• Question: do many people have the disease you study?

    Asked by louis to Kylie on 13 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Kylie Belchamber

      Kylie Belchamber answered on 13 Jun 2016:

      Yes, loads!
      We think that about 65 million people in the world have COPD, which is a long term lung disease where people find it harder and harder to breathe, because their lungs are damaged. They get damaged from smoking, or from pollution, or from breathing in smoke from a fire all day, every day. It only affects old people, about ages 50 plus (but there is an early type that can affect people aged 30 plus).
      About 3 million people a year die from COPD, so it is a big problem in the world, and costs a lot of money to treat, because people are sick for 5-20 years.

      In the UK, about 1.2 million people have COPD and about 30,000 die per year. To compare that to other diseases, about 2.5 million people have cancer in the UK. That includes all types of cancer (lung, breast, skin, brain etc).

      It is nice to study something that affects so many people, as your research have a big impact on so many families. Working on less common diseases is important too, as they normally don’t get many people fighting for them, so they need all the help they can get!

      I hope that is what you were looking for 🙂

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