Publications by authors named "Andrew Worrall"
Article Synopsis
- Randomised controlled trials often use surrogate endpoints instead of direct outcomes to enhance efficiency and reduce costs, but this can lead to increased uncertainty regarding treatment effects and intervention harms.
- A new guideline, known as CONSORT-Surrogate, provides a checklist for reporting trials that utilize surrogate endpoints, ensuring better clarity and transparency in the results.
- The recommended checklist, tailored for all stakeholders involved in clinical trials, aims to improve the reporting quality of these studies and ultimately reduce wasted research efforts.
Article Synopsis
- Randomised controlled trials often use surrogate endpoints instead of direct outcomes to save time, cost, and ethical concerns, but this can create uncertainty about the actual treatment effects and potential harms.
- The SPIRIT-Surrogate is a new guideline to enhance the reporting standards for trial protocols that use surrogate endpoints, building on the existing SPIRIT checklist.
- This guideline includes nine modified items, encouraging all stakeholders to adopt it, which aims to improve trial design, transparency, and ultimately reduce wasted research efforts.
Rationale: Mass spectrometry (MS) is introduced to high school students in the UK in many pre-university course syllabi. As such, we have identified the use of MS as a key technique that should be taught practically to undergraduates from the outset of their studies. This mini-review describes how we introduce and develop students' use of MS throughout our three-year undergraduate spiral curriculum practical programme, using atmospheric pressure chemical ionization MS (APCI-MS).
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- Thoracotomy is a highly painful surgical procedure that can lead to long-lasting chronic pain, making effective acute pain management crucial to prevent this outcome.
- The TOPIC 2 trial is a large, multicenter study examining the effectiveness and cost-efficiency of two pain management techniques—thoracic epidural blockade (TEB) and paravertebral blockade (PVB)—in over 1,000 adult patients scheduled for thoracotomy.
- The trial aims to determine which method better reduces the incidence of chronic post-surgical pain after six months, while also evaluating secondary factors like acute pain, complications, quality of life, and economic impacts associated with each analgesic approach.
Article Synopsis
- The paper discusses the increasing use of surrogate endpoints in interventional trials and introduces a framework for better defining and reporting them.
- A series of studies, including reviews and surveys involving various stakeholders, revealed inconsistencies in how surrogate endpoints are currently defined and understood.
- It was found that while traditional surrogate endpoints focus on biomarkers, broader interpretations including intermediate outcomes like function or symptoms also require clearer consensus among stakeholders, particularly between patients and health technology experts.
Background: Public and patient involvement aims to improve research quality, relevance, and appropriateness. Despite an increasing evidence base on the influence of public involvement in health research, the role of involvement in methodology research (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: A rapid review is a form of evidence synthesis considered a resource-efficient alternative to the conventional systematic review. Despite a dramatic rise in the number of rapid reviews commissioned and conducted in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, published evidence on the optimal methods of planning, doing, and sharing the results of these reviews is lacking. The Priority III study aimed to identify the top 10 unanswered questions on rapid review methodology to be addressed by future research.
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- - The importance of rapid reviews in health care decision-making has increased since the COVID-19 pandemic, offering quicker, albeit potentially less rigorous, evidence synthesis compared to systematic reviews.
- - A modified James Lind Alliance Priority Setting Partnership will be conducted to identify the top 10 research questions regarding the planning, execution, and sharing of rapid reviews, incorporating input from diverse stakeholders such as patients, clinicians, and policymakers.
- - The process involves conducting online surveys to gather perceptions on research uncertainties, categorizing responses to create a long list of questions, and holding a consensus workshop to finalize the priorities, which aims to reduce research waste and improve the effectiveness of rapid reviews.
Article Synopsis
- The UK clinical trial community aims to improve participant retention in randomized trials, as there's a significant lack of evidence-based strategies to address this issue.
- The PRioRiTy II project, in partnership with the James Lind Alliance, involved stakeholders working together to identify and prioritize research questions on trial retention through a three-stage process, including surveys and a consensus meeting.
- Ultimately, 456 respondents contributed to formulating a longlist of 372 questions on retention, which was narrowed down to the top 21 key research questions that need addressing to enhance participant retention in clinical trials.
Background: Activated type 1 insulin-like growth factor receptors (IGF-1Rs) undergo internalisation and nuclear translocation, promoting cell survival. We previously reported that IGF-1R inhibition delays DNA damage repair, sensitising prostate cancer cells to ionising radiation. Here we tested the clinical relevance of these findings.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe sought to assess the relationships between platelet reactivity at different time points, CYP2C19*2 and ABCB1 status and clinical outcomes in patients with acute coronary syndromes (ACS). Anti-platelet response to clopidogrel was studied prospectively using the VerifyNow (VN) P2Y12 assay at the time of angiography and at 30 days post procedure in 151 patients admitted with ACS who underwent percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Troponin T levels were measured at angiography and 16-24 hour following PCI.
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