key: cord-0874735-8pd83h8v
authors: Shabbir, Asad; Ahluwalia, Amrita
title: Second wave and second opportunity: capitalising on cardiovascular research activity during the COVID-19 pandemic
date: 2020-11-23
journal: Eur Heart J Qual Care Clin Outcomes
DOI: 10.1093/ehjqcco/qcaa087
sha: 1dcbfbd2d87de866202184d8029a3496d8506713
doc_id: 874735
cord_uid: 8pd83h8v

nan

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed unprecedented pressure on healthcare systems and negatively impacted on research activity. Non-COVID research productivity has fallen owing to the closure of academic institutions, home-working and clinicianscientists being recalled to clinical service. However, pending the discovery of a vaccine recruitment of healthy volunteers and patients into COVID-19 clinical trials will be the primary route to identify potentially lifesaving treatments.

As a result of the reduced capacity to access primary care and 2-week wait appointments there is a significant risk of diagnostic delays in the management of chronic diseases which could lead to a looming crisis, including concerningly in cardiovascular disease (1) . Also, an implication of isolation measures has been the closure of research institutes and the reduction of non-COVID research outputs. to maximise the additional patients that may be eligible to recruit. Social distancing and protecting staff from unnecessary risk is a concern, however there is ample time to ensure clinical research facility preparedness to facilitate additional patient recruitment into clinical trials and rapid data analysis.

The economic conditions have also resulted in a perception of decreased funding for non-COVID research (2; 3) and whilst there is a focus on COVID-19 this

inevitably results in neglect of other equally and arguably more pressing areas of research; an issue that has been raised by many recently (4) . Restricting clinical research due to concerns related to COVID-19 whilst understandable, due to the many unknowns concerning the pandemic, may actually result in worse outcome for patients (5). It is possible that research funding may be more challenging to win in the mediumto long-term if the closure of charity shops in the UK for instance, which make up a significant proportion of revenue for charities that fund research, recurs with restrictions on retail space trading. It is important that key areas of disease that remain our biggest killers worldwide are not ignored.

A.

Jan 

The co-authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

The data used to form the figures in this manuscript are available on publicly available online (i.e. available on the internet) government and charity websites. The co-authors confirm that the all illustrations and figures in the manuscript are entirely original and do not require reprint permission.

The Invisible Epidemic: Neglected Chronic Disease Management During COVID-19

British Heart Foundation warns research investment could halve this year due to coronavirus

ESC Guidance for the Diagnosis and Management of CV Disease during the COVID-19 Pandemic. The European Society of Cardiology