Publications by authors named "Sean Ewings"

Article Synopsis
  • Health literacy is the ability to access and understand health information, which is crucial for making informed decisions about one’s health.
  • The study focused on patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) to assess their health literacy levels and how it related to the severity of their condition, utilizing specific questionnaires.
  • Findings showed that while patients with more severe COPD felt less confident in managing their health, they reported better skills in evaluating health information, suggesting the need to address health literacy as a key factor in effective self-management.
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Objectives: To evaluate the delivery of rehabilitation using implicit motor learning principles in an acute stroke setting.

Design: Pilot, assessor-blind, cluster randomised controlled trial with nested qualitative evaluation.

Setting: Eight inpatient stroke units, UK.

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Background: Malignant mesothelioma is a rapidly lethal cancer that has been increasing at an epidemic rate over the last three decades. Targeted therapies for mesothelioma have been lacking. A previous study called MiST1 (NCT03654833), evaluated the efficacy of Poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibition in mesothelioma.

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Background: For patients with nonischemic cardiomyopathy (NICM), current guidelines recommend implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICD) when left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) is ≤35%, but the DANISH trial failed to confirm that ICDs reduced all-cause mortality for such patients. Circumstantial evidence suggests that scar on CMR is predictive of sudden and arrhythmic death in this population. The presence of myocardial scar identified by cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) in patients with NICM and an LVEF ≤35% might identify patients at higher risk of sudden arrhythmic death, for whom an ICD is more likely to reduce all-cause mortality.

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Objective(s): To describe a) how motor learning principles are applied during post stroke physiotherapy, with a focus on lower limb rehabilitation; and b) the context in which these principles are used, in relation to patient and/or task characteristics.

Design: Direct non-participation observation of routine physiotherapy sessions, with data collected via video recording. A structured analysis matrix and pre-agreed definitions were used to identify, count and record: type of activity; repetitions; instructional and feedback statements (frequency and type); strategies such as observational learning and augmented feedback.

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Background: The antiviral drug molnupiravir was licensed for treating at-risk patients with COVID-19 on the basis of data from unvaccinated adults. We aimed to evaluate the safety and virological efficacy of molnupiravir in vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals with COVID-19.

Methods: This randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blind, phase 2 trial (AGILE CST-2) was done at five National Institute for Health and Care Research sites in the UK.

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Background: For patients with oesophagogastric adenocarcinoma, surgery is the only curative option and despite the use of multimodality therapy, which combines it with chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy, more than 50% of patients will relapse and die. Many UK patients present with advanced disease which is already inoperable or metastatic at diagnosis. For these patients, standard care chemotherapy only offers them survival of less than a year.

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Objectives: The aim of this study was to understand how people living with Parkinson's and healthcare professionals perceived their care management and interactions with health services were affected during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, many governments introduced restrictions and services that support Parkinson's care management had to cease or be delivered remotely. These changes may have had an impact on the well-being of people living with Parkinson's.

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Objective: The role of social networks, especially weaker ties (e.g. casual acquaintances and hobby groups), in self-management of long-term consequences of cancer is unexplored.

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ß-d-N4-hydroxycytidine (NHC), the parent nucleoside of molnupiravir, a COVID-19 antiviral, was quantified at SARS-CoV-2 transmission sites in 12 patients enrolled in AGILE Candidate-Specific Trial-2. Saliva, nasal, and tear NHC concentrations were 3%, 21%, and 22% that of plasma. Saliva and nasal NHC were significantly correlated with plasma (P < .

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Introduction: Systemic anticancer therapy is given to selected patients with early breast cancer (EBC) before or after surgery with the aim of eradicating micrometastatic spread and reducing the risk of cancer recurrence. Chemotherapy treatment is most effective when patients receive the optimum dose, on time and without delays or reductions in their treatment doses. Most chemotherapy drugs are dosed according to body surface area calculated from a patient's height and weight.

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Background: Modern designs for dose-finding studies (e.g., model-based designs such as continual reassessment method) have been shown to substantially improve the ability to determine a suitable dose for efficacy testing when compared to traditional designs such as the 3 + 3 design.

