Researchers screen Afro-Caribbean students to predict risk of heart disease

Researchers at the University of Hertfordshire are screening an Afro-Caribbean cohort of students this week to gauge their predisposition to heart disease in later life.

Professor Nigel Baber (Clinical Trials Co-ordinating Centre) and Dr Andrew Garrett (School of Life Sciences) have joined forces with researchers from the Universities of Cambridge and Cardiff in the British Heart Foundation-funded Enigma-E research project into heart and blood vessel health.

According to the researchers, disease of the heart and arteries remains the major cause of mortality and morbidity in the Western World.  Moreover, as more ethnic groups adopt Western lifestyles, the incidence of heart and arterial disease is rapidly increasing in these diverse populations.

As a result, the collaborative University teams are assessing resting blood flow in students from an Afro-Caribbean cohort in the University's Human Physiology Laboratories on Thursday and Friday (22 and 23 April).  The overall aim is to collect blood samples and freeze the serum so that they can follow up the students over a thirty-year period to detect any changes in their health.

"It is known that certain ethnic groups are at much greater risk than others and we are particularly interested in this," said Professor Baber. "Therefore, to help predict who is at risk we need to look at lots of young people from various ethnic backgrounds to work out what predisposes people to getting heart disease."

Enigma-E researchers at the University of Cambridge approached Professor Nigel Baber and Dr Garrett to carry out this research because the University of Hertfordshire has one of the most diverse student populations in the UK with over forty percent of students coming from non-European ethnic groups.

Dr Garrett plans to offer selective students from the ethnic populations who participate in this research a free follow-up exercise and physical activity analysis.  This will determine their level of physical conditioning and current physical activity regime.