History Of The MRC Epidemiology Unit In South Wales

Between 1936 and 1942 Philip D ;Arcy Hart co-ordinated, on behalf of the MRC,a series of surveys of chronic pulmonary disease in South Wales coal miners to address the growing concerns about the respiratory health of miners.[1] To investigate further the causes of lung disease in miners the MRC established the MRC Pneumoconiosis Research Unit at Llandough Hospital in 1945.[2] In 1948 Dr Archie Cochrane joined the unit and established a team carrying out what he called ”clinical and environmental studies”. During the 1950s this team was largely concerned with epidemiological studies of respiratory disease in miners. They did, however, carry out electro-cardiographic surveys and studies of blood pressure at the behest of Dr Bill Miall. In 1960 Cochrane became the David Davies Professor of Tuberculosis and Chest Diseases at the Welsh National School of Medicine and the MRC agreed toseparate his team to create an MRC Epidemiology Unit in South Wales.[3] In 1974 on the retirement of Cochrane, Dr Peter Elwood took over until his own retirement in 1995, at which point a decision was made to close the Unit. Mr Peter Sweetnam took running the Unit until the end of March 1999 when the Unit closed. In addition to work on mining communities, the Unit carried out studies of other industrial workers, iron deficiency anaemia, migraine, eye disease, aspirin, environmental lead, milk supplementation, and cardiovascular disease. Perhaps the most influential study the Unit carried out was the randomised-controlled trial of aspirin, which showed for the first time that daily aspirin might reduce mortality following myocardial infarction.[4] The paper describing the results of this study was among the fifty most cited papers published in the British Medical Journal.[5]

References

1. D’Arcy Hart P with Tansey EM. Chronic pulmonary disease in South Wales coal mines: an eye-witness account of the MRC surveys (1937-1942) Social History of Medicine 1998; 11: 459-468.

2.rspectives on the role of the MRC Eds: Austoker J, Bryder L.. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989 pp. 137-161.

3. Cochrane AL, with Blythe M. One Man’s Medicine British medical Journal: London 1989.

4. Elwood PC, Cochrane AL, Burr ML, Sweetnam PM, Williams G, Welsby E, Hughes SJ, Renton R. A randomised controlled trial of acetyl salicylic acid in the secondary prevention of mortality from myocardial infarction. BMJ 1974; i: 436-440.

5. Dixon B. The “top 50”; a perspective on the BMJ drawn from the Science Citation Index. BMJ 1990; 301: 747-751.