What springs to mind when you hear the words ‘Human Appetite Lab’?

Benches full of bubbling test tubes? Conical flasks full of rainbow-coloured liquids?

Plates full of ‘bush-tucker’, designed to test our appetites to the limit?

Maybe you’re a bit of a sci-fi fanatic and you noticed that its initials spell ‘HAL’, and you are visualising evil computers a la 2001: A Space Odyssey?

If any of these are what you pictured, you might be disappointed to learn that it is in fact no more than a small suite of cubicles attached to our clinic, where we sometimes ask volunteers to eat a meal alone and in silence.

What’s the point in this? Well, we can learn a lot about the human appetite by getting people to concentrate on what they’re eating without any distraction from outside stimulus.

To help with some clinical staff training, I had a go in the HAL myself, and here’s how it went:

3pm: I wait outside the HAL for a member of the clinic team to let me in. I’m not allowed to knock on the door, as this would break the silence and might affect the other volunteers who are already eating. I realise that this ‘no outside stimulus’ rule is taken very seriously.

3.10pm: After being shown into my cubicle, I must wait in silence for 10 minutes before my meal is brought to me. The space is small without being too tight or claustrophobic, and the walls are plain white but for one canvas, which has an inoffensive picture of some leaves in pastel shades. Actually, I really, really enjoy this part! As a full-time-working Mum, I cannot remember the last time I sat for 10 minutes with nothing to do and no distractions! I almost wish I could stay and enjoy the peace a little longer, but I can smell food and my stomach is growling. (I’m usually a lunch-at-12 kind of girl, so I am ready for whatever’s on offer!)

3.15pm: One of my clinic colleagues brings in a tray full of food. Emphasis on FULL! There’s half a sliced cucumber, a dessert-bowl full of salad leaves, another full of yoghurt and a whole family-sized lasagne in its plastic tray. I’m not exaggerating when I say there’s enough here to feed four. Good thing I’m hungry!

I’m told that I must take vertical strips from the lasagne, transfer it onto my plate and eat everything on my plate before taking any more. I suppose that this will allow the clinicians to accurately measure how much I’ve eaten. Before she leaves, the trainee tells me that the purpose of this exercise is to eat until I feel ‘comfortably full’, and that if I do finish all of my lasagne before I reach this point then they will bring me more. Wow!

3.25pm: I’ve munched my way through one sliver which is about 1/5^th of the width of my family lasagne. It was delicious! I nibble a bit of cucumber and think about eating some more. And then I realise that I don’t know whether I am ‘comfortably full’ or not! I could definitely walk away now and feel satisfied. But I’m sure there’s room for more! I have a long think about calling it a day. But the food is delicious, it’s free, and if I leave now I will be wasting over ¾ of a lasagne! So I cut one more small sliver. Yum!

3.35pm: As I waddle back to my desk, my stomach gurgles again but for a very different reason. I have definitely pushed myself to the less comfortable side of ‘comfortably full’.

So my experience of the Human Appetite Lab was a bit of an eye-opener! Firstly, it made me realise that our appetites are very sensitive to external factors. Even alone, in a silent room with blank walls, I still responded to cues outside of my own body – namely, a sense of obligation not to waste a free meal! Secondly, and a little worryingly, I learned that I am used to valuing these external cues over my body’s own reaction to food. I genuinely struggled to recognise when I was full.

It’s a common problem. When deciding how much of a meal to eat, most of us are influenced in some way by what’s going on around us. You are likely to eat more if your dining companions are really enjoying their meal, and less if they complain about the food. It is very common to feel obligated to eat everything on your plate, even if this means eating more than the body actually wants or needs. If you eat in front of the TV (and let’s face it, who doesn’t), you can be influenced by what you are watching; for example, you might eat more if you tune into Nigella Lawson and significantly less if you’re watching Embarrassing Bodies. You might even keep picking at a meal which you’ve ‘finished’ until a show ends, or there’s an ad break, an opportunity to scrape your plate and get out of ‘eating mode’.

This is why the HAL plays such an important role in some of our studies. Obesity is on the increase, and it contributes to a huge range of diseases, from type 2 diabetes to cancer. There’s an increasing demand on the Pharmaceutical industry to help find solutions to the obesity epidemic. One way to tackle it is to create treatments which reduce the human appetite, and by reducing the number of external stimulus which can affect us, the HAL helps us to establish whether the drug is working. Simple, but effective!

