an annual basis.
"Four years ago, we realised that there was a gap in getting the results out to the public. Most researchers will publish their work in journals and present it in the universities but until recently, there was no forum or mechanism of explaining to the public the results of the work their taxes finance," she says.
The question of what happens to the recommendations of each research programme is a question which is bigger than the HRB and its area of responsibility, according to O'Driscoll.
"Research gets implemented when public demand changes . . . it is patient demand that pulls the latest findings through into practice," she says.
But in a health system which is often "underestimated," O'Driscoll contends that it is important for the public to see it instead as a "huge source of innovation."