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Polyphenols are naturally occurring colourful substances in plant foods, known to reduce blood glucose levels. The aim of this study is to investigate the ability of polyphenols enriched in bread to reduce blood glucose levels in healthy people. The polyphenol-rich extracts from spinach at 1-10% will be added to bread and taste-tested to choose the most accepted concentration for this study. Spinach is one of the vegetables that is versatile and known to contain high polyphenols content, where a cup of raw contains nearly 100 mg of polyphenols and 7x more in frozen products

A 12-week parallel-group randomised controlled trial examining the effects of a supervised resistance training on pain intensity, well-being, and inflammation compared to usual care in adults with chronic non-specific low back pain will be conducted. It is hypothesised that 12 weeks of resistance training will improve pain intensity, well-being and inflammation compared to usual care in adults with chronic non-specific low back pain.

To determine if a combination mitochondrial-based therapy using over-the-counter supplements can result in an improvement in the sensation of nerve-related pain in people with diabetes-related painful peripheral neuropathy.

Unfortunately, many people will experience knee osteoarthritis at some point in their life. This can be diagnosed by a General Practitioner (GP) or other health professional, and there are different ways this may be done. People often have beliefs about treatments for, and the prognosis of, their knee osteoarthritis. Currently, we do not know whether the way someone is diagnosed with knee osteoarthritis makes any difference to their beliefs about treatment or prognosis. This study is interested in learning more about whether the way people are diagnosed with knee osteoarthrtitis changes their beliefs about the condition. We hypothesise that a diagnosis and explanation without x-ray will reduce beliefs that surgery is necessary and increase beliefs that exercise is helpful, compared to a diagnosis and explanation based on x-ray.

In Australia, approximately one third of community-dwelling older people fall each year and the risk of falling increases with age. The consequences of falling can be fatal including fractures, institutionalising and loss of independence. The sport of judo includes a number of techniques and strategies that can be amended to teach older adults how to prevent falls and how to fall safely. This project aims to upskill Allied Health Professionals and Judo coaches to provide an 8-week Judo-based exercise program to older adults to teach them the core skills required to land safely from a controlled fall using a two-day workshop combined with practical experience by attending the 8-week Judo based exercise program. In addition, this project will evaluate how effective the 8-week Judo based exercise program is in improving safe-landing skills in community-dwelling older adults aged 65 years and older. Secondary outcomes will include balance, mobility, fear of falling, physical performance, strength and muscle mass, physical activity, and quality of life.

The lack of qualified healthcare professionals in the workforce to meet the needs of Aotearoa's growing and diverse population presents a significant challenge to providing timely, equitable, and culturally appropriate support. Digital humans (DHs) show particular promise in closing this gap, potentially providing responsive, accessible, cost-effective, and scalable support to patients (Loveys et al., 2020). However, for DHs to foster high user engagement, trust and connection as successful healthcare agents, they must engage in effective patient-centred communication in ways similar to human professionals. The identification and integration of features of DHs that facilitate the formation of high-quality, empathetic relationships with their patients is, therefore essential. The current research will assess whether there is an overall difference in perceptions of empathy when a digital human delivers a brief medical consultation compared to a human physician. As a cornerstone of effective, patient-centred consultation, greater physician empathy drives better clinical outcomes and can further impact appraisals of physicians' trustworthiness, competence, and warmth. Therefore, the present study will extend its inquiry to investigating differences in these variables as secondary outcomes. To reflect real-life conditions regarding the significant demands placed on physicians, the human physician will deliver an empathetic and non-empathetic consultation. The DH will mirror these conditions, The content of the DHs consultation will be modelled on the human physician's consultation. We hypothesize that the empathetic human physcian will be rated most highly on all outcomes, followed by the empathetic DH, the non-empathetic human physician, and the non-empathetic DH.

This study aims to evaluate the effects of multi-joint isometric resistance training at various joint angles on several aspects of muscular fitness, including strength (both isometric and dynamic), power, muscle endurance, muscle hypertrophy (both whole body and region-specific), and fatigue recovery. These outcomes will be compared to those of traditional resistance training (i.e., dynamic/isotonic), with careful attention to ensuring equal volume and intensity between the groups. The study will adopt a randomised controlled trial design, with eligible participants randomly assigned to either an isometric resistance training group or a traditional resistance training group. Participants will engage in 3 sets of 6 repetitions each for the chest press and leg press exercises. In the traditional resistance training group, sets will involve isotonic contractions (ISOT) with the full range of motion (ROM) at 80% of their one-repetition maximum (1RM). Conversely, the isometric resistance training group will perform isometric contractions (ISOM) at 80% of their maximal voluntary contraction (MVC), with each set executed at a different angle within the normal lifting range of motion (i.e., lower third, middle third, and upper third). It is anticipated that this research will provide insights into the longitudinal effects of isometric resistance training on muscle performance.

The purpose of this study is to build machine learning and AI models to predict admissions to hospital from just information available at emergency department traige. We look to address current gaps in the literature by exploring the effect of concept drift and will attempt to address concept drift to try to make these models more applicable to the real clinical environment.

This study aims to determine the changes in blood glucose level control over six months following a simplified Mediterranean diet-based nutrition intervention compared to usual care among Australian adults diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. A healthcare practitioner in the primary care setting (GP or nurse) will deliver the intervention via telephone consultations and online media. Blood test results and other outcome measures of patients will be obtained from their registered general practice. We expect that patients receiving the nutrition intervention will have a greater improvement in blood glucose control, blood cholesterol levels, liver function, body weight and blood pressure compared to the patients in the usual care group.

This project looks at how daily actions (Things You Do; TYD) impact symptoms of anxiety and depression, in a sample of Australian health professionals. A Randomised Controlled Trial will compare three groups (n = 136 per group): TYD intervention vs. Gratitude intervention vs. Waitlist control condition. The two interventions conditions will follow a similar procedure beginning with reading instructions about the intervention condition, answering the same questionnaires, and receiving targeted SMS messages each weekday for four weeks. The primary objective of this trial is to compare the benefits of the TYD intervention vs. a gratitude intervention vs. a waitlist control condition on symptoms of depression and anxiety in Australian health professionals. Based on our previous research, the primary hypothesis is that nudging actions using SMS messaging will result in reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety in the two intervention groups relative to the waitlist control group, but that significantly greater improvements will be observed in the group who receive nudges based on the TYD model, compared to those receiving nudges based on gratitude information.