Professor Jill Belch

Professor Jill Belch

Professor of Vascular Medicine

Head of TICR / Vascular Medicine
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Professor Jill Belch is a Professor of Vascular Medicine, accredited in Rheumatology, Vascular Medicine, and Internal Medicine. She graduated as a Doctor from the University of Glasgow (MB ChB), where she completed her Research MD degree (1st class Honours, winner of Bellahouston Gold Medal) in 1987. She was appointed Senior Lecturer with Honorary Consultant status at the University Department of Medicine in Ninewells Hospital, Dundee, also in 1987, and became Professor of Vascular Medicine in 1995. From 2006 until January 2016, she was the Research Dean then Co-Dean of the Medical School. She was also NHS Tayside R&D Director for 10 years also to 2016. Further she established and became Co-Director of the Tayside Academic Health Partnership. She is a founder Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Science and a Fellow and Past Council Member of the Royal Society, Edinburgh. She is currently Head of the Institute of Cardiovascular Research fund raising appeal. Her research interests centre on cardiovascular disease with especial reference to peripheral arterial disease (PAD). She also has a keen interest in the environment and climate change effects on health and is researching environmental issues such as the effects of air pollution on disease requiring hospital admission. She is passionate about equality and is concerned air pollution and other climate change issues will seriously disadvantage those already without resource. She is the Medical School’s Chair of the Sustainability committee, and co-chairs the short-term working group on Air Pollution at the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh. She is Immediate Past President of both the UK Section of Vascular Medicine at the Royal Society of Medicine and the European Society of Vascular Medicine (ESVM), for whom she also chairs the ESVM Guidelines Committee. She was awarded an OBE in 2016 for Services to Medicine, Saltire Outstanding Women of the year in 2019, & Scotswoman of the Year in 2020 for service during the covid pandemic.

In the course of her Research she has:

  • Completed >32 single centre biomarkers trials
  • Chairman or Member of Trial Steering Committee/CI/site PI of 30  International multicentre clinical trails
  • Received Peer reviewed grant funding amounting to over £25m over 27 years
  • Circa 500 publications in peer reviewed Scientific Journals
  • 307 plenary/invited lectures Nationally 7 Internationally
  • Supervised 28 PhD, MD, MSc students
  • Held 7 Editorships or Editorial Board memberships
  • Past member of 4 MRC Grant Committees

Impact of Research

One of Professor Belch’s recent papers was selected as a high impact case in Research Excellence Framework assessment within the UK. Her work has been quoted in both National and International Guidelines and has modified treatment world-wide. Her work was recently selected as a finalist in the Herald Higher Education Research Awards.

She was involved in the first Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh, PAD Guideline (Medical management of peripheral arterial diseases 1998), leading to a second one in 2007 (Management of peripheral arterial disease), she participated in the recent NICE Quality Standard Advisory Committee (QSAC) for Peripheral arterial disease. Through this work she has contributed to the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QoF) process, introducing risk factor screening for PAD as local quality measure for Primary Care in the UK.

Her work in trial design within PAD has allowed Guidelines to be developed in this area, which have been used by both EMEA and FDA in developing regulations for drug registration in PAD (Study design options for clinical trials in PAOD patients; Transatlantic Conference on Clinical Trial Guidelines in PAD, Basel, Switzerland).

She now also works to encourage protection of the Scottish people from the effects of air pollution.

These are a selection of papers from the past 5 years but further work can be accessed via Google Scholar: 

