The UK Multiple Long Term Conditions Research Registry

Principal Investigator: Professor Miles Witham

Recruiting people with multiple long-term conditions is essential if research studies are to be representative of people cared for by clinical services. Finding the right group of willing participants for studies in these conditions is not straightforward, as a full picture of a person’s complex health conditions, plus key additional information needed to match people to appropriate studies, is often not collected as part of routine clinical practice.

This project seeks to establish a UK wide registry of people with multiple long-term conditions interested in taking part in research. We will enrol 500 participants from 10 UK centres, aged 40 and over, living with four or more long-term conditions (from a standard list of 50 conditions including ageing syndrome, such as falls, frailty and sarcopenia, the age-related loss of muscle size and strength).

This registry will be used to help recruit people with multiple long-term conditions to future studies. As part of the project, we will use the registry to conduct a study of lifestyle factors (diet, activity, smoking, sleep and alcohol use) and their relationship to multiple long-term conditions in 200 participants. This will help to design future interventions to improve health for people with multiple long-term conditions.