Alixe Kilgour is an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh and an NRS Clinician. She is based in the Department of Ageing and Health within Usher. Her current research interests are sarcopenia, frailty and the relationship between cognitive and physical ageing. Her current research focus is the use of physical activity in the treatment of sarcopenia, clinical trials in older adults, and major trauma in older adults.
She is a Medicine of the Elderly Consultant in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, working clinically in Orthogeriatrics, Frailty at the Front Door and the Major Trauma Unit. She is Clinical Lead for Orthogeriatrics and Medicine for the Elderly in Major Trauma.
Her PhD developed a novel methodology to measure neck muscle cross-sectional area on MRI brain scans, thus allowing one scan to provide a measure of both brain and muscle structure. She worked within the Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology (CCACE) and on the Lothian Birth Cohort (LBC) 1936 Studies.
She has supervised SSC projects for the University of Edinburgh, led two systematic reviews on physical activity in older adults, worked as a Co-Investigator on the Result:Hip trial, and continues to lead on muscle measurement in the LBC1936 studies. She is currently supervising a PhD student looking at frailty in LBC1936 participants. She is a co-author on a current Cochrane review investigating the use of resistance exercise after stroke. She is co-director of the RCPE course, An Introduction to Clinical Research Including Critical Appraisal.
Alixe is working with EMERGE on the FORCE:SEE study, which is investigating whether handgrip strength, Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB) score and frailty status can predict adverse outcomes following an acute medical admission. Specifically, which factors are predictive of 30-day readmission.