Caerphilly Heart Disease Study

The Caerphilly Heart Disease Study, also known as the Caerphilly Prospective Study (CaPS), is an epidemiological prospective cohort, set up in 1979 in a representative population sample drawn from Caerphilly, a typical small town in South Wales, UK.

The initial aim was to examine relationships between a wide range of social, lifestyle, dietary and other factors with incident vascular disease. Opportunity was also taken, in collaboration with a range of clinical and laboratory colleagues, to collect data on a wide range of factors with possible relevance to diseases other than vascular, and at the same time to collect clinical information on incident disease events. The study was initiated by Professor Peter Elwood OBE, Director of the Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit for South Wales. The work has so far led to over 400 publications in the medical press.

In 1948, an MRC epidemiological unit was set up in Cardiff, South Wales, under Professor Archie Cochrane. Peter Elwood joined Cochrane in 1963 and together they promoted long-term studies of representative population samples. They also conducted randomised controlled trials to test a variety of clinical hypotheses. Undoubtedly, the most important of their joint studies was a randomised controlled trial of aspirin showing a reduction of vascular mortality.

Reported in the British Medical Journal in 1974, this was the first study to demonstrate a protective role for aspirin in the reduction of death and reinfarction. The British Medical Journal recognised this article as one of the 50 most frequently cited papers published between 1945 and 1989.

Following this trial, Elwood and his research team set up the Caerphilly Heart Disease Study, with their primary focus on vascular disease, and the identification of predictors for platelet activity and thrombosis. Caerphilly was chosen for the work because the population was fairly stable, it had age and social class structures similar to that of the whole UK population, and there was a high incidence of ischaemic heart disease compared with the rest of the UK.

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