Gabapentin add-on treatment for drug-resistant focal epilepsy.

Background: This is an updated version of the Cochrane Review previously published in 2018. Epilepsy is a common neurological disorder characterised by recurrent seizures. Most people with epilepsy have a good prognosis and their seizures are well controlled by a single antiepileptic drug, but up to 30% develop drug-resistant epilepsy, especially people with focal seizures.

The onset of nausea and vomiting of pregnancy: a prospective cohort study.

Background: Nausea and vomiting are experienced by most women during pregnancy. The onset is usually related to Last Menstrual Period (LMP) the date of which is often unreliable. This study describes the time to onset of nausea and vomiting symptoms from date of ovulation and compares this to date of last menstrual period METHODS: Prospective cohort of women seeking to become pregnant, recruited from 12 May 2014 to 25 November 2016, in the United Kingdom.

Nausea and vomiting in pregnancy is not just 'morning sickness': data from a prospective cohort study in the UK.

Background: Nausea and vomiting in pregnancy is usually called 'morning sickness'. This is felt by sufferers to trivialise the condition. Symptoms have been described as occurring both before and after noon, but daily symptom patterns have not been clearly described and statistically modelled to enable the term 'morning sickness' to be accurately analysed.

Levetiracetam add-on for drug-resistant focal epilepsy.

Background: Drug resistance is common in focal epilepsy. In this update, we summarised the current evidence regarding add-on levetiracetam in treating drug-resistant focal epilepsy. The original review was published in 2001 and last updated in 2012.

Modelling seizure rates rather than time to an event within clinical trials of antiepileptic drugs.

Background: Predictive models within epilepsy are frequently developed via Cox's proportional hazards models. These models estimate risk of a specified event such as 12-month remission. They are relatively simple to produce, have familiar output, and are useful to answer questions about short-term prognosis.

Topiramate add-on therapy for drug-resistant focal epilepsy.

Background: The majority of people with epilepsy have a good prognosis and their seizures are controlled by a single antiepileptic drug. However, up to 20% of patients from population-based studies, and up to 30% from clinical series (not population-based), develop drug-resistant epilepsy, especially those with focal-onset seizures. In this review, we summarise the current evidence regarding topiramate, an antiepileptic drug first marketed in 1996, when used as an add-on treatment for drug-resistant focal epilepsy.

Tiagabine add-on therapy for drug-resistant focal epilepsy.

Background: Epilepsy is a common neurological condition that affects up to 1% of the population. Nearly 30% of people with epilepsy are resistant to currently available antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) and require treatment with multiple antiepileptic drugs in combination. Tiagabine is one of the newer AEDs that can be used as an adjunct (add-on) to standard AEDs.

Gabapentin add-on treatment for drug-resistant focal epilepsy.

Background: This is an updated version of the Cochrane Review previously published in 2013.Most people with epilepsy have a good prognosis and their seizures are well controlled by a single antiepileptic drug, but up to 30% develop drug-resistant epilepsy, especially those with focal seizures. In this review, we summarised the evidence from randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of gabapentin, when used as an add-on treatment for drug-resistant focal epilepsy.

Burke-Fahn-Marsden dystonia severity, Gross Motor, Manual Ability, and Communication Function Classification scales in childhood hyperkinetic movement disorders including cerebral palsy: a 'Rosetta Stone' study.

Aim: Hyperkinetic movement disorders (HMDs) can be assessed using impairment-based scales or functional classifications. The Burke-Fahn-Marsden Dystonia Rating Scale-movement (BFM-M) evaluates dystonia impairment, but may not reflect functional ability. The Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS), Manual Ability Classification System (MACS), and Communication Function Classification System (CFCS) are widely used in the literature on cerebral palsy to classify functional ability, but not in childhood movement disorders.

Topiramate add-on for drug-resistant partial epilepsy.

Background: The majority of people with epilepsy have a good prognosis and their seizures are controlled by a single antiepileptic drug. However, up to 20% of patients from population-based studies and up to 30% from clinical series (not population-based) develop drug-resistant epilepsy, especially those with partial onset seizures. In this review we summarise the current evidence regarding topiramate, an antiepileptic drug first marketed in 1996, when used as an add-on treatment for drug-resistant partial epilepsy.

Tiagabine add-on for drug-resistant partial epilepsy.

Background: Epilepsy is a common neurological condition that affects almost 0.5% to 1% of the population. Nearly 30% of people with epilepsy are resistant to currently available drugs.

The adverse effects profile of levetiracetam in epilepsy: a more detailed look.

The adverse effects profile of levetiracetam in epilepsy is still being fully described. We recently published a Cochrane Review evaluating the effectiveness of levetiracetam, added on to usual care, in treating drug-resistant focal epilepsy. The five most common adverse effects were reported and analysed with no scope for reporting any less common adverse effects than those.

Gabapentin add-on for drug-resistant partial epilepsy.

