• Question: What sort of science do you study?

    Asked by pinkiepie to Kat, Andrew, Katie, Sadaf on 19 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by leah4444.
    • Photo: Andrew Swale

      Andrew Swale answered on 19 Jun 2013:

      I study Clostridium difficile (C. Diff) infection.

      C. Diff is a ‘superbug’ that people can catch in hospital and gives them severe diarrhoea.

      I take blood from these patients and extract their DNA to try to see if any markers are different in these patients compared to healthy people

    • Photo: Aikaterini Tsaousi

      Aikaterini Tsaousi answered on 19 Jun 2013:

      I study ‘atherosclerosis’, a disease of the cardiovascular system; the word basically describes the process of the disease which is progressive narrowing (and hardening) of the blood vessels. It usually comes with age and most commonly found in the arteries around the heart. At least 2.6 million people in the UK have narrowing of the arteries around the heart, which can lead to a heart attack, angina, or both.

      My work involves studying the behaviour of individual cells found in the blood vessel wall (called macrophages), which are thought to be ‘activated’ by fatty deposits and accelerate the condition.

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