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A School funded study has been pivotal in leveraging further funding for research into COPD and co-morbidities at the University of Southampton.

According to Mike Thomas (PI) and Lynn Josephs (Team Lead) from Southampton’s Department of Primary Care and Population Sciences, the SPCR funded study 'Understanding variations in outcome in asthma and COPD: use of routine clinical data', used the Hampshire Health Record (an analytical database containing routine primary and secondary care data for over 1.3 million patients) to develop methods to identify a cohort of 21,243 patients in Hampshire with a primary care diagnosis of COPD. They additionally studied clinical outcomes in these patients (hospital admissions, A+E attendances, mortality) over a 2 year period.

The findings from this study were presented under the same title at the International Primary Care Respiratory Group (IPCRG) annual conference in Athens in May 2014 (L. K. Josephs, M. Johnson, P. J. Roderick, M. Thomas, IPCRG 2014: Abstract IPCRG14LB-1319), and at the SPCR Showcase on 26 November 2014.

Methodologies developed for this project, to identify the cohort  and quantify outcomes,  have been "pivotal in developing  the respiratory work stream in our recently successful Wessex NIHR CLAHRC bid. Using clinical coding strategies developed for this School-funded study, we have designed a longitudinal study to identify important co-morbidities in these COPD patients (such as heart disease, asthma, diabetes, stroke, anxiety and depression) and to examine the effects of co-morbidity both on uptake of healthcare (e.g. smoking-cessation support, flu vaccination, use of pulmonary rehabilitation programmes) and  on clinical outcomes over a 3 year period; this study is now an important part of the CLAHRC respiratory theme. The school funding has therefore played a vital role in leveraging larger funding for ongoing projects." said Lynn Josephs.