Procalcitonin-guided duration of antibiotic treatment in children hospitalised with confirmed or suspected bacterial infection in the UK (BATCH): a pragmatic, multicentre, open-label, two-arm, individually randomised, controlled trial.

Background: Procalcitonin is a rapid response biomarker specific for bacterial infection, which is not routinely used in the UK National Health Service. We aimed to assess whether using a procalcitonin-guided algorithm would safely reduce the duration of antibiotic therapy compared with usual care, in which C-reactive protein is the commonly used biomarker.

Methods: The BATCH trial was a pragmatic, multicentre, open-label, parallel, two-arm, individually randomised, controlled trial conducted in 15 hospitals in England and Wales.

Developing an adaptive paediatric intensive care unit platform trial with key stakeholders: a qualitative study.

Objectives: Platform trials were used successfully in adult populations during the COVID-19 pandemic. By testing multiple treatments within a single trial, platform trials can help identify the most effective treatments (and any interactions between treatments) for patients more quickly and with less burden for patients and their families. The aim of this qualitative research was to inform the design of the first adaptive platform trial for paediatric intensive care in the UK with young people, parents/carers and paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) staff.

Historic rewiring of grass flowering time pathways and implications for crop improvement under climate change.

Grasses are fundamental to human survival, providing a large percentage of our calories, fuel, and fodder for livestock, and an enormous global carbon sink. A particularly important part of the grass plant is the grain-producing inflorescence that develops in response to both internal and external signals that converge at the shoot tip to influence meristem behavior. Abiotic signals that trigger reproductive development vary across the grass family, mostly due to the unique ecological and phylogenetic histories of each clade.

Speech in Ten-Minute Sessions: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial of the Chaining SPLITS Service Delivery Model.

Purpose: This study evaluates the initial efficacy of Chaining SPeech Lessons in Intensive Ten-minute Sessions (SPLITS), an alternative service delivery model for the Speech Motor Chaining treatment approach. We hypothesized that Chaining SPLITS would result in improvements in /ɹ/ accuracy on syllables and untrained words when compared to a no-treatment condition.

Method: Within a randomized controlled trial, thirteen 7-9-year-old children with difficulty producing /ɹ/ were randomized to receive treatment either immediately or after an 8-week delay.