Lucie Wilson lecture for CORT 'The impact of low level CO on the brain'

For the third in the CO Research Trust autumn lecture series we welcomed Lucie Wilson a first-year PhD student at Sheffield Hallam University, to discuss her work into the effect of low level CO on the brain.

Lucie is a registered adult nurse with over 7 years of patient-facing clinical experience and a master’s degree in advanced nursing. Throughout her career, Lucie has gained experience working in a variety of settings including community medical, acute surgical and interventional radiology settings.

Her clinical background has informed her interest in CO as a public health issue, and she is excited to bring her medical training and expertise to the development of this area of research.

Most individuals are exposed to ambient levels of CO every day. Whilst plenty of research exists on the impact of acute, high level CO exposure in humans, the effects of low-level exposure remain largely unexplored. Relatively low exposure levels of 6ppm and below have been linked with cardiovascular diseases, such as stroke and heart disease. Additionally, levels of only 3ppm have been sufficient to cause neurovascular changes in humans, but the cognitive impact of low-level exposure remains poorly understood at present.

This PhD project, jointly funded by the CO Research Trust and Sheffield Hallam University, will address these gaps in knowledge with the use of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and Transcranial Doppler Ultrasound (TCD) techniques, to explore potential physiological and neurological responses in healthy adult volunteers, exposed to low levels of CO in a controlled experimental setting.

In this talk, Lucie presented novel pilot data on blood flow responses to low-level CO inhalation using TCD imaging, and how CO impact’s reaction time patterns and its brain correlates using fMRI.
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