Background: The majority of people with epilepsy have a good prognosis and their seizures are well controlled by a single antiepileptic drug, but up to 30% develop drug-resistant epilepsy, especially those with partial seizures. In this review we summarise the current evidence regarding the antiepileptic drug gabapentin, when used as an add-on treatment for drug-resistant partial epilepsy.

Objectives: To evaluate the efficacy and tolerability of gabapentin when used as an add-on treatment for people with drug-resistant partial epilepsy.

Vigabatrin for refractory partial epilepsy.

Background: Epilepsy is a common neurological condition which affects between 0.5% and 1% of the population. Approximately 30% of people with epilepsy do not respond to treatment with currently available drugs.

Levetiracetam add-on for drug-resistant focal epilepsy: an updated Cochrane Review.

Background: Epilepsy is an important neurological condition and drug resistance in epilepsy is particularly common in individuals with focal seizures. In this review, we summarise the current evidence regarding a new antiepileptic drug, levetiracetam, when used as add-on treatment for controlling drug-resistant focal epilepsy. This is an update to a Cochrane Review that was originally published in 2001.

Tiagabine add-on for drug-resistant partial epilepsy.

Background: Epilepsy is a common neurological condition, affecting almost 0.5 to 1% of the population. Nearly 30% of people with epilepsy are resistant to currently available drugs.

Statistician expert witnesses in agreement on relative hazards.

'If anticoagulants had been administered sooner, my client would not have died' was a central claim put to us, as statistician expert witnesses, by a Claimant's and Defendant's lawyers. To assist other litigants, and without identifying the specific case, we set out the study types that contribute to the evidence base, and their limitations. We then explain why it is difficult to adduce evidence about the relative risk of dying from pulmonary embolism within 12 hours of admission to accident and emergency even when it is well accepted that anticoagulation reduces the risk of dying within the next seven days of patients at objectively confirmed risk of pulmonary embolism.

Practical guidelines for adaptive seamless phase II/III clinical trials that use Bayesian methods.

Hommel (Biometrical Journal; 45:581-589) proposed a flexible testing procedure for seamless phase II/III clinical trials. Schmidli et al. (Statistics in Medicine; 26:4925-4938), Kimani et al.

Changes in rates of violent child deaths in England and Wales between 1974 and 2008: an analysis of national mortality data.

Background: This study used national data to determine if violent child death rates fell between 1974 and 2008.

Design: Using mortality data from the Office of National Statistics, categories potentially containing violent child deaths were analysed for children aged <1, 1-14 and 15-19 years. These data were compared with Home Office data on recorded homicides in children aged <1 and 1-15 years.

Modelling the rate of change in a longitudinal study with missing data, adjusting for contact attempts.

The Collaborative Ankle Support Trial (CAST) is a longitudinal trial of treatments for severe ankle sprains in which interest lies in the rate of improvement, the effectiveness of reminders and potentially informative missingness. A model is proposed for continuous longitudinal data with non-ignorable or informative missingness, taking into account the nature of attempts made to contact initial non-responders. The model combines a non-linear mixed model for the outcome model with logistic regression models for the reminder processes.

Bayesian sensitivity models for missing covariates in the analysis of survival data.

Rationale: This paper presents a Bayesian approach using WinBUGS for analysing survival data in which observations have missing information on some covariates. Modelling the joint density of the survival time and the covariates allows for the missing covariate data to be missing at random (MAR), as opposed to the more restrictive assumptions imposed by a complete case analysis.

Methods: Here, the survival times are modelled by the accelerated failure time model and the joint covariate density is factorized as a series of conditional densities, each modelled by logistic regression.

Prevalence of visual field loss following exposure to vigabatrin therapy: a systematic review.

Purpose: Vigabatrin is an efficacious antiepileptic drug licensed as add-on therapy in refractory epilepsy and used in infantile spasms. Eight years after licensing, there emerged a strong and possibly causative association with bilateral visual field loss. We report a systematic review ascertaining the magnitude of risk of vigabatrin associated visual field loss (VAVFL) and any clinical predictors of risk.

A comparison of customized and population-based birth-weight standards: the influence of gestational age.

Objectives: We examined how customized birth-weight standards compare to population birth-weight references at term (> or =37 weeks), nearly term (34-36 weeks), moderately preterm (32-33 weeks) and for the very preterm births (28-31 weeks), with respect to perinatal mortality.

Study Design: Data from the national Swedish Medical Births Register for the years 1992-2001, consisting of a total of 783,303 singletons born at or after 28 completed gestational weeks. Infants were classified as small for gestational age (SGA, <10th centile) according to a conventional population based birth-weight reference and a customized standard.

Number needed to treat and number needed to harm are not the best way to report and assess the results of randomised clinical trials.

The inverse of the difference between rates, called the 'number needed to treat' (NNT), was suggested 20 years ago as a good way to present the results of comparisons of success or failure under different therapies. Such comparisons usually arise in randomised controlled trials and meta-analysis. This article reviews the claims made about this statistic, and the problems associated with it.