“It makes me feel special”
It has been a long journey for Alisa Riaz, who first had symptoms of asthma in early childhood. However, it wasn’t until she started to have children of her own that her health took a turn for the worse. It left her struggling to walk up and down stairs, hold a conversation and manage even minimal levels of exercise.
She said: “When I’m pregnant, everything is fine. I’m so healthy! But when I had my daughter things were rapidly going really bad. It wasn’t just breathing now, it was everything. My joints were hurting, I had swollen joints, and I lost the feeling in my leg. It was pretty dramatic, those six weeks after having my daughter. When I was holding her bottle I couldn’t hold it up straight, so that was when I knew something wasn’t right.”
Despite many trips to the doctors and a range of inhalers, Alisa – who comes from Peterborough – was still breathless. She couldn’t be weaned from the steroids that were being used to control the worst of her symptoms so she was referred to the severe asthma clinic at Leicester’s Hospitals.
A conversation with the ‘kind nurses in Leicester’ encouraged Alisa to take the first step into research. She said: “It sounds like a cliché, but I thought it was something that would maybe help others, whatever they can find out from doing research on me. So that was my main reason. I was ready to give something back.”
Global first patient
In February 2020, Alisa became the first person in the world to enter a study testing a new medicine to treat asthma.
The medicine had already been tested in healthy volunteers, but this was the first time it had been tried in a patient with asthma. As it is a ‘double-blind’, ‘randomised’ trial, neither the patient nor the doctors know whether Alisa has received the new medicine or a placebo (‘dummy’ medicine that looks like the new medicine but has no active ingredients).
Mrs Riaz, who is married with four children, said: “The nurse told me I was the first person in the world to join the study and I was absolutely amazed that was the case. It makes me feel special, actually! I’m part of history. It’s definitely something to smile about.”
Helping future patients
Professor Peter Bradding, who is a Consultant Respiratory Physician at Leicester’s Hospitals and Clinical Professor of Respiratory Medicine at the University of Leicester, is the study doctor. He said: “The purpose of this study is to test the safety of a new medicine and understand the effects it has on people with asthma. Participation in the study is entirely voluntary so we are hugely grateful to Mrs Riaz and other patients who will join the study for giving up their time. While it may or may not benefit them directly, it is a step towards finding treatments that may help patients like them in the future.”
For now, Alisa said she feels ‘great, absolutely fit’ and brims with positivity.
