ANZCTR search results

This study will use microarray analysis to investigate the effects of statins, antioxidant nutrients and omega-3 fatty acids (fish oil) in COPD. COPD is a condition that involves inflammation of the airways that can cause scarring and airflow limitation of the lung, with the primary cause being cigarette smoking. Statins are drugs which are usually used to lower cholesterol levels but are also known to have anti-inflammatory and possible antioxidant effects. Omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants have also been found to be useful in reducing inflammation. Hypothesis: Statins, antioxidants and fish oil supplements may have different and potentially complementary effects, on genes involved in inflammatory pathways. The combined use of these interventions may provide a superior approach to reducing inflammation and slowing deterioration of lung function in ex-smokers with obstructive airway disease.

To establish the feasibility, patient acceptability, effect on risk factors and thereby overall potential of repeated semi-personalized lifestyle reminders sent via mobile phone text messages in a population at high risk of cardiovascular events. The main hypothesis that will be tested is that a program of brief and repeated lifestyle messages will improve cardiovascular risk factor levels compared to usual care.

To determine the effect of participation in the new Ambulatory CF Physiotherapy Clinic on patients' quality of life, lung function, fitness and number of days in hospital.

This is an open-label, non-randomized, dose-escalation study, to be conducted in two phases: a single-centre dose-escalation phase with supernumerary patient addition (Part 1), to determine the safety and tolerability of CYT387, and to identify a therapeutic dose for the confirmation portion of the study; and a multiple-centre dose-confirmation phase (Part 2), which will be a cohort expansion at or below the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) of CYT387.

In the last five years, a treatment specifically developed for borderline personality disorder namely Schema Therapy has been found to be more effective than existing usual treatments and a specialized form of psychodynamic therapy. When compared to other specialized treatments, Schema Therapy has very low drop-out rate and is very effective, not only in reducing symptoms, but in improving quality of life. Schema Therapy can lead to full recovery from BPD and normal functioning. However, this schema therapy is yet to be tested outside of the centres that developed the programme. A large scale international study to investigate the efficacy of the treatment programme across six countries in several different languages is planned for 2011. The research will compare two different delivery modes of Schema Therapy with existing treatments to see if there is some benefit of this new therapy. The study will enable us to determine not only if the therapy is beneficial in other parts of the world, but by including an Australian site, we can make specific recommendations in an Australian context.

More than half of the Australian population do not meet the levels of physical activity recommended to achieve health benefits. The Internet has become an increasingly important communication tool and Internet based physical activity interventions which include innovative technology have the potential to reach large groups of individuals and contribute to the promotion of physical activity and behaviour change. Each year there is a proliferation of health-related and health-promotion websites, yet virtually no work has been done to study the utility and effectiveness of these population-targeted websites. This study will develop a website featuring Web 2.0 applications and evaluate the efficacy and utility of the website to promote physical activity in comparison to a conventional (Web 1.0) physical activity promotion website and a control group. The study will initially test the efficacy of the intervention in this randomised control trial (RCT). The RCT will investigate the efficacy, adherence and behaviour change in a rigorous, controlled setting with high internal validity. Following the commencement of the RCT and an ecological trial (ET) will commence. The ET takes advantage of the unique 'real world' sample available to the research team through the existing 10,000 Steps website to evaluate engagement by users from the broader community. The ecological trial will be registered separately. We expect that the current proposal will provide an increased understanding of the benefits of newer web-based technologies and applications in engaging and retaining participants on web-based physical activity promotion sites. This work has the potential to improve health outcomes from increased engagement/retention in physical activity.

This research project composes of collecting echocardiographic and cardiac MRI (CMR) data on two populations of patients; those with severe aortic stenosis and those with systemic hypertension and comparing them to healthy subjects. We would like to use the data collected on these two cohorts of patients to look at 2 dimensional strain imaging, tissue Doppler imaging, three dimensional volumes and myocardial fibrosis. By using these advanced imaging techniques we can evaluate and quantify left ventricular (LV) hypertrophy and myocardial characteristics. This may give us a better understanding of cardiac remodelling and the function of the heart muscle in each of these disease states. We hypothesise that differences in myocardial function and tissue characterisation detected by these imaging techniques may be detected in patients aortic stenosis and hypertension with similar degrees of LV hypertrophy.

Hepatobiliary disease is a common manifestation of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Usually this is apparent by the development of abnormal liver function tests (LFT). In the majority of cases deranged liver tests are transient, can be related to the activity of the inflammatory bowel disease and have no clinical sequalae. However, There are several other causes for deranged LFT’s in IBD which may lead to permanent scarring of the liver. A scarred or fibrotic liver often may not declare itself by abnormal liver tests and transient elastography (TE) is a non invasive method of measuring liver stiffness now used widely in research and clinical practice. In the field of hepatitis C, it is largely replacing the need for a liver biopsy to exclude advance fibrosis and cirrhosis. In this project we seek to find out the prevalence of liver injury in IBD patients by measuring liver stiffness using an operator independent machine called FibroScan (RT).

We wish to study and determine early predictors of cardiac toxicity during combined trastuzumab and/or anthracycline chemotherapy in patients with breast cancer by way of precise assessment of sub-clinical right (RV) and LV systolic and diastolic function. Volume measurements and determination of oedema and myocardial fibrosis will be performed by CMR and advanced echocardiography in order to identify sub-clinical changes of probably significance for development of later manifest ventricular dysfunction. Secondary aim is to correlate observed cardiovascular changes with cumulative dose chemotherapy, age and pre-existing cardiovascular risk factors and biochemical markers or cardiac dysfunction and fibrosis. We hypothesise that: - CMR images will show evidence of myocardial oedema, before patients develop chemotherapy induced cardiomyopathy - tagging imaging techniques will demonstrate lowered active diastolic function - degree of cardiac dysfunction will be proportional to number of chemotherapy cycles conducted - CMR and advanced echo will allow for identification of patients at high risk of heart disease - Abnormalities seen on advanced echo and features of fibrosis on CMR will correspond with abnormal biochemical markers

The purpose of this study was to compare the relative efficacy of the traditional one-on-one physiotherapy format (control group) with a combined one-on-one/group-circuit physiotherapy format (experimental group) during post-acute lower-limb orthopaedic inpatient rehabilitation. The study’s research questions were, for post-acute lower-limb orthopaedic in-patient rehabilitation: 1. Does a combined one-on-one/group-circuit physiotherapy format offer ‘cost-savings’relative to a traditional one-on-one model of physiotherapy service-delivery? 2. Is a combined one-on-one/group-circuit physiotherapy format as clinically effective as the traditional one-on-one model of physiotherapy service-delivery? 3. Are there any specific measures of recovery particularly influenced by the model of service-delivery? 4. How do the discharge scores for key functional mobility measures compare with normative data?