European collaboration on health technology assessment: looking backward and forward.

The establishment of health technology assessment (HTA) has been an important topic in Europe for many years. There have been a series of activities starting with first projects in 1994 leading to joint actions from the European Network of HTA (EUnetHTA) ending in 2021. This long interval of engagement with HTA structures, methodology, and processes by all member states led to a reliable basis for European collaboration in HTA.

Closing the cycle of innovation in healthcare in Europe.

Pragmatic or practice-oriented comparative effectiveness trials may be conducted to fill the evidence gaps that are revealed after the private sector has performed the trials needed for bringing their product to the market. A tool of increasing importance to identify such evidence gaps is resulting from health technology assessments (HTA) whereby the data derived from clinical research are examined in a systematic manner with reference to effect, safety, as well as additional parameters. Practice-oriented trials are informative for healthcare decision makers, practice-changing and may even be cost-saving for the healthcare payers.

Defining capacity building in the context of HTA: a proposal by the HTAi Scientific Development and Capacity Building Committee.

Objectives: To develop a definition of "capacity building" relevant to Health Technology Assessment international (HTAi).

Methods: A review of capacity building activities undertaken by HTAi members, members of the International Network of Agencies for Health Technology Assessment (INAHTA), and regional HTA networks was compared against general literature on capacity building definitions and frameworks. The findings were reviewed by the HTAi Scientific Development and Capacity Building Committee.

Influence of different CLA isomers on insulin resistance and adipocytokines in pre-diabetic, middle-aged men with PPARγ2 Pro12Ala polymorphism.

Conjugated linoleic acids (CLAs) are natural PPARγ ligands, which showed conflicting effects on metabolism in humans. We examined metabolic effects of different isomers of CLA in subjects with PPARγ2 Pro12Ala polymorphisms. A total of 35 men underwent four intervention periods in a crossover study design: subjects with either genotypes received c9, t11 CLA or t10, c12 CLA, a commercially available 1:1 mix of both isomers or reference oil (linoleic acid (LA)).

Multi-locus stepwise regression: a haplotype-based algorithm for finding genetic associations applied to atopic dermatitis.

Background: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) provide an increasing number of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with diseases. Our aim is to exploit those closely spaced SNPs in candidate regions for a deeper analysis of association beyond single SNP analysis, combining the classical stepwise regression approach with haplotype analysis to identify risk haplotypes for complex diseases.

Methods: Our proposed multi-locus stepwise regression starts with an evaluation of all pair-wise SNP combinations and then extends each SNP combination stepwise by one SNP from the region, carrying out haplotype regression in each step.