We make every effort to ensure that all women having their antenatal care at our hospitals is aware of the eLIXIR study. At Guy’s and St Thomas’, information is available on the BadgerNet Maternity app, the routine online application used when pregnant women are completing their booking information form. At King’s College Hospital, this is provided in form of a leaflet in the maternity booking pack.
Use of data
Every woman attending antenatal care in our hospital trusts will automatically be included for use of their routine data and their babies’ unless they express a wish not to take part. This process is known as opt-out consent. You may also choose to withdraw participation from the study at any point without any consequences for your hospital care or that of your child.
If you have any questions or would want to have your or your baby’s health records removed from the data linkage, please contact, e: elixir@gstt.nhs.uk or t: 0773 816 8907, or write to: Lucilla Poston/ Tisha Dasgupta (lucilla.poston@kcl.ac.uk/tisha.dasgupta@kcl.ac.uk), Department of Women and Children’s Health, 10th Floor, North Wing, St Thomas’ Hospital, London SE1 7EH
See our Project Privacy Policy to learn more about how we use your data.
Blood samples
In contrast to use of data, we will ask you in person for express permission to take an extra blood sample for eLIXIR research, when you attend your first antenatal appointment (fetal scan appointment) at Guy’s and St Thomas’. You will be approached by a member of our research team who will either contact you beforehand by telephone or email, or in-person at your appointment. If you kindly agree to take part, we will ask you to review and sign a consent form which gives your agreement to an extra sample being taken when you give your routine blood samples. This is two extra tubes of 6 ml each, just under a tablespoon of blood.
With your permission, we can use these blood samples to investigate how your body works during pregnancy, what causes problems during pregnancy, and the effect of changes happening around you – such as the impact of local pollution or COVID-19 – and how this might affect you and your baby in future.
The COVID-19 Sub-Study
If you agree to take part in the COVID-19 Sub-Study and give a blood sample, we will be able to test your blood for the presence of antibodies to the virus. This test measures your antibody response to two different parts of the virus, so can distinguish between recent natural infection and vaccination. However, it is not always possible to distinguish between vaccination and a natural infection you had longer ago. We also are still learning about how long antibodies stay in your blood after vaccination.
If you have taken part in the COVID-19 Sub-Study and are worried about your results, please contact the study team on eLIXIR@kcl.ac.uk.
If you are interested in finding out more, you may be eligible to take part in the Brain Imaging in Babies study, which offers further antibody testing and an MRI scan of your baby’s brain. If you would like more information, please contact the study team on gsttr.bibs@nhs.net.
