NCT01813032

Comparison of Vascular Function in Emergency Service Professionals

• Status: Completed
• Phase: —
• Study type: Observational
• Enrollment: 36 (actual)
• Sponsor: University of Edinburgh · Academic / Other
• Sex: Male
• Age: 18 Years – 60 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Emergency Service Professionals have an increased risk of death from heart attacks when compared to the general public. All the emergency professions share similar responsibilities such as emergency call-outs and shift work. Heart disease is the commonest cause of on-duty death amongst fire-fighters accounting for 45% and compared with 22% in police officers and 15% in the general population. The unique risk to fire-fighters is likely to reflect a combination of factors including extreme physical exertion, mental stress, heat and pollutant exposure. In this study the investigators will assess healthy career fire-fighters and age-matched healthy police officer control subjects following a sedentary period. The investigators will take blood samples to measure platelet activity (platelets are the particles in blood that help blood clot) and will examine how blood clots outside of the body. The investigators will then perform studies placing small needles in the arm to assess how the blood vessels respond following these duties. The investigators hypothesise that fire-fighters do not have pre-existing impairment of heart, blood or blood vessel function as a cumulative effect of their occupation, but rather these are acute and transitory effects following distinct fire-fighter duties. We therefore expect similar results in both occupational groups.

Conditions

• Vascular Function
• Atherothrombosis

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
PROCEDURE	Forearm Vascular Study	Forearm venous occlusion plethysmography to measure forearm blood flow during intra-arterial infusion of the vasodilators Verapamil (10-100 µg/min), bradykinin (100-1000 pmol/min), sodium nitroprusside (2-8 µg/min) and Acetylcholine (5-20 µg/min).
PROCEDURE	Badimon Chamber	Ex-vivo assessment of thrombus formation using the Badimon Chamber

Timeline

• Start date: 2012-04-01
• Primary completion: 2013-04-01
• Completion: 2013-04-01
• First posted: 2013-03-18
• Last updated: 2024-05-03

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United Kingdom