OxVasc Controls

Could you spare an hour to help our research?

If you are the spouse, friend or relative of someone who has joined our study after a stroke, transient ischaemic attack (TIA) or heart attack, but you’ve never had one of those illnesses yourself, and you are registered with one of the GP practices we are working with, YOU could help us to produce useful results. That’s because we need a group of people who haven’t had a stroke, TIA or heart attack, to compare with the people who have.

We call these people 'controls', and we ask them the same questions about their medical history, family health history, diet etc as we ask the patients who are helping with our research, check their blood pressure, and take a blood sample from them. Then we look for similarities and differences.

There are no brain scans involved. However we will be checking the blood flow into the brain using a  non-invasive ultrasound method called a Trans Cranial Doppler (TCD). 

It doesn’t matter if you have other health problems, so long as you’ve never had a stroke, TIA or heart attack. We mainly need men over fifty, and women over sixty (but if a younger person has had a heart attack or stroke, they can invite controls who are a similar age to them). There’s no upper age limit.