Peter Elwood

Peter Elwood (born 1930) is professor of epidemiology who for more than two decades led the Medical Research Council's Epidemiological Unit in South Wales. In 1979 he initiated the Caerphilly Heart Disease Study.

Career Elwood completed four house jobs and six months in general practice, before opting towards epidemiology and studying whether some lung diseases favoured Northern Irish flax workers.

His work has included a 35 year study involving over 2,500 men, on the effects of aspirin on platelets and heart disease, carried out in Caerphilly, Wales.

He showed that absorption of iron from iron salts added to bread was at "about 4 per cent" in women with low hemoglobin level, which was lower than the previously assumed amount of "about 30 per cent". He showed that giving milk to vulnerable children at school was beneficial but was not re-implemented. It is not clear whether or not the participants of the study consented to it being conducted on them. The flour of the chapattis was laced with radioactive iron.

Selected publications

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