My wife, Lelia Duley, who has died aged 67, was an obstetric epidemiologist who studied health outcomes related to pregnancy, childbirth and its aftermath.
Working alongside frontline clinicians, she designed large-scale trials to test commonly used, but under-evaluated, treatments for pregnant women.
In 1995 the results of the groundbreaking Collaborative Eclampsia trial, coordinated by Lelia, showed, among other things, that the use of magnesium sulphate instead of diazepam before delivery was a more effective treatment for eclampsia and also reduced mortality. As a result, practice changed overnight, with the use of diazepam dropped almost immediately and magnesium sulphate becoming the standard care option worldwide.
Lelia was born in Oxford to Gerald Duley, a British Leyland accountant, and Magda (nee Tölgyesi), a migrant from Hungary who operated early computers. After her secondary education in Oxford at St Edmund Campion school, she studied medicine at Aberdeen University, and we met for the first time when she was on a student placement at a hospital in Nazareth, Israel, where I was doing voluntary work.
After working as a house officer at various hospitals across the country in the early 1980s, in 1984 she became a research assistant within the departments of clinical epidemiology and obstetrics and gynaecology at the Royal London hospital. By 1990 she was a Wellcome fellow and principal investigator for the eclampsia trial at the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit in Oxford, with the results published five years later.
Later Lelia became deputy director of the UK Cochrane Centre, then an obstetric epidemiologist at the Nuffield Department of Medicine at Oxford University and a professor of obstetric epidemiology at Leeds University (2006-11). Her final position was as professor of clinical trials research at Nottingham University, where she specialised in trial design.
Wherever she worked Lelia led her researchers with intelligence, humility, charm and humour. She liked people, listened, and, above all, was committed to gathering the best possible evidence for pregnant women and their babies. At home she filled the house with the smell of her great cooking while tending to her lush gardens – and enjoying the company of friends from all corners of the globe.
Lelia retired in 2016 due to ill-health caused by chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, but despite setbacks and restrictions she far outlived her initial prognosis. Characteristically, she became a valued contributor to the work of CLL Support, a patient-led charity supporting people with leukaemia, and also enjoyed – and benefited from – a buddying facility run by Leukaemia Care which put her in touch with others with her condition.
We married in 1992. She is survived by me and our children, Lucy and Beth, and her two brothers, Steve and Chris. Her sister Clare predeceased her.
