Researchers from HEDS (based within ScHARR) and Oncology and Metabolism (Within The University of Sheffield) are collaborating with other partners as part of a European research project to provide further evidence about the condition of hypoglycaemia. Hypoglycaemia is a common and potentially serious side effect of insulin treatment in diabetes, and their aim is to alleviate the burden and consequences for people living with diabetes and healthcare systems in general as part of the Hypo-RESOLVE project.
The IMI 2 project has an animated clip which you can view below that illustrates how the project aims to alleviate the burden and consequences of hypoglycaemia for people living with diabetes. The short animation aims to show the project’s approach, goals and inform interested non-professionals about how Hypo-RESOLVE is about to increase knowledge on hypoglycaemia.Professor Simon Heller, a co-coordinator of the project and Sheffield lead, is Director of Research and Development and Honorary Consultant Physician at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust.
Professor Heller said: “This is a really exciting project which has brought together leading international players from academia, industry and members of the public to raise awareness of the impact of hypoglycaemia on people’s lives and to build evidence-based data to help us formulate answers to key questions about the mechanisms that cause it.”
Since the £23.6m project launched in 2018, more than 20 leading international partners from academia, industry and civil society have joined forces, including clinicians from Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and internationally renowned health economists and modellers from ScHARR.
Professor Heller is supported by colleagues from ScHARR, Dr Jill Carlton, Dr Philip Powell, Professor Alan Brennan and Dan Pollard.
Research Fellow Dr Carlton said of the project: “It is fantastic to be involved in this project which will undoubtedly make a real difference to the lives of those people who experience hypoglycaemia. Some of the work in ScHARR includes developing a new questionnaire that can be used to measure the impact of hypoglycaemia for use in clinical trials and cohort studies. By understanding how, and in which ways, hypogylcaemia affects people’s quality of life, people who make decisions about healthcare will know what to measure when they are testing new treatments designed to reduce the impact of hypoglycaemia on quality of life.”
Hypo-RESOLVE (Hypoglycaemia – Redefining SOLutions for better liVEs) aims to provide researchers and clinicians with more validated data about the condition by:
· Creating a sustainable clinical database;
· Conducting studies to understand the underlying mechanisms of hypoglycaemia better;
· Performing a series of statistical analyses to define predictors and consequences of hypoglycaemia;
· Calculating the financial cost of hypoglycaemia in European countries.
Please visit www.hypo-resolve.eu or follow @HypoResolve on Twitter for more information on the project.
During the first half of the project, the Hypo-RESOLVE partners have made significant progress in achieving the project’s objectives. In on-going experimental work, the consortium has already established a secure, sustainable database with data from more than 100 clinical trials comprising almost 60,000 individuals to confirm and refine an evidence-based classification of hypoglycaemia. With this statistical power as a baseline, it will be possible to make valid statements about the glucose thresholds below which hypoglycaemia constitutes a serious risk for people living with diabetes.