ANZCTR search results

This study looks if supervised physical exercise is useful in reducing side effects of hormonal therapy for prostate cancer. Who is it for? You can join this study if you have been enrolled in the Randomised Androgen Deprivation and Radiotherapy (RADAR) study. Trial details: Participants will be divided into two groups. One group will undertake supervised resistance and aerobic exercise. Sessions are 60 minutes each, twice weekly over 6 months. The other group will be provided with a printed booklet with general information about physical exercise. The study will measure aerobic capacity, abdominal obesity, lipid and glycemic control, muscle function and other indicators of well-being before, immediately after the program and 6 months after the program. The use of androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) is accompanied by a number of side effects. This study will investigate the effects of supervised physical exercise on reversing ADT related side effects.

Asthma affects approximately 20% of children, is a common cause of hospital admissions, and we do not know how to stop children developing it. Infantile eczema is also common, affecting about a third of children. Infants with eczema often later develop asthma. It is hypothesised sensitisation to allergens can occur via damaged skin associated with eczema, which then increases the risk of asthma. If this hypothesis is correct, it may be possible to prevent asthma by improving the skin barrier function in infants. There is evidence that a ceramide based emollient (which contains the major components of skin) can improve skin barrier function, while current treatments for eczema do not. This pilot study is aims to determine if a daily application of a ceramide dominant emollient can improve infant skin barrier function.

The aim of the trial is to address the current lack of evidence for what is arguably Australia's most widely used chronic disease self-management program, the Flinders Model. It is hypothesised that older Australians who receive the Flinders Model of Self-Management support program will experience improved health status compared to those who receive a health education package. A secondary objective of the study is to ascertain the impact of the Flinders Model on spouses (‘carers’) who care for those with complex chronic disease. It is unknown whether the Flinders Model will increase or decrease carer burden and stress.

The PROMUS Element small vessel clinical trial – PLATINUM SV, is a prospective, multi-centre trial to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of the PROMUS Element Everolimus-Eluting Coronary Stent System in patients with a lesion in a smal vessel (2.25-2.5mm diameter). Treatment will be in participants with a single de novo (new or untreated) atherosclerotic coronary artery lesion. A separate coronary artery (de novo) narrowing is able to be treated with a commercial treatment (eg: stent such as PROMUS, balloon angioplasty, excluding brachytherapy) during the initial procedure. Up to 35 sites enrolling up to 94 patients. Follow up at 30 days, 6 and 12 months after intervention.

The PROMUS Element Long Lesion clinical trial –PLATINUM LL, is a prospective, multi-centre trial to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of the PROMUS Element Everolimus-Eluting Coronary Stent System in patients with a lesion that is 24-34mm in length. Treatment will be in participants with a single de novo (new or untreated) atherosclerotic coronary artery lesion. A separate coronary artery (de novo) narrowing is able to be treated with a commercial treatment (eg: stent such as PROMUS, balloon angioplasty, excluding brachytherapy) during the initial procedure. Up to 35 sites enrolling up to 102 patients. Follow up at 30 days, 6 and 12 months after intervention.

The Behavioural Activation model highlights the centrality of patterns of avoidance and withdrawal. The conceptualisation for using BA with depression by Dimidjian and colleagues has received strong empirical support. The premise of BA treatment on depression focuses on reducing the repetitive negative thinking in depression- rumination; and assisting individuals to reverse avoidant behaviours, particularly in areas of occupational or daily-life routine demands. Recent research has pointed to distinct similarity in the features of worry and rumination, both sharing a common feature of repetitive negative thought and both has implications on problem orientation (approach versus avoidance) and problem resolution. The current study aims to adapt the BA treatment for depression to a group with excessive and uncontrollable worry tendency. The purpose of the current study is to determine the efficacy of using Behaviour Activation to treat excessive and uncontrollable worry. The study may also have implications for future directions of a transdiagnostic treatment approach to depression and anxiety disorders where excessive worry is a maintaining factor.

The primary purpose of this study is to determine if using a bedside ultrasound machine is as good as using an Xray to determine if a bone is fractured. A positive outcome from this study may speed up the treatment of patients with similar injuries and avoid unecessary exposure to radiation.

The primary purpose of the study is to investigate vitamin D and health in people with chronic kidney disease who are using peritoneal dialysis or hemodialysis. As part of the study we want to find out whether people using peritoneal dialysis have low vitamin D levels in their blood and how much vitamin D they get from food and sunlight exposure. We also want to find out whether low vitamin D is related to adverse health outcomes. Study hypotheses (alternative hypotheses) 1) Low intake of vitamin D & exposure to sunlight will be associated with low blood levels of vitamin D 2) Low blood levels of vitamin D will be associated with adverse health outcomes

This study aims to improve the nutrition and physical activity behaviours of mothers with young children.

Bacopa Monnieri (BM) was first defined as a phytochemical brain tonic and touted to have the ability to improve memory, learning, and concentration for 3000 years (Zhou et al., 2007). Bacopa of late has had the statistical backing to support its cognitive enhancing capabilities (Calabrese et al., 2008) and since these findings BM has been trialled in a number of different settings offering new insights to its cognitive and physiological benefits. Investigations using BM on the response of elderly subjects uncovered significant cognitive improvements and a complete tolerability of the herb over a 12-week study (Calabrese et al. 2008). Elderly participants significantly improved their performance on learning tests and stroop tasks and showed decreases in Center for Epidemiologic Studies Short Depression Scale (CESD-10) depression scores and State-Trait Anxiety Indicator scores (STAI) scores. These studies allow us to hypothesize that cognitive improvements with the use of BM made after the age of 65 indicate its possible effectiveness on age related disorder (Calabrese et al. 2008; Barbhaiya et al.'s 2008). No study has reported any adverse events that weren’t also experienced by placebo groups, indicating a high tolerability of the drug among healthy human subjects. Furthermore using animal models, BM has been implicated in the amelioration of vascular dysfunction (Dar and Channa 1997), the decreased accumulation of beta-amyloid-42 (Holcomb et al. 2006) and acetylcholinesterase (Das et al. 2002), decreased levels of cholesterol (Anbarasi et al., 2005), and increased the activity of free radicals (Bhattacharya et al. 2000; Dhanasekaran et al. 2007) lessening the impact of oxidative stress associated with ageing and Alzheimer’s Dementia. The study will be an acute double blind, placebo controlled, crossover design investigating stress levels, cardiovascular effects, aortic elasticity, and cognitive function in an older adult population. Participants are required to attend testing sessions on three occasions; one practice day and two subsequent testing days separated by a seven day washout period. On the first of the testing days the participants will be randomly assigned to either placebo or treatment group and will then crossover groups on the second testing day. Each testing day will consist of a battery of tests, followed by the administration of the drug and a two hour wait period, followed by a second round of battery testing. The results of both pre-treatment and post-treatment testing will be compared using a repeated measures analysis of variance contrasting both groups in each condition over several testing periods.