Dr Ajay K Gupta

Profile

Study websites:

• CoPE- HCP: COVID-19 disease and Physical and Emotional Wellbeing of the Health Care Professionals
• SCRATCH-HTN

ORCID iD: 0000-0001-5807-8503

Ajay graduated in medicine (MBBS) with distinction in Pharmacology, and completed his initial core medical training (MD) from Delhi University. Subsequently, Ajay won a prestigious World Bank Scholarship award to do Master of Science (MSc) in epidemiology from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (University of London). After that, he did his PhD under the supervision of Profs Neil Poulter and Peter Sever from Imperial College, London. He completed his further specialist clinical training in General Internal Medicine and Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics from Royal London and St Bartholomew Hospital.

Ajay’s research to date has been in a broader field of preventive cardiovascular and metabolic medicine with a particular focus on hypertension, statin therapy, and diabetes. He has extensive experience of population health research, clinical trials design and management, and has been associated with several large phase-3 clinical trials, such as ASCOT. He has been on the end-point and adjudication committees of a few clinical trials and studies, such as PREMIUM, SABRE, and ORBITA.  When working in Imperial College, he gained substantial experience in analyses of large databases. Another research interest of Ajay is on reporting of drug-related adverse events in trials, and how are they captured in databases.

Recently, he has been involved in setting up a large cohort study - the ASCOT Legacy cohort.  Another research focus of Ajay is in the area related to the ethnic differences in the treatment response and the influence of ethnicity on cardiovascular outcomes, particularly amongst South Asian and Asian populations. Ajay also has extensive experience in doing meta-analyses and systematic reviews. He is interested in developing research programmes to inform clinical practice and generate hypothesis; by either utilising previously published data in various trials, studies and surveys or from developing various linkages with the administrative databases. He has been a member of editorial board of several journals and is a Senior Associate Editor of Journal of American Heart Association.

Clinically, Ajay works as Hon consultant in the Barts BP Centre of Excellence at Barts Heart Centre. He has a clinical interest in managing complex patients with multiple cardiovascular risk factors, including hypertension, diabetes and obesity. He works with patients with drug intolerance, and those with drug-related adverse effects, to help develop different strategies to manage their risk. In the past, he has been instrumental in developing clinical pathways, for example, he was instrumental in developing an ambulatory care clinic setup and setting up a secondary care diabetes clinic. In the past, he has extensively worked in several other sub-specialties, including Acute Medicine and Diabetes and Endocrinology, and has thus gained wide-based clinical experience in different specialities.

Academic Awards

• Finalist American Society of Hypertension 2008 Young Investigator Award
• Finalist Austin Doyle Award, International Society of Hypertension Conference, 2006
• Joint Japan World Bank Graduate Scholarship, 2003–4 for study in LSHTM, University of London
• Asian Development Bank Scholarship, 2003, University of Sydney
• 35^th World Heart Federation Fellowship 2001

Research

Group members

• Barts Cardiovascular CTU: Prof Amrita Ahluwalia (Interim Chair), Dr Vivienne Monk (Manager), Dr Saidi Mohiddin, Prof Steffen Peterson, Dr Dan Jones (Senior Lecturer), Jane Field
• Members of Blood Pressure Group: Dr Mel Lobo, Dr Vikas Kapil, Dr Fu Ng, Dr Gurvinder Rull, Dr David Collier, Dr Manish Saxena, Dr Peter Julu, Dr Chris Wolff, Mr Sotiris Antoniou
• Cardiovascular Genomics: Prof Mark Caulfield, Prof Patricia Munroe, Prof Moris Brown, Dr Fu Ng, Dr Helen Warren, Dr Claudia Cabrera, Dr Mike Barnes

Summary 

Dr Gupta’s research interests are mainly around the epidemiology and therapeutics related to the cardiovascular and metabolic medicine; the treatment and pathophysiology of hypertension, impact of statin therapy, and prevention of the cardiovascular events amongst those with diabetes. He has a particular interest in developing risk prediction models to help prevent major cardiovascular adverse events. He has worked extensively in evaluating the efficacy and utility of various newer and older antihypertensive agents. Ajay’s other research focus is in the area related to the ethnic differences in treatment response, and the relationship of the ethnicity with cardiovascular risk factors and diseases. In his research, he utilises the information available in the existing databases to develop evaluations that may, in turn, help improve the understanding about some of the less explored (but clinically significant) issues in the field of cardiovascular and metabolic medicine. For example, in the past, he has done several meta-analyses to answer clinically relevant questions. He has also used large clinical trial databases to generate evidence, which in turn has improved clinical practice and have generated the newer hypothesis. He aims to develop a portfolio of such research programme that can deliver tangible research outputs at significantly lower costs. 