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Repurposing approved drugs may rapidly establish effective interventions during a public health crisis. This has yielded immunomodulatory treatments for severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), but repurposed antivirals have not been successful to date because of redundancy of the target in vivo or suboptimal exposures at studied doses. Nitazoxanide is a US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved antiparasitic medicine, that physiologically-based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) modeling has indicated may provide antiviral concentrations across the dosing interval, when repurposed at higher than approved doses.

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Background: Stroke affects millions of people every year and is a leading cause of disability, resulting in significant financial cost and reduction in quality of life. Rehabilitation after stroke aims to reduce disability by facilitating recovery of impairment, activity, or participation. One aspect of stroke rehabilitation that may affect outcomes is the amount of time spent in rehabilitation, including minutes provided, frequency (i.

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Background: No phase 3 trial has yet shown improved survival for patients with pleural or peritoneal malignant mesothelioma who have progressed following platinum-based chemotherapy. The aim of this study was to assess the efficacy and safety of nivolumab, an anti-PD-1 antibody, in these patients.

Methods: This was a multicentre, placebo-controlled, double-blind, parallel group, randomised, phase 3 trial done in 24 hospitals in the UK.

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Objectives: AGILE is a Phase Ib/IIa platform for rapidly evaluating COVID-19 treatments. In this trial (NCT04746183) we evaluated the safety and optimal dose of molnupiravir in participants with early symptomatic infection.

Methods: We undertook a dose-escalating, open-label, randomized-controlled (standard-of-care) Bayesian adaptive Phase I trial at the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen Clinical Research Facility.

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Background: There is an urgent unmet clinical need for the identification of novel therapeutics for the treatment of COVID-19. A number of COVID-19 late phase trial platforms have been developed to investigate (often repurposed) drugs both in the UK and globally (e.g.

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Background: Diagnosis of influenza in patients admitted to hospital is delayed due to long turnaround times with laboratory testing, leading to inappropriate and late antiviral treatment and isolation facility use. Molecular point-of-care tests (mPOCTs) are highly accurate, easy to use, and generate results in less than 1 h, but high-quality evidence for their effect on management and clinical outcomes is needed. The aim of this study was to assess the clinical impact of an mPOCT on influenza detection, antiviral use, infection control measures, and clinical outcomes in adults admitted to hospital with acute respiratory illness.

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Background: The management of the COVID-19 pandemic is hampered by long delays associated with centralised laboratory PCR testing. In hospitals, these delays lead to poor patient flow and nosocomial transmission. Rapid, accurate tests are therefore urgently needed in preparation for the next wave of the pandemic.

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Background: Patient access to medicines at home during the last year of life is critical for symptom control, but is thought to be problematic. Little is known about healthcare professionals' practices in supporting timely medicines access and what influences their effectiveness. The purpose of the study was to evaluate health professionals' medicines access practices, perceived effectiveness and influencing factors.

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Purpose: Conventional static visual acuity testing profoundly underestimates the impact of infantile nystagmus on functional vision. The slow-to-see phenomenon explains why many patients with nystagmus perform well in non-time restricted acuity tests but experience difficulty in certain situations. This is often observed by parents when their child struggles to recognise familiar faces in crowded scenes.

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Introduction: Management of the COVID-19 pandemic is hampered by long delays associated with centralised laboratory PCR testing. In hospitals this leads to poor patient flow and nosocomial transmission and so rapid, accurate diagnostic tests are urgently required. The FebriDx is a point-of-care test that detects an antiviral host response protein in finger prick blood within 10 min, but its accuracy for the identification of COVID-19 is unknown.

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Objectives: Phase I - To determine the optimal dose of each candidate (or combination of candidates) entered into the platform. Phase II - To determine the efficacy and safety of each candidate entered into the platform, compared to the current Standard of Care (SoC), and recommend whether it should be evaluated further in a later phase II & III platforms.

Trial Design: AGILE-ACCORD is a Bayesian multicentre, multi-arm, multi-dose, multi-stage open-label, adaptive, seamless phase I/II randomised platform trial to determine the optimal dose, activity and safety of multiple candidate agents for the treatment of COVID-19.

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Background & Objectives: Previous research demonstrates the impact of workforce organisation variables on quality of care and nurse wellbeing. However, the extent to which these variables influence completion of important "ancillary" nursing work is unexplored. This type of work can include discussion of care information between colleagues, promoting continuity of care during shift changes, and participating in continuing professional development programs.

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