Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health
Head: Prof Fares Haddad
The Institute brings together the various
bodies doing sports and exercise-related research at UCL, which include
the John Scales Centre for Biomedical Engineering, ASPIRE, the Institute of Human
Performance, the Hatter Institute and many others. One of the aims is to integrate all their sports and
exercise-related research to facilitate the use of limited funds. Our
key partners in terms of sports-related work and research outside of
UCL will be the universities of Warwick, Nottingham, Loughborough,
Sheffield and Bristol and Bath.
Our Research
There will be a great deal of clinical work focusing on high-end outcomes in athletes and in sport as a whole. Many of our interventions, particularly drug-related and surgical interventions for injuries, have tended to accept a less than perfect outcome. We are now looking at systems for trying to return injuries back to normal function and having ways of recording and documenting that process.
Professor Hugh Montgomery and his team have been leading research on the genetics of bone physiology, and in particular of stress fractures in athletes. We have published on this and it is now being extended to the elite athletic population. We are looking at genetic polymorphisms to see if we can identify groups at risk of certain injuries and groups more suited to one sort of exercise/ sport or another.
Another area of research is the clinical and imaging assessment of the young adult hip in sport. This is a key source of morbidity which was previously unrecognised. Young sportsmen and women start to damage their hips at a very young age and that groin pain which was previously ascribed to soft tissue problems is in fact a bony problem in the hip joint that later leads to osteoarthritis and a hip replacement. We now have good ways of imaging that and minimally invasive interventions that can deal with the problem and hopefully change the natural history for these people, not just getting them back to sport but also allowing them a longer lifespan without major hip surgery.
London 2012
A great deal of the research is focused on optimising
our athletes for London 2012.
The Institute includes the British Olympic Medical Institute Science and Research Unit, which is based in the Rosenheim building. The Unit focuses on scientific activities aimed at improving the understanding of the effects of various training paradigms on human performance as well as developing innovative technical solutions, training methodologies and nutritional interventions in partnership with academic institutions, the home countries' home institutes and UK sport and Olympic sponsors.
The work of the Institute will focus partly on
translating the current knowledge in sports and exercise medicine to
the general public for public health benefit, but also on trying to
deliver that extra 1% that makes a difference between gold medals and
also-rans in elite sport/athletics. The whole idea is that exercise
medicine is made available in the community to decrease risks of
cardiovascular problems, diabetes and other problems.
External partners
The Institute has a number of external partners
including the English Institute of Sport, the British Olympic
Association, and it is also involved in looking after UK Athletics and
professional rugby and football clubs, such as Saracens and Tottenham
Hotspur.
Details of current research groups within the Institute are listed below:-
|
Research Group |
Head |
Email |
| Extreme environment | Mick Grocott |
mike.grocott@ucl.ac.uk |
| British Olympic Medical Institute Labs | Marco Cardinale | marco.cardinale@boa.org.uk |
| Surgical Optimisation | Monty Mythen |
monty.mythen@uclh.nhs.uk |
| Orthopaedic Outcomes Group | Fares Haddad |
fares.haddad@uclh.nhs.uk |
| Upper Limb Group | Carlos Cobiella | tbc |
| Imaging | tbc | tbc |
| Hip Deformity | Johan Witt |
johan.witt@uclh.nhs.uk |
| Sports Education | Peter Hamlyn |
tbc |
| Centre for Neuroscience in Sports |
Peter Hamlyn |
tbc |
|
Human Health & Performance |
Hugh Montgomery |
h.montgomery@ucl.ac.uk |