Would you like to eat a meal in the HAL? Give us a call on 0113 394 5200 and ask us about our upcoming food effect studies!

An autoimmune disorder is any illness in which the body turns on itself – white blood cells which are designed to protect your body’s intricate systems malfunction and attack. There are many different autoimmune diseases with a huge range of symptoms, but they’re often referred to as ‘invisible illnesses’ because they chiefly effect the interior working of glands, joints and the nervous system.

One example which the Pharmaceutical industry is becoming increasingly aware of is Sjogren’s syndrome. As an invisible illness,
this one is quite the heavy-hitter. It may be unfamiliar to you, and you might well be wondering how to even say it! Aptly, Sjogren’s is pronounced ‘Show-Grins’ – and as is the case with many invisible illnesses, sufferers are inclined to put on a brave face. Despite chronic pain, fatigue and discomfort, they still show a grin to the outside world.

So what is Sjogren’s syndrome? With this particular disorder, the immune system attacks the body’s moisture producing glands. Sjogren’s is typified by dryness and associated discomforts – sore, burning eyes, swollen tongue, difficulty swallowing, and painful sex. Patients with Sjogren’s are usually reliant on false tears and even false saliva day-to-day.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, Sjogren’s also carries with it a wide range of other symptoms, including fatigue, musculoskeletal pain, swollen glands and loss of sensation, and no two sufferers’ symptoms are exactly alike. It evades diagnosis, often masquerading as Multiple Sclerosis, Lupus or Fibromyalgia. One of the most relied-upon tests for Sjogren’s syndrome is a biopsy of tissue from the inside of the lip, but even this can produce a false negative result if the illness is mild or in its early stages.

Because of all of the above, it takes an average of 4.7 years between the onset of symptoms and diagnosis. One famous Sjogren’s patient, Venus Williams, actually waited 7 years to be diagnosed!

At the time of her diagnosis in 2011, Williams was absent from professional tennis for almost a whole year, but in 2015 she regained world top 10 ranking. An incredible achievement for the athlete who recently admitted she has ‘struggled with fatigue for years’. Her success shows that a carefully managed diet and treatment of individual symptoms when they occur can really help to control Sjogren’s syndrome. However, there is no cure or single treatment available of this systemic illness – yet.

In late 2015, we started studying a new potential treatment for Sjogren’s Syndrome, designed to treat the underlying cause of the illness rather than just relieving some of its symptoms. To make sure that we can get this drug through to the next phase of testing, we still need to recruit several groups of healthy men and women aged 18 – 55. As well as helping to provide some hope for patients with Sjogren’s Syndrome, these volunteers will earn from £1644 – £2751 for their time. Could you help us with this study? Click here for full details!

[fullwidth background_color=”” background_image=”” background_parallax=”none” enable_mobile=”no” parallax_speed=”0.3″ background_repeat=”no-repeat” background_position=”left top” video_url=”” video_aspect_ratio=”16:9″ video_webm=”” video_mp4=”” video_ogv=”” video_preview_image=”” overlay_color=”” overlay_opacity=”0.5″ video_mute=”yes” video_loop=”yes” fade=”no” border_size=”0px” border_color=”” border_style=”” padding_top=”20″ padding_bottom=”20″ padding_left=”0″ padding_right=”0″ hundred_percent=”no” equal_height_columns=”no” hide_on_mobile=”no” menu_anchor=”” class=”” id=””][one_full last=”yes” spacing=”yes” center_content=”no” hide_on_mobile=”no” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” background_position=”left top” border_size=”0px” border_color=”” border_style=”” padding=”” margin_top=”” margin_bottom=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”” animation_speed=”0.1″ class=”” id=””][fusion_text]When we talk about psoriasis, we are usually referring to it as a skin condition- the inflamed, flaky patches or ‘plaques’ which most often form on the hands, scalp and in the creases of joints. But over and above this, psoriasis is an incurable, inflammatory disease which affects a sufferer’s entire system, and often takes a profound toll on patients’ mental health. A new study at Covance Leeds aims to make the condition easier to manage.

 When a person has psoriasis, they produce skin cells ten times faster than average. This results in the formation on thick plaques of inflamed, red skin, which can often have a flaky top layer of dead and dying skin cells. As well as being irritating, psoriasis plaques can be painful and intensely itchy. Psoriasis patients can find it hard to sleep or to complete basic daily tasks during a ‘flare up’.

