Health, Heredity and Environment Research Group

Experience

we have worked on several projects: epidemiologic, clinical trials, and genomic studies.
We were part of the Nigeria Institute of Product Developement (NIPRID) Niprisan study - we participated in the phase III study of Niprisan.
We carried out community study in rural and semiurban communities in a Local Government Area in Enugu looking at prevalence and risk factors for non-communicable diseases - hypertension, chronic kidney and cardiovascular diseases.
We did genomic study looking at APOL1/MYH9 risk in subjects with kidney disease.
We were part of the NOAAH Trial, a multi centre, multi-country drug trial involving 7centres. Our centre recruited the most subjects for that study. This study also expose us to electronic data capture. CRFs, blood pressure measurements and ECG readings were captured electronically.
We are currently involved in the H3Arfica Kidney Disease Network Project. The project plans to document the genomic and phenotypic profile of kidney disease in African population. Our centre is one of nine centres. The project has two other supplementary studies to look at HIV associated nephropathy and HCV/HBV associated kidney disease.

Research interests

My centre is member of the H3 Africa Consortium, the Kidney disease Research Network Arm.
We collaborated with various centres locally and internationally:
Prof Jan Staessen of Prof Jan Staessen’s Hypertension Lab, the Studies Coordinating Centre, Division of Hypertension and Cardiovascular Rehabilitation, Department of Cardiovascular Diseases, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Prof Skorecki and Dr Walter Wasser of The Rappaport Family Institute for Research in the Medical Sciences, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.
Dr M A C Onuigbo of Midelfort Clinic, Mayo Health System, Eau Claire WI, USA & College of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA.
Locally we collaborate with:
Prof JM Oli who was part of the African American Diabetes Mellitus Project and presently of the H3 Africa Consortium the Diabetes Mellitus Arm.
Prof Rich Umeh, Prof Elvis Shu and Prof Obinna Onwujekwe of Consortium of Health Research and Advance Training (CHERAT) and Health Policy Research Group.

Disease areas

• Cancer
• HIV
• Malaria
• Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs)
• Other
• Respiratory Diseases
• TB

We can participate in drug trials in most of the above listed diseases

Other information

The research group has two sites to recruit subjects from: Enugu, Enugu State with University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital as base and Abakaliki, Ebonyi State with Federal Teaching Hospital Abakaliki as base.
The lead PI has a Masters degree in Clinical Research and postgraduate diploma in Sociology. The group understands the need for being GCP compliant and encourages its members to do GCP certification courses.

Documents