Finding a cure gives ex-football ace new goal in life

FORMER professional footballer Ray Henderson had always been very active even after hanging up his boots following a career with clubs including Hull City and Middlesbrough.

But when he repeatedly seized up with severe cramps in his right leg while out walking, he realised he had a problem.

Hospital tests revealed he had an abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA), a potentially fatal condition that was hampering the blood flow into his leg.

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Following two years of monitoring, he underwent major surgery to repair the problem which develops when the main blood vessel in the abdomen taking blood from the heart to the major organs swells like a balloon.

Doctors remain puzzled about what causes the condition – which claims 8,000 lives a year in the UK.

But experts from Leeds University plan to change that with help from hundreds of people from across the region including Mr Henderson. They also hope to find new ways of treating the condition, which is common in elderly men, and are appealing for more volunteers to come forward to help.

Mr Henderson, 73, of Boston Spa, played football for Middlesbrough, Hull City and Reading before going on to manage at Halifax Town and Southport and coaching at Everton but he stayed fit after leaving the sport for a successful career in business and remains so today.

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“Before I knew what it was, it wasn’t a problem,” he said. “At no stage did I feel ill but you’ve no chance if it goes. A lot of people have the problem but have no idea.”

Following his diagnosis, he had a device fitted to help his blood flow but regular check-ups showed the aneurysm was growing to a point where he needed surgery.

The grandfather-of-four was opened up “from top to bottom” in a five-hour operation at Leeds General Infirmary and has since suffered no further ill effects.

“It was fairly major surgery but fortunately it went well. The team there are brilliant,” he said.

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Most patients have no symptoms at first and many will die of other causes, but as the aneurysm gets larger, the risk of it bursting increases, usually with fatal results.

Its cause remains unclear, making it difficult for doctors to predict which patients are living with it and which are most likely to develop it.

But researchers say findings from the Leeds Aneurysm Development Study are helping to identify new ways of slowing down or stopping its progression so more patients can be treated safely before problems develop.

People with and without the condition are compared by looking at their lifestyles to assess the role of factors such as diet, smoking and exercise. Blood samples are also tested for proteins and genes that could cause the aorta wall to weaken.

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Julian Scott, Professor of Vascular Surgery at Leeds University, said: “Over 1,000 patients and control subjects have volunteered to help us with this work and thanks to them we now have one of the world’s largest collections of samples in the UK related to aneurysm development.

“Through this work, we are making good progress towards understanding what causes AAA and who is most at risk. Ultimately, we want to improve the treatment of patients with AAA, either through lifestyle changes or drug treatments.

“But there is still a lot that we don’t know and to answer these questions, we need to compare more patients with AAA to people without the condition.”

Latest findings show that patients with AAA tend to form denser blood clots that are harder to destroy with conventional clot-busting drugs. The larger the patient’s aneurysm, the denser the blood clots tend to be. Researchers now want to test how this type of densely-packed clot could trigger swelling in the aorta.

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Robert Ariens, reader in molecular vascular biology at Leeds, said: “It is possible that this type of dense clot releases active proteins that weaken the aorta wall, but without more experiments, we cannot say for certain.

“By learning more about the biological mechanisms that trigger AAA and allow the aneurysms to grow, we will get better at developing drugs to treat this condition.”

The study is funded by the Garfield Weston Trust for Medical Research into Diseases of the Heart, the Circulation Foundation, the British Heart Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.

Researchers want to recruit 1,000 people with AAA and 1,000 others without it but of a similar age and vascular research nurse Anne Johnson is available on 0113 343 7702 to answer questions.