Medicine and health
What your money can do
Cardiovascular disease accounts for 30%of all deaths worldwide. Coronary heart failure causes one in five male deaths in the UK. It has a worse prognosis than many cancers. But a £25 donation could support a world first study at the University that is investigating the potential stem cells have to help repair scarred heart tissue. This innovative work could direct the future treatment of heart attack patients and bring renewed hope to many severely ill people.
Medical research at Bristol is tackling disease, saving lives and restoring lost hope. Generous donations are helping Bristol’s talented researchers to push forward their ground-breaking ideas.
Do you care about your health?
The Bristol Heart Institute is an internationally acclaimed centre of excellence where life-saving open heart surgery techniques have been developed that are now standard in clinical practice worldwide. Only through continued research will we understand why heart disease became such a huge problem in the 20th century, and how we might confine it to history in the 21st.
High blood pressure
A recent study has identified a link between the kidneys and the brain that triggers high blood pressure throughout the body. A major advance occurred when researchers were able to completely prevent high blood pressure by blocking certain brain signals. Further trials are of course required, but initial results raise the hope for new treatment.
Newborns
Seven out of 1,000 babies are born with congenital heart disease (hole in the heart). Current treatment consists of a surgical graft that needs to be replaced several times in the patient’s life. Bristol researchers are devising a graft made out of the baby’s own stem cells which would grow with the baby, eliminating the need for multiple open heart surgeries and improving quality of life.
Areas supported in 2011/12
- Our scientists are looking closely for ways to treat autoimmune diseases like Multiple Sclerosis or Parkinson’s. With your help, they can now look even closer. Thanks to your gifts, Bristol now has a state-of-the art confocal microscope, allowing the study of cells in minute detail, to better understand the causes and behaviours of diseases.
- Over 5% of the UK population who are over 55 will undergo a joint replacement. Current metal-on-metal joints can have painful side effects. Thanks to just one legacy gift, we’re helping develop an alternative joint that will hurt less, last longer, and be less susceptible to infection.
- At Bristol’s Cancer Research centre, your gifts are the sole funding for innovative, ‘blue sky’ research into new ways to prevent cancer, improve patients’ quality of life as they undergo treatment, and increase survival rates.
- You’re helping to prevent miscarriages and foetal brain injury. Thanks to you, we’re fundamentally changing current understanding of how a placenta works at the molecular level. Your gifts will have a major impact on the pain and distress of conditions such as cerebral palsy.
- Stem cell research has started to deliver on its promised clinical applications, and Bristol is a world-leading institution in this field. Key lines of research are being pursued thanks to generous gifts.