About Us

This study will focus on various aspects of the lives and health of children from birth to adulthood with CF. ENHANCE will take place over a five-year period initially with a hope of further long-term extension into the future.

Huge progress has been made in managing cystic fibrosis in children over the last number of decades. A lot of what we understand about CF in childhood comes from research prior to some of the more dramatic improvements in the care of CF in children over the last 10 years. It’s going to be really important for us in the future to ensure that we really understand the evolution of symptoms and signs of disease in CF in this new era. It’s going to be very important for us to know whether outcomes in some children are better than in others and whether some previously seen aspects of disease can be avoided. We want to understand the differences between children without CF and children with CF and understand why some children with CF do better than others.

ENHANCE is a real-world study examining clinical outcomes of people with CF (PwCF) in this new CF care era. This study will involve children with CF across 13 paediatric CF centres in Ireland and the UK. We will be examining a wide range of well-established tests in the people participating in the study, as well as some newer, more sensitive tests looking at how the health and quality of life in people with CF changes over time.

As part of this study, the patient will undergo several tests on an annual basis from the time of recruitment. The tests are described in What’s Involved section. Where possible we will try to complete these tests at the child’s CF clinic visits, however we may ask that participants attend an additional visit once a year to complete remaining tests that are required as part of ENHANCE. Various samples such as blood, throat swabs and stool samples will also be collected and stored in our labs in Dublin (Children’s Health Ireland).