There are about 25435 clinical studies being (or have been) conducted in United Kingdom. The country of the clinical trial is determined by the location of where the clinical research is being studied. Most studies are often held in multiple locations & countries.
The coronavirus pandemic has had demonstrable impact upon healthcare workers. For healthcare workers this has meant disruption to vital access to peer support networks. In May 2020 the United Nations (UN) published a policy brief highlighting the importance of supporting mental health and wellbeing for communities affected by coronavirus. There is a need to find innovative solutions to facilitate support in the post-COVID-19 era and some innovations are emerging to fill this void but an evidence, long-term, sustainable, solution is yet to be proposed. In response, a digital app has been co-developed by UK researchers and healthcare staff with the intent to facilitate a virtual peer support mechanism for National Health Service (NHS) staff.
With the recent worldwide outbreak of the COVID-19 infection and the huge impact it has had upon lives in the UK, it is key to increase knowledge on the impact of the virus on the body. Certain aspects of the virus' characteristics are also poorly understood: The reason behind the variation in response between individuals, and the long-term impacts of infection upon the body. It is already known from previous research that muscle-health plays an important role in health, with other illnesses known to have an impact upon muscle health. A large number of studies have investigated the relationship between muscle and health, with an increasing focus upon the impact upon the mitochondria within the muscle cells. Mitochondria are the energy-producing component of a cell and are vital not just for the muscle-cells but for the body as a whole. The researchers hope that by investigating the impact of COVID-19 infection upon human skeletal muscle, the question of why individuals have different responses to the infection and the mechanism of the longer-term impact of infection can be answered. This added knowledge will then, hopefully, be able to guide therapy targets in the future.
Asthma is a common lung condition that causes long-term breathing problems. There is no cure and if uncontrolled can be life threatening. Many asthma deaths are preventable if managed using a personalised treatment plan explaining what to do when unwell, how to manage symptoms and correct inhaler use. Those with controlled asthma are less likely to be admitted to hospital and more likely to have an improved quality of life. COVID19 has emphasised the need to redesign healthcare delivery to reduce avoidable exposure. Clinical services are turning to remote care including online digital health apps. Digital health offers mechanisms to promote effective asthma care, offer remote individual treatment plans, monitor asthma control in 'real time' and provides information to prevent asthma attacks. Regulatory health guidelines recognise that technology has the potential to improve asthma care and could lead to reductions in NHS service use and improve symptoms. This study aims to evaluate the delivery of an asthma self-management app 'myAsthma' in a secondary care asthma service. Patients will use the app to input and track their symptoms and report their medication usage. The app provides information on environmental triggers such as air quality to better prepare asthma sufferers in preventing an asthma attack. It offers educational videos to improve understanding of asthma, including online training in inhaler technique. The goals are to increase adherence to and correct use of medication, help patients self-manage dynamically to reduce their risk of an asthma attack and equip healthcare professionals with the data to identify those people at higher risk of an attack. This is an unblinded randomised controlled trial with two arms: standard care (control) and myAsthma with standard care (intervention). Asthma control will be compared between the groups. It is a single-centre study which will take place in Bradford Teaching Hospital. A minimum of 60 participants will be recruited into the study and randomised on a ratio of 1:1 - 30 in the control arm and 30 in the intervention arm. Over 6 months outcomes will be measured using a combination of questionnaires and Asthma Control Test Scores (measure of symptom control). The main outcome of this study is to explore the efficacy of this new model of service delivery, whether it can provide an improvement in asthma control test scores, and will lead to a fully powered randomised controlled trial.
