Spring updates

It’s been a busy few weeks at ADAMS HQ.

We’ve been sending out saliva kits to everyone who’s signed up. We’ve now recruited over 150 people in just over 3 months. I’m so grateful to everyone who’s agreed to take part and am continually struck by the enthusiasm and generosity of everyone I speak to about participating.

We’ve also started recruiting at our first site outside of London - the Leeds team have been amazingly efficient getting the study off the ground, and have already recruited their first participants. Looking forward to starting up at other sites in the very near future.

We’ve also had our first scientific abstract accepted - this will be made into a poster presentation for the Association of British Neurologists Conference in Harrogate. The aim of the poster is to communicate to other healthcare professionals what we’re doing and hopefully forge some new collaborations in the process.

I’ve copied the abstract below so you can have a read. Since submitting we’ve recruited another 60 people, so these figures are already a bit out of date!

***

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) have focussed on populations of European ancestry. Studying MS genetics in other ancestries is necessary to ensure the generalisability of these findings.  

We report the design of a new collaborative MS genetics project - ‘ADAMS’. Individuals with MS from non-White-British ethnic backgrounds will be recruited either via a website - https://app.mantal.co.uk/adams - or in-person at a participating site. We will collect demographic and phenotypic data using a combination of a baseline questionnaire and subsequent healthcare record linkage. We will collect DNA from up to 1000 participants using saliva kits (Oragene-600) and genotype individuals using the Illumina Global Screening Array version 3. Genotypes will be combined with large ancestrally-matched control datasets (UK Biobank and East London Genes and Health). 

We have recruited 91 participants within the first eight weeks of the study. Of this initial cohort, 73.9% are female, 84.5% were born in the UK, 32.4% identified as Asian or Asian British, 28.2% as Black, African, Caribbean or Black British, and the remainder identified as having mixed, other, or White backgrounds. 51% stated they were unlimited in their mobility. 84.7% of participants have relapse-onset forms of MS and 76.1% have ever had disease-modifying therapy. The median age at diagnosis is 30.5 and the median age at recruitment 36.7. Further recruitment and genetics results will follow over the next 3 years. 

***

That’s all for this week. Remember to subscribe for regular updates, and if you are thinking of participating please check out the website at: https://app.mantal.co.uk/adams

Stay safe

Ben