Researcher perspectives: George Nava

George Nava is a Specialist Registrar in Respiratory and General Internal Medicine, and a National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Academic Clinical Lecturer. He was recently successful in completing his PhD with NIHR Biomedical Research Centre: Bristol on the relationship between asthma, mental health conditions, wellbeing and brain imaging.

In August 2026, we spoke to George about his academic journey, his PhD and what motivated him to investigate whether asthma can lead to structural and functional changes in the brain.

Getting involved with research – uncertainties and unanswered questions

I had experienced research in small doses throughout my training, and even as a medical student I was drawn to the research behind what we were being taught. I was interested in why we know what we know, how discoveries happen, and where the gaps still are.

Medicine is full of knowledge, but the deeper you go, the more you realise that knowledge is not always absolute. There are limitations, uncertainties and unanswered questions, and I find that exciting.

Exploring the life of a clinical academic through the NIHR

Completing the NIHR Academic Foundation Programme in London gave me my first experience of life as a clinical researcher. It helped me understand what a clinical academic career could look like.

For me, being a clinical academic means working at the cutting edge of knowledge whilst remaining grounded as a clinician. It allows you to keep asking questions while staying connected to patients and clinical practice.

After completing core medical training, I worked in London and Australia. My respiratory training started in 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic. I was later awarded a NIHR Academic Clinical Fellowship. This brought me to Bristol and the Academic Respiratory Unit, where I began working with Professor James Dodd.

Investigating the link between asthma, mental health and brain imaging

Asthma is strongly associated with lower wellbeing, poorer quality of life and mental health, but the reasons for those links are not fully understood. Unpicking how asthma and mental health conditions are connected could help us develop new interventions to treat one or both conditions.

Part of my work focused on exploring shared genetics between asthma and mental health conditions. I wanted to understand whether there was evidence that asthma caused mental health conditions, or vice versa, or whether shared genetic factors might predispose people to both asthma and mental health conditions.

Another part of my research involved looking at brain imaging.

We know that mental health conditions are associated with differences in brain structure and function. Some studies suggest that this may also be the case with asthma.

Because asthma is an inflammatory condition, one of our key hypotheses was that inflammation involved in asthma might also affect the brain. We explored this using large-scale data from UK Biobank alongside state-of-the-art brain imaging techniques, in patients from the Bristol NHS asthma service, through the CONTENTED (Characterisation of neuroimaging and wellbeing over time in severe eosinophilic asthma treated with mepolizumab) study.

The NIHR BRC: Bristol was central to the interdisciplinary nature of my research. It allowed me to bring together respiratory medicine, mental health, genetics, imaging and data science, without which my research would not have been possible.

Improving the lives of people living with asthma

People with asthma are more likely to have a mental health condition than people without asthma, and that risk is even higher for people with severe asthma. These difficulties can sit on top of all the other impacts of living with a chronic illness.

Improving our understanding of the link between asthma and mental health will highlight to clinicians the importance of considering the presence and impact of mental health diagnoses when reviewing patients with asthma.

It can help patients in validating that their experience of living with asthma can reach beyond their lungs. I hope this work will point towards new routes for treatment of this aspect of asthma care.

Ultimately, I anticipate that this work will benefit people with asthma, especially those whose asthma is linked with poor wellbeing, anxiety, depression or other mental health difficulties.

Planning for the future

Now that I have successfully completed my PhD, I am looking forward to continuing my career as an NIHR-funded Academic Clinical Lecturer. This will allow me to complete my respiratory training and work towards becoming a respiratory consultant, while also benefitting from protected time for research.

The aim is to continue developing my research while building towards a larger advanced fellowship application and, ultimately, becoming an academic consultant in Bristol.

Routes that I am currently exploring for this include the use of virtual reality to develop treatments for breathlessness in asthma. Breathlessness can be one of the most difficult symptoms people experience. For some it persists beyond how active their asthma is and there are few effective treatments for it.