The investigators are currently conducting a research study, called PRESTO, in the pre-hospital environment where the investigators are asking paramedics to talk to patients about participating in the research study, interpret a heart tracing (or ECG), take a blood sample and record some study specific information. Apart from ECG interpretation, these are activities that the paramedics would not normally do and so the investigators had to provide training in order to ensure that these activities were carried out to the same standard across the four ambulance services that were involved, all of who have different working practices. In order to do this, the investigators provided a training package based around four subject areas - blood sample collection, heart tracing interpretation, background to the study and the importance of conducting the study activities to a high standard (called Research Fundamentals). These were presented to the paramedics either as online training or in a face-to-face session. There has been a mixed response to both the uptake in training across the four ambulance services and the engagement from paramedics in following PRESTO with a potential participant. As more research is being done in the pre-hospital environment the investigators feel that it would be beneficial to try to find out why paramedics may or may not have taken part in the PRESTO training. To do this the investigators will be sending out a survey to each of the four ambulance services which will contain questions around whether the paramedics thought the training package for PRESTO was suitable, whether the paramedics felt confident following PRESTO with a potential participant after the training and what the paramedics think the main barriers are to participating in research. Up to 30 paramedics will also be approached to participate in an interview, which will explore these ideas further. This should allow the investigators to identify potential barriers that prevent paramedics from taking part in training for research studies. It should also allow the investigators to offer insight to future researchers about the type of training that should be provided for paramedics for a research study and how it should be delivered.
Haemorrhoidal disease is amongst the most common rectal conditions causing significant distress to the affected patients. Current surgical techniques for the treatment of internal haemorrhoids are associated with several drawbacks and sometimes high recurrence rates. The purpose of this study is to assess the safety and efficacy of a new minimally invasive technique that is based on blocking the arteries that feed the haemorrhoids and thus potentially leading to a decrease in their size. A recently published paper with 14 patients showed good results in terms of safety(Vidal et. al.). Despite the promising preliminary evidence, there is still a need for more studies and additional data. Furthermore, at the current time, there are no studies assessing quality of life changes post embolisation for these patients and the investigators hope to evaluate this important aspect of treatment as well. This study will provide the investigators with results regarding the efficacy and safety of arterial embolisation for advanced haemorrhoid disease. This will be the first study to provide data on short and long term efficacy (in terms of re-bleeding and re-operation rates) as well as to provide evidence on the effect of this novel treatment on quality of life. This study will also be the largest study to date and if successful will pave the way for a large randomised controlled trial comparing the gold standard surgical treatment to the embolisation treatment. The embolisation of haemorrhoid vessel is not an experimental technique and it has been used in the past in cases of uncontrollable hemorrhoidal- related bleeding with good results and without morbidity. However, this is the first time that the investigators will use this technique as a first line treatment for haemorrhoids and part of this study is to assess the feasibility and safety of this approach.
More than 400,000 people in the UK live in care homes. These individuals are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19; many are frail and the majority have concurrent physical health problems and dementia. This group are at the highest risk of becoming severely ill with COVID-19 and are dependent on a stretched care workforce. The isolation, together with the stresses and distressing nature of the current work environment is also likely to have an impact on the mental health and well-being of care staff. It is vital to provide good quality support to enable care staff to remain resilient, and to enable good quality care that maintains the well-being of residents with dementia and reduces emerging neuropsychiatric symptoms in residents without increasing harmful sedative medications. COVID E-WHELD is based on the optimized WHELD training intervention on successfully completed in randomised clinical trials (RCTs) in 86 care homes, more than 1000 people with dementia. WHELD reduced use of anti-psychotics, improved agitation and overall neuropsychiatric symptoms, improved quality of life and reduced mortality for people with dementia. A digital version of WHELD (eWHELD) with virtual supervision in a further care home RCT including 130 people with dementia has demonstrated benefits for staff carers and improvements in the quality of life of people with dementia, with eWHELD combined with virtual supervision, but not with e-learning alone. The current project will evaluate a COVID-19 adapted version of eWHELD to address current needs of care homes during the COVID-19 pandemic. This will be undertaken in a 2 arm, 4 month, randomized cluster RCT in 1280 care homes (allowing for 75% drop out with COVID-19 outbreaks) to determine whether COVID-19 adapted eWHELD improves quality of life and mental health for people with dementia in care homes and the mental health of care staff.
