Antibiotic prescribing for care-home residents: a population-based, cross-classified multilevel analysis in Scotland, UK.

Background: There is wide variation in antibiotic prescribing across care-homes for older people, with implications for resident outcomes and antimicrobial resistance.

Objective: To quantify variation in antibiotic prescribing and associations with resident, care-home and general practice characteristics.

Design: Population-based analyses using administrative data.

Primary care transformation in Scotland: a comparison two cross-sectional national surveys of general practitioners' views in 2018 and 2023.

Background: The 2018 Scottish GP contract established GP Clusters and multidisciplinary team (MDT) expansion. Qualitative studies have suggested sub-optimal progress.

Aim: To quantify progress since the introduction of the new contract.

Benzodiazepine and z-drug prescribing in critical care survivors and the risk of rehospitalisation or death due to falls/trauma and due to any cause: a retrospective matched cohort study using the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink.

Purpose: Benzodiazepines and z-drugs are often prescribed to critical care survivors due to high prevalence of mental health problems and insomnia. However, their safety has not been studied in this population.

Methods: Retrospective cohort study of 28,678 adult critical care survivors hospitalised in 2010 and 2018: 4844 prescribed benzodiazepines or z-drugs, matched to 23,834 unexposed survivors using UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink linked datasets.

Self-monitoring of blood pressure following a stroke or transient ischaemic attack (TASMIN5S): a randomised controlled trial.

Background: Blood pressure (BP) control following stroke is important but currently sub-optimal. This trial aimed to determine whether self-monitoring of hypertension with telemonitoring and a treatment escalation protocol, results in lower BP than usual care in people with previous stroke or transient ischaemic attack (TIA).

Methods: Unblinded randomised controlled trial, comparing a BP telemonitoring-based intervention with control (usual care) for hypertension management in 12 primary care practices in England.

Using HIV and Hepatitis C Molecular Epidemiology to Investigate Assisted Partner Services Recruitment Among People Who Inject Drugs in Kenya.

Sexual and/or injecting partners of people who inject drugs (PWID) may have an elevated risk of HIV infection either from sharing a transmission network or an epidemiological environment. We estimated the degree of similarity between HIV and hepatitis C (HCV) sequences from PWID and their partners to assess whether partner-based recruitment identifies sexual or injecting partners within transmission networks. We used assisted partner services (APS) to recruit sexual and injecting partners of PWID living with HIV in Kenya and evaluated trends in the TN93 distances (an adjusted measure of sequence similarity) of the HIV-1 and HCV sequences from partner pairs.