There are about 3285 clinical studies being (or have been) conducted in Pakistan. 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 goal of this cluster randomized controlled trial is to assess the effectiveness of smartphone application in reducing the symptoms of Anxiety and depression among adolescents. The main objectives of this trial are: 1. Primary Objective To develop a smart phone application for reduction in depressive and anxiety symptoms in Pakistani adolescents aged 12-18 years 2. Secondary Objectives - To determine the effectiveness of a smart phone application in reduction of anxiety symptoms in Pakistani adolescents aged 12-18 years via a randomized controlled trial - To determine the effectiveness of a smart phone application in reduction of depressive symptoms in Pakistani adolescents aged 12-18 years via a randomized controlled trial - To determine the effectiveness of a smart phone application in improvements of well-being of Pakistani adolescents aged 12-18 years via a randomized controlled trial the randomization will occur at the school level for the intervention group and control group. Students in the intervention group will receive the access to a smartphone application designed to improve the mental health of adolescents, they will be briefed on how to use the application and its advantages. while the students in the control group will receive self-reading pictorial educational leaflets related to mental health improvement. the researcher will conduct the assessment of depression, anxiety and mental wellbeing using PHQ-A, GAD-7 and WHO-5 at baseline, 1 month and at 3 months to compare if the smartphone application is effective in reducing the symptoms of depression and anxiety of adolescents and overall improvement in the mental wellbeing.
The study is a two-arm, parallel randomized controlled trial (RCT) with a treatment period of 12 weeks, and long-term follow-up at 52 weeks which plans to enroll 258 smokers from general adult population. Participants who meet the eligibility criteria and give their informed consent will be randomized (1:1) to one of two treatment arms: (1) E-cigarettes (18mg/ml) with individual counselling (2) Nicotine patches (21mg) with individual counselling. Eligible participants must be at least of legal age allowed for smoking in the country, of either gender, regular smokers (minimum 10 cigarettes/day for at least a year) and interested to stop smoking. Participants will be scheduled for a screening visit and a baseline (BL) visit at the trial site. The participants will be scheduled for eight study visits in total, including five treatment sessions and three follow-up visits, using both face to face interaction at trial site as well as follow up on telephone. Eight study visits are planned at weeks 1, 2, 4, 8, 12, 18, 24, and 52. Exhaled carbon monoxide assessment will be used at the trial site to quantify biochemically validated smoking abstinence. All secondary outcomes and self-reported usage of nicotine patches, EC and cigarettes will be monitored throughout the study.
This is a phase II randomized, observer-blinded, placebo-controlled study with 3 arms enrolling a total of 2,358 participants. The arms are composed of Arm 1, pregnant participants receiving Hecolin® (N=1,104) with immunogenicity subset (n=150), Arm 2, pregnant participants receiving placebo (N=1,104) with immunogenicity subset (n=150), and Arm 3, non-pregnant participants receiving Hecolin® (N=150) of which all participants in this arm will be included in the immunogenicity subset.
This study aims at developing an online system for the remote delivery of EMDR therapy in Pakistan. Moreover, this study will compare the efficacy of online EMDR therapy with face-to-face EMDR therapy.
Case-control diagnostic accuracy study with 130 potential pediatric PID+ (primary immunodeficiency) patients, and 100 age-matched, healthy controls (PID-). The potential PID+ participants will be recruited prospectively through 9 hospitals in Sindh and Punjab states or contacted via the PID surveillance registry developed by AKU Hospital's Polio Excretion in PID study to identify children with primary antibody deficiency (PAD+: a type of PID+); healthy, age-matched PID-participants will be recruited by snowball sampling. At the point of care, health care workers (HCWs) will collect capillary blood samples (0.1mL) to run the PID rapid screening test and reader on potential PID+ participants (identified by exhibiting >2 of the Jeffrey Modell warning signs) and healthy, age-matched controls. All pediatric study participants will be sent to the hospital lab to have a confirmatory immunology panel (see 4.4.1 Diagnosing PID for the battery of tests) run on a serum/plasma sample to confirm their PID diagnosis (PID+/PAD-, PID+/PAD+, PID-); a 1.5uL aliquot of serum/plasma will simultaneously be used to run a PID rapid screening test by a laboratory technician (LT). HCWs and LTs will be blinded to true PID status. Blood and serum PID rapid screening test results will be compared to the confirmatory immunology panel to determine diagnostic accuracy. All clinical management of study participants will follow the standard of care for PID in Pakistan and will be based upon the immunology panel result. The HCWs and LTs administering the tests will be trained prior to the diagnostic accuracy test (see Objectives below) and will provide feedback on the tool post-training and post-use to assess usability, acceptability, and feasibility of integrating the test and digital reader into tertiary hospitals for the purpose of improved national PID surveillance, improved PID patient care, and polio eradication in Pakistan.