This study looks at how hypertensive patients, with high levels of aldosterone (hyperaldosteronism) differ from hypertensive patients without hyperaldosteronism with regards to markers of salt appetite. It also looks at how salt appetite changes after treatment of hyperaldosteronism. Salt makes food taste good and when our bodies need salt our brains make us like salty food even more. A high salt diet contributes to hypertension and a low salt diet is an important aspect of the treatment of hypertension. Unfortunately patients find it difficult to adhere to a low salt diet. Aldosterone is produced by the adrenal glands, its release is stimulated by a salt need and it has been shown, in rodent models, to activate pathways in the brain which drive a salt appetite. Mice with enhanced activity of the aldosterone pathway in the brain become hypertensive due to increased salt intake. Hyperaldosteronism, in humans, results in hypertension. The contribution of salt appetite, as opposed to the effect of aldosterone on the kidney's retention of salt and other systems, is unknown. Human studies have shown that when a human has a salt appetite, the concentration at which they can detect the taste of salt reduces, they increase their preference for salty food, and they consume more salt. When hyperaldosteronism is suspected in a hypertensive patient, they attend hospital for a day of investigations. Patient who are shown to have hyperaldosteronism have subsequent visits for imaging of their adrenals and sampling of blood from the adrenal vein to diagnose aldosterone producing adenomas (small tumours) which may be removed surgically, if not suitable for surgery, the hyperaldosteronism is treated with medication. This study will recruit hyperaldosteronism patients to investigate the effect of aldosterone on salt appetite by testing salt taste threshold, salt taste preference and intake before and after treatment.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the role of neoadjuvant immunotherapy and to demonstrate high pathologic complete response (pCR) and near pCR rates in melanoma participants with clinically detectable nodal disease and a high risk of recurrence. Neoadjuvant immunotherapy aims to enhance the systemic T-cell response to tumor antigens while detectable tumor is still present, inducing a stronger and broader tumor-specific immune response. Of the neoadjuvant approaches studied within melanoma, the neoadjuvant combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab has demonstrated high pCR and near pCR rates that may translate to prolonged clinical benefit.
Recent reports have highlighted Covid-19 related increase in levels of depression and stress related disorders in the health care professionals. Pranayama (ancient yogic breathing techniques) helps harmonizing breathing by regular voluntary control of breath. Yoga has been shown to modulate autonomic nervous functions of the brain. Sudarshan kriya Yoga (SKY) is a unique form of pranayama taught by ''Art of Living UK'' a non-profit organization -for over two decades. SKY involves simple rhythmic breathing technique (easy to practice) that aims at harmonizing body, mind and emotions. Sudarshan kriya yoga (SKY) has been shown to be beneficial in reducing levels of stress, anxiety and depression. This breathing based meditation technique has previously been shown to be beneficial in post-traumatic stress disorder. In this pilot study the aim is to assess the feasibility and effect of SKY in NHS health care workers with possible Covid-19 related stress and anxiety disorder.
This prospective observational multicenter registry study will include adults greater than 40 years old, diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, requiring home noninvasive ventilation as part of standard medical care. For the purposes of this study, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is defined as chronic respiratory failure consisting of historical spirometry vales (FEV1 <60% predicted and FEV1/VC < 0.7) and chronic increased daytime carbon dioxide levels greater than 6.0 kPa or 45 mmHg. In addition, participants diagnosed with major organ system diseases or obstructive sleep apnea will be excluded. At least 100 men and women who consent and meet the inclusion/exclusion criteria will be asked to participate. The anticipated study duration will be 6 months. The study will involve an initial visit for the standard of care initiation of home noninvasive ventilation. At this time, potential participants will be screened for participation. If eligible once consented, medical history will be collected and baseline questionnaires related to their respiratory disease will be completed. The registry study will include 6 month of home use of the noninvasive ventilator using the BiPAP A40 EFL device. Study staff will reach out to participants on a monthly basis to review any issues, medication changes, unscheduled visits, and device data download. Additional phone calls and or visits may occur on an as needed basis if issues arise. The final visit will be an in facility visit. The primary endpoint will be the overall prevalence of Expiratory Flow Limitation (EFL) in ventilated hypercapnic COPD patients, as defined as the percentage participants exhibiting a DeltaXrs value greater than or equal to 2.8 during one or more nights of therapy.