  1. Rothwell PM, JF, Belch JFF et al.  Effects of aspirin on risks of vascular events and cancer according to bodyweight and dose: analysis of individual patient data from randomised trials. Lancet 2018;18: 387-399 doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31133-4.
    • Low doses of aspirin (75–100 mg) effective in preventing vascular events in patients weighing less than 70 kg, and had no benefit in the 80% of men and nearly 50% of all women weighing 70 kg or more. Higher doses of aspirin were effective in patients weighing 70 kg or more.
  2. SUMMIT Consortium, Shore AC, Belch JJF et al  Use of vascular assessments and novel biomarkers to predict cardiovascular events in type 2 diabetes ­ the SUMMIT VIP study. Diabetes Care 2018; 41(10):2212-2219. doi: 10.2337/dc18-0185.
    • Markers of inflammation and blood vessel stress reflect CV risk in subjects with diabetes with manifest Cardiovascular disease,
  3. Kitas GD, Belch JJF et al. TRACE RA Consortium.  A Multicenter, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Trial of Atorvastatin for the Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Events in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). Arthritis and Rheumatism 2019; 71(9): 1437-1449. doi: 10.1002/art.40892.
    • Atorvastatin is safe and results in a significant reduction of in patients with RA. The 34% CV Event risk reduction is consistent with the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists’ Collaboration meta-analysis of statin effects in other populations.
  4. Belch JJF, Fitton, C., Cox, B. et al. Associations between ambient air pollutants and hospital admissions: more needs to be done. Environ Sci Pollut Res. 2021: 28: 61848–61852. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-16544-0
    • This study shows a significant increase in all cause and CV hospital admissions, on high pollution days in Tayside, Scotland
  5. Fitton C, Cox B, Chalmers J, Belch JJF. An 18-year data-linkage study on the association between air pollution and acute limb ischaemia (ALI) VASA.2021 Nov;50(6):462-467. doi: 10.1024/0301-1526/a000972.
    1. ALI hospital admissions increased with ambient NO x and NO on days of high measured pollution levels and a cumulative effect was seen with PM10.
  6. Khan F, Belch JJF et al. Plaque characteristics and biomarkers predicting regression and progression of carotid atherosclerosis. Cell Reports Medicine, 2022: 3(7) Article number: 100676
    • These observations provide insight into the atherosclerotic process. Progression primarily occurs in fibrotic plaques and is associated with increased levels of Platelet Derived Growth Factor.
  7. Lambert M, Houston GJ, Littleford R, Fitton CA, Struthers A, Sullivan F,  Gandy S, Belch JJF.  Tayside Screening For Cardiac Events (TASCFORCE) study: a prospective cardiovascular risk screening study.  British Medical Journal. 2022; 12(10): e063594, doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2022-063594.
    • Age, female sex, ex-smoking status, lower heart rate, higher high-density lipoprotein and lower total cholesterol were independently associated with higher
  8. Fitton C.A, Belch, J.J.F. et al  Respiratory Admissions Linked to Air Pollution in a Medium Sized City of the UK: A Case-crossover Study. Aerosol Air Qual. Res. 2023; 23(8), 1-10, 230062. https://doi.org/10.4209/aaqr.230062

Guidelines 

1. Belch JJF, Carlizza A, Carpentier PH, Constans J, Khan F, Wautrecht J-C, Visona A, Heiss C, Brodeman M, Pécsvárady Z, Roztocil K, Colgan M-P, Vasic D, Gottsäter A, Amann-Vesti B, Chraim A, Poredoš P, Olinic D-M, Madaric J, Nikol S, Herrick AL, Sprynger M, Klein-Weigel P, Hafner F, Staub D & Zeman Z. ESVM guidelines – the diagnosis and management of Raynaud’s phenomenon. Oct 2017 In VASA 46, 6, pp 413-423 11 p. DOI:  10.1024/0301-1526/a000661

    • This paper is a European-wide evidence based Guideline on how to investigate and manage Raynaud’s in Primary Care. 

2.  Landmesser U, Chapman MJ, Stock JK, Amarenco P, Belch JJF, Borén J, Farnier M, Ference BA, Gielen S, Graham I, Grobbee DE, Hovingh GK, Lüscher TF, Piepoli MF, Ray KK, Stroes ES, Wiklund O, Windecker S, Zamorano JL, Pinto F, Tokgözoglu L, Bax JJ, Catapano AL; European Society of Cardiology/European Atherosclerosis Society Task Force. New prospects for PCSK9 inhibition? March 2018 In European Heart Journal. Doi: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehy147 

    • This paper gives recommendations to the medical profession in Europe on the best way to use a new class of fat lowering drugs, the PCSK9 inhibitors, which have shown to be very effective in reducing heart attacks, stroke and amputation.