Down syndrome also known as trisomy 21, is a genetic disorder caused by the presence of all or part of a third copy of chromosome 21. It is usually associated with physical growth delays, mild to moderate intellectual disability, and characteristic facial features. There is no cure for Down syndrome. Education and proper care have been shown to improve quality of life. Some children with Down syndrome are educated in typical school classes, while others require more specialized education. Those with Down syndrome nearly always have physical and intellectual disabilities. They also typically have poor immune function and generally reach developmental milestones at a later age. They have an increased risk of a number of other health problems, including congenital heart defect, epilepsy, leukemia, thyroid diseases, and mental disorders. This study will determine effects of weight bearing exercises with and without Jaffery's core stability exercise training on dynamic balance and trunk muscles strength in children with Down syndrome. Randomized controlled study will be conducted in which data will be collected from children with down syndrome with calculated sample size of 18 which will randomly assigned into group A and group B. Group A would receive weight bearing exercises (I.e. standing on preferred foot, standing with close eyes, walking forward on a line using normal stride and heel to toe gait, stepping over response speed stick on balance beam ).Group B would receive weight bearing exercises along with the jaffrey's core stability exercises (I.e. contracting muscles, sitting on Swiss ball, Bridging, Squatting side lying bridge etc.).Frequency will be 5 sessions per week, of 1 hour and duration is of 5 months. Balance and trunk muscle strength will be pre assessed using pediatric balance scale and trunk control measurement scale respectively. The improvement will be measured with same tools. Data will be analyzed through SPSS 25.
Pakistan is one of the most vulnerable low- and middle-income countries with 29 million adult active tobacco users. Smoking cessation services are lacking as the tobacco control initiatives have largely failed to address the smoking endemic. Over the last five years, Pakistan has witnessed the use of innovative tobacco harm reduction such as e-cigarettes, nicotine pouches, and non-nicotine replacement therapies (non-NRTs). However, their use remains limited. THR products are imported legally as consumer goods and are taxable. The lack of sufficient data for THR and its application is a challenge in gauging their effectiveness in assisting smokers to quit combustible smoking. Evidence-based studies on e-cigarettes and other nicotine products are required to gauge the effectiveness of e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches as smoking cessation aids. Keeping in view the study objectives, a sample size of 600 participants will be sufficient to assess the effectiveness of e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches for smoking cessation in Pakistan. Of these, 200 participants each will receive e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches along with basic care counseling, while the remaining 200 participants will only receive basic care counseling for 48 weeks. The association of participants' characteristics with smoking and health status will be based on bivariate and multivariate analysis. The simple t-test and variance analysis will assess the differences in intervention indicators between the control and treatment groups. For the inferential analysis, the average treatment impact of the treatments will find using quasi-experimental techniques such as difference in difference (DID) or Propensity Score Matching (PMS). This study will be evaluated participants at baseline, after their self-decided "quit date,". The follow-up will be a survey every 12 weeks. Results may inform the public, decision-makers, and researchers about the use of e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches helping smokers to quit smoking or switch to less harmful alternatives in the short- and medium-term periods.
Project Summary: The prevalence of preterm birth ranges from 5% to 18% across 184 countries, and an estimated 15 million infants are born preterm globally. These infants with an immature immune system and gastrointestinal tract are at risk of complications of premature birth, which is the leading cause of neonatal death. According to researcher hypothesis for this study, there is role of probiotics in promoting food tolerance and reducing the incidence and severity of Necrotizing Enterocolitis (NEC) and death related to NEC in pre-term VLBW infants. In the current study, we will examine the effects of probiotics in premature infants and figure out the optimal intervention through randomized controlled trial (RCT). A prospective, masked, randomized single blinded controlled trial will be conducted in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) of Services Hospital Lahore. In this trial the treatment group will receive the probiotics during their first month of life, and the control group will receive no treatment. Primary outcome will be the incidence of death or NEC (≥ stage 2). Death is included as a primary outcome because it is a competing variable of NEC. The x2 test will be used to analyze the categorical data, along with Fisher's exact test when applicable. The Student's t test will be used for continuous data. A logistic regression model will be used to analyze the treatment effects on the primary and secondary outcome variables (death, NEC, and sepsis). Values will be expressed for mean and standard deviation. Statistical significance is set at P-value of 0.05. The objective of this study is to confirm the evidence and to get the more reliable and authentic results regarding the more effective treatment of NEC in preterm neonates. In this way, the researcher shall be able to improve the outcome of premature births and to reduce the complications by increasing the cure rate. Similarly, it will help the researcher to improve knowledge for better management of NEC in neonates.
The present study is designed to identifying the post-traumatic stress symptoms in children experiencing some traumatic event and to adapt and apply school based intervention (Support for students exposed to trauma SSET) to students who shows the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
This trial will determine if a well-established probiotic, Vivomixx, can modulate the maternal microbiota and ameliorate the maternal environmental enteropathy which compromises growth in the first 1000 days. The probiotic Vivomixx has been used in many thousands of people including pregnant women, both within and outside a research context. This trial is the first in a proposed series of proof-of-concept intervention studies which are intended to provide data to enable a rational selection of interventions to be evaluated at scale in future large scale phase 2 trial in which birth outcomes and postnatal growth will be key endpoints.