ASCOT legacy cohort, and LATER dementia programme
Ajay is a part of the study team for the two ongoing cohort studies that are developed from the patients who were initially randomised in the Anglo-Scandinavian Cardiac Outcomes Trial. This is a cohort of 8600 hypertensive patients, who were initially followed up for 5.5 years as part of the original ASCOT trial, and after that, they are being followed for morbidity and mortality using various database linkages. In LATER Dementia project, the impact of blood pressure and lipid-lowering during mid-life is being examined for the subsequent development of cognitive impairment.

Other ongoing research projects

• Impact of BP control and BP variability on long-term morbidity and mortality.
• To evaluate the role of drug-related new-onset diabetes on cardiovascular morbidity and mortality.
• To evaluate the relationship of pulse pressure in comparison to systolic blood pressure as the marker of the future cardiovascular risk.

Publications

• Graham C, Steckelmacher J, Capel M et al. (2024). Nationwide trends in blood pressure control among those with and without diabetes in England over last 2 decades: Health Survey of England 2003-2019.

  
  

  DOI: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehae666.2561

  
  

  QMRO:
• Gupta A, Graham C, Capel M et al. (2024). Nationwide trends in major cardiovascular risk factors in England in the last 2 decades: Health Survey of England 2003-2019.

  
  

  DOI: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehae666.3603

  
  

  QMRO:
• Graham C, Steckelmacher J, Prasher J et al. (2024). Trends in hypertension prevalence and control in England over the last 3 decades: Health Survey of England 1994-2019.

  
  

  DOI: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehae666.2562

  
  

  QMRO:
• Steckelmacher J, Graham C, Maniero C et al. (2024). Managing hypertension in older people: current concepts.

  
  

  DOI: 10.1136/dtb.2023.000031

  
  

  QMRO: https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/100656
• Sposato LA, Gupta AK, Wu KC (2024). JAHA Spotlight on Neurocardiology: An Emerging Field Gaining Traction Among Neurologists and Cardiologists.

  
  

  DOI: 10.1161/jaha.124.038026

  
  

  QMRO: https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/99878
• Collett G, Korszun A, Gupta AK (2024). Potential strategies for supporting mental health and mitigating the risk of burnout among healthcare professionals: insights from the COVID-19 pandemic.

  
  

  DOI: 10.1016/j.eclinm.2024.102562

  
  

  QMRO: https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/96112
• committee W, Reith C, Preiss D et al. (2024). Effects of statin therapy on diagnoses of new-onset diabetes and worsening glycaemia in large-scale randomised blinded statin trials: an individual participant data meta-analysis.

  
  

  DOI: 10.1016/s2213-8587(24)00040-8

  
  

  QMRO: https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/95932
• Magavern EF, Kapil V, Saxena M et al. (2024). Use of Genomics to Develop Novel Therapeutics and Personalize Hypertension Therapy.

  
  

  DOI: 10.1161/atvbaha.123.319220

  
  

  QMRO: https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/96841
• Gupta A, Whiteley WN, Godec T et al. (2024). Legacy benefits of blood pressure treatment on cardiovascular events are primarily mediated by improved blood pressure variability: the ASCOT trial.

  
  

  DOI: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehad814

  
  

  QMRO: https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/94646
• Wu R, Williams C, Zhou J et al. (2024). Long-term cardiovascular risks and statin treatment impact on socioeconomic inequalities: microsimulation model.

  
  

  DOI: 10.3399/bjgp.2023.0198

  
  

  QMRO: https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/91103

Collaborators

Internal

• Jesmond Dalli (WHRI)

External

• Peter Sever (Imperial)
• Neil Poulter (Imperial Clinical Trials Unit)
• Timothy Collier (LSHTM)
• Teck Khong (St George’s)
• Neil Chapman (St Mary’s)

News

• Blood pressure medications and statins found to provide long-term cardiovascular benefits (QMUL), August 2017
• Some statin-related side-effects are due to 'nocebo' effect (QMUL), May 2017
• Statin side effects: Muscle pain, memory loss and erectile dysfunction might be all in the mind(Newsweek)
• Getting the right hypertension drug(American Renaissance), August 2010
• Getting the right hypertension drug (Wall Street Journal)