Imperial College London

Academic Institute

Lynne Sykes

Unknown

No

NIBDAPC_2023_0026

BACKGROUND If you give birth in the UK, at the start of pregnancy you give a blood sample which is tested for immunity to e.g. HIV and hepatitis, which is then stored for 2 years in case of the need to check for immunity to e.g. chicken pox. WORK TO DATE At the start of the pandemic, our group realised that we could use small amounts of these samples to test for antibodies to COVID in samples stored from 2019 onwards, to see when the virus actually arrived in the UK and when it started spreading. We joined the test results with anonymous information about age group, ethnicity group and deprivation (according to postcode) to see which groups the virus affected most. The results of this led us to consider how best to use the 1.2 million maternal blood samples stored in the UK to improve women’s and babies’ health and to prepare for future pandemics. We have sat in on pregnancy consultations where these samples are taken and seen that both women and midwives have minimal information on what blood samples are used for after routine testing. AIMS We will establish a program to enagage women using NW London maternity services in the use of their blood samples anddata taken at routine maternity appointments. We aim to initiate testing of these samples which gives added benefit to the health of women and their babies. OBJECTIVES i) To establish patient engagement to shape the studies conducted on stored samples how we use the data ii) To establish blood testing, with the results joined up with anonymous information about the woman and their pregnancy for infections and immunity, to test nutrition and to find new predictive tests for pregnancy complciations iii) To set up a study which is ready to test for the next pandemic virus using stored blood samples

The project outline have been presented to The Bridge public engagement group (Twitter @TheBridgeW12) who have agreed that the project represents areas of interest to women in NW London and that they would be willing to work on the study. Likely initial targets for infection and immunity screening have been based on stakeholder consultation from virology, obstetrics, paediatric immunology and midwifery colleagues. Recent scares about the detection of Polio in waste water in NW London prompted a mass child vaccination campaign, rendering the population immunity in pregnant women of high interest to women and value to policy-makers. The UK is 15 years on from a low point in uptake of Rubella vaccination and Rubella immunity is no longer routinely screened for in pregnancy and it is of great interest to policy-makers as to whether pregnant women are immune or not to this potentially teratogenic (can cause malformations in the unborn baby) virus. Rare infections such as HTLV have an unknown seroprevalence, ie we don’t know how many people are infected, in the UK, HTLV is associated with cancers and can be vertically transmitted from mother to child, its seroprevalence is of interest to virologists and to oncologists.

Public Health Research

01/09/2023

De-Personalised

Not applicable

Not applicable

One-off

TRE