The very first patient is delighted. “It’s much more convenient for me to come here” testifies this volunteer of a research which aims to know how and how long the antibodies resulting from the vaccines against Covid-19 are present in the body in people in good health. health, but also in those suffering from diabetes or obesity. This Friday morning, seven other study volunteers will not have to go to Rennes University Hospital, but willin the car park of the Vern-sur-Seiche health center (35). Here, a brand new truck brings research to patients.
“Open the field of possibilities”
“The idea germinated a few years ago to allow research to be exported outside the hospital,” explains Professor Bruno Laviolle, director of the clinical investigation unit at the CHU. In this flying consultation room, the duo of a doctor and a nurse has everything to perform, process and store urine and blood tests: a centrifuge, a refrigerator for samples and a freezer at -22°C. For Dr. Fabrice Lainé, head of the mobile clinical investigation unit, this new tool opens up a very wide range of possibilities.
“This is going to be particularly useful for volunteers with illness who tire a lot or those who suffer from a disability. We will also be able to carry out research in occupational medicine, by standing in a company’s parking lot to involve employees, or studying exposure to certain products among farmers by coming directly to them. This can speed up the general search. In many cases, people do not participate in research because going to the hospital scares them or coming is complicated for them”.
Soon, the truck will make it possible to carry out a research protocol which tests the effects of a diet rich in Omega 3 in nursing home residents, for which researchers need to regularly take blood samples in the twenty or so establishments where the study is taking place. “It can also allow local general practitioners to do research,” continues Dr. Lainé. General practitioners are overwhelmed with work and do not necessarily have the time or the equipment. Yet they are the ones who know their patients well. One can imagine, for example, that a doctor advises his smoking patients to go through our truck after their consultation as part of a study on a new drug for smoking cessation”. If no treatment is administered in the vehicle, it will make it possible to carry out all the control operations necessary to carry out and advance the research in progress.
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