If that wasn’t enough to contend with, psoriasis is a systemic disease which is more than just skin deep. Psoriatics have around a 30% chance of going on to develop psoriatic arthritis, which causes pain and swelling in the joints and spine, and has similar symptoms to rheumatoid arthritis.

There also appears to be a connection between psoriasis and a variety of other diseases. There is a 27% higher incidence of diabetes in psoriasis patients. A higher than average proportion of psoriatics develop Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis, as well as several different types of cancer.

Even without these potential complications, psoriasis is often very damaging to a patient’s mental health. In a society where image counts for so much, the outwardly-apparent nature of psoriasis can have a crippling effect on self-esteem. There is also a persistent misconception that psoriasis is a contagious rash (it categorically ISN’T), which means that patients can be isolated or ostracized from a very young age. It is hardly surprising that many psoriatics suffer from depression; and tragically, a high number of psoriatics have reported having suicidal thoughts.

 Currently, there is no cure for psoriasis, but there is hope in the form of a new treatment  which is being developed at Covance. This new drug works in a similar way to therapies which are already available, but it is believed to be more effective and safer than the other drugs which are currently on the market. This means that it may be possible to treat psoriasis effectively with a smaller dose, and with a lower risk of side effects.

To help us with this study, we are looking for men and women aged 18-65 with moderate to severe psoriasis who are able to attend a 3 day stay at our clinic in Leeds and 8 outpatient visits. For taking part in this study, volunteers will be paid £1930. Interested? Click here to become a volunteer.

Even if you are not a psoriasis patient, if you are over 18, and would like to help us develop new treatments for psoriasis and a host of other illnesses, click here to apply.

Recently, we’ve been recruiting healthy men and women to participate in the study of a new treatment for Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis. The name’s a bit of a mouthful and it’s not a disease we hear about very often… so what is it, and why are we interested in treating it?

Pulmonary fibrosis is a lung disease which causes scar tissue to form between the air sacs in the lungs. As you’d imagine, this makes breathing laboured and difficult, and it also hinders the process of transferring vital oxygen into the bloodstream.

Presently, our understanding of this disease is very limited – the word ‘idiopathic’ means that the cause of the illness is not known, and the condition was only given a name at all in the year 2000. What we do know about IPF is that it is not contagious, it is not a form of cancer and it is not the same as cystic fibrosis. We know that it’s more prevalent in men, and it’s more common in older people. We know that it may be connected to smoking, or exposure to dust and other harmful chemicals. And tragically, we know that half of the people diagnosed with IPF will not survive for more than 3 years.

Although you might not be familiar with IPF, you will most likely have heard of the actor Marlon Brando and stunt-driver Evil Knievel, both of whom lost their lives to this disease.

The early symptoms of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis include an extreme breathlessness caused by simple tasks like getting dressed, and patients can also suffer from anaemia-like symptoms of weightloss, fatigue and joint pain. Unfortunately, as IPF is a rare disease, these symptoms can be misdiagnosed as signs of ‘getting older’. Once a GP suspects IPF, chest x-rays and CT scans can be used to give a positive diagnosis – if a patient has this condition, the scans will show a ‘honeycomb’ of scarring within the lungs.

There is currently no cure for this disease. ‘Pulmonary rehab’, which is like gentle physiotherapy for the lungs, can be useful in helping patients to control the condition and breathe more comfortably. Oxygen tanks can also help by enriching the blood supply. A new drug called pirfenidone has been shown to slow the development of scar tissue in the lungs, but it is not effective for everyone, and it has a number of common side-effects including insomnia and sensitivity to sunlight.

In Leeds, we are holding clinical trials for a new drug which has anti-scarring properties similar to pirfenidone, but which appears carry less risk of side-effects, in the hope that one day, it can be used to improve the prognosis for all patients with IPF. Men and women aged 18-65 with no ongoing health conditions can take part in this study, and be paid from £100 per day for helping us carry out this important research. If you’d like to be one of them, click here to apply for this study, or give us a call on

 0113 3945 200.

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This week, I met up with 4 University of Leeds students who have just started a 12 month placement in the Covance Research Clinic. After a bit of a friendly natter, I learned a lot about their experience so far, their plans for the future… and how to cope with handling bodily fluids on a daily basis!

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