With your help, we will be sponsoring a PhD student, Salma Miyan BSc, to complete her PhD thesis, which will review medical studies from around the world in the evolving field of Environmental Medicine.

Were aiming to raise £15,000 towards this research project, however, if we can raise more than our target, we hope to sponsor more PhD students to carry out further research into the impact of pollution on environmentally-sensitised people, suffering from conditions like asthma, eczema, rhinitis, migraine and allergy, and at the same time, help more people receive short-term treatment.

About Salma

Salma returned to university as a mature student in 2015 and graduated with first class BSc with honours in Nutritional Science. Her return to studies was preceded by a bout of illness, including ME/CFS and diagnosis of coeliac disease with other food sensitivities. Nutrition and lifestyle changes were key to her recovery and motivated her to want to study and understand more about the underlying mechanisms involved.

Salma's project - by Salma Miyan

I am thrilled to be at the start of my PhD project sponsored by the Environmental Medicine Foundation and co-supervised by researchers at Manchester Metropolitan University, The University of Manchester and Dr Jean Monro at Breakspear Medical.

The overall aim of my PhD project is to pull together the research conducted at Breakspear Medical and peer-reviewed studies from all over the world, which explore and outline the mechanisms underlying the causes and symptoms of allergy and chronic disorders, such as ME/chronic fatigue. Part of this will be studying and mapping the molecular, cellular and systematic effects of Environmental Medicine treatments that institutions around the world use, including the ones used at Breakspear Medical.

The recording and analysis of anonymised patient data is essential for medical research and in the development of Environmental Medicine. Therefore, a key aim of this project will be to create a bespoke data analysis tool that will allow us to analyse anonymised laboratory results and medical records from consenting patients. This will enable us to show real time results for how different groups of people respond to novel treatments and, in doing so, we will produce further evidence which we hope to publish in relevant scientific and clinical journals.

This project is not only important for increasing the pool of validated evidence for the success of Environmental Medicine treatments, such as those undertaken at Breakspear Medical, but also for increasing the understanding and awareness of environmental illnesses. The use of anonymised medical data relating to these treatments, alongside the mapping and research into the underlying workings of these treatments, will help researchers, clinicians and patients alike to understand better these chronic environmental conditions and lead to more treatments being available for people suffering from such conditions all over the world.

It is vital that projects such as these continue to be supported and I am really looking forward to working with the team at Breakspear Medical.