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Schools within a within 50km of Melbourne may be invited to participate.

People with complete quadriplegia commonly report sleep disturbances and have been found to lack melatonin production, a hormone that modulates our sleep cycle. It is unclear if their sleep problems are related to their lack of melatonin production. The aim of this study was to investigate whether nightly supplementation of 3mg melatonin would induce, shift the phase of and/or modify subjective sleep for people with complete quadriplegia. It is hypothesised that supplementation with melatonin will improve subjective sleep for people with complete quadriplegia along with their sleep phasing, quality of life and autonomic functioning.

Children with cerebral palsy (CP) have difficulty with mobility due to increased muscle tone (spasticity) and weakness in their legs. In recent years, botulinum toxin type A (BoNT-A, or botox) has been used to treat muscle spasticity, providing an opportunity for physiotherapy to improve walking ability and endurance. Current research findings suggest that the effect of botox can be increased by making sure that injected muscles are actively contracting at the time of injection. If this theory is correct, strategies which “activate” the injected muscle may play a vital role in making the most of a given botox treatment. This project will test this theory by comparing 2 groups of children who receive botox; one group will also receive electrical stimulation to the affected calf muscle at the time of the botox injection, and the other group will only receive the injection. Both groups will then receive standard post-injection physiotherapy. The two groups will then have their walking ability assessed using specialised gait analysis. This project has the potential to improve the effects of botox treatment for all children who are injected.

We are conducting a study of a potential treatment (Alpha-Stim:Registered Trademark) for pain associated with fibromyalgia. We are looking for people who have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia who are willing to trial the Alpha-Stim: Registered Trademark Cranial Electrotherapy Stimulation (CES) device daily over a six week period. If you do agree to participate, you will be required to attend the laboratory at Deakin Burwood Campus for three 2 hour sessions within the 6 week period of the study. The first of these sessions will be held before your first 3 weeks of CES treatment, the second after the first 3 weeks, and the third at the conclusion of your treatment. During each of these sessions, we will be measuring your levels of pain, anxiety, depression and quality of sleep using certain tests. You will be asked to fill out some questionnaires to establish the severity and impact of your symptoms. These questionnaires should take about 20 minutes to complete. We will seek information such as your age, gender and the length of time you have suffered from fibromyalgia. Pain will be measured using a device which applies light pressure to parts of the body, and a visual analogue scale, which is a questionnaire asking for your level of agreement with certain statements about your pain. We will also measure some psychological and cognitive attributes. The tests being used are all standardized clinical measures and will be used to assess you at baseline (pre-treatment), in the middle of the 6 weeks and then again at the conclusion of the 6 week period (post-treatment).

The purpose of this project is to test the usefulness of a parenting program in reducing and/or preventing behaviour problems and improving metabolic control in children who have developed diabetes in the past couple of years. If the program is helpful, we hope that this will improve the emotional and physical wellbeing of these children in the future. Previous research has shown that children who have behaviour problems before, or soon after they develop diabetes, are at an increased risk for ongoing emotional difficulties, as well as being more likely to have poorly controlled diabetes. We plan to invite the families of children who have diabetes and behaviour problems to take part in this project. Half of these families will be offered a parenting program and the other half will receive the standard care from the Diabetes Clinic. We are also interested in finding out whether this parenting program may prevent behaviour problems developing in the future. We also plan to invite families of children who have diabetes and do not have behaviour problems to take part. Half the families will take part in the parenting program and half will receive the standard care. This will allow us to see whether the parenting program can prevent the development of behaviour problems in children who do not have problems at the moment. We are hoping 80 families will take part in this project.

Preliminary evidence has driven the development of an innovative treatment for early stuttering, called the Westmead Program. The treatment involves training children to practice a speech pattern known as syllable timed speech (STS) with their parents, daily. STS involves speaking with equal stress attached to each syllable and it is the best known means to control stuttering in a laboratory context. The current best practice treatment, the Lidcombe Program, has been replicated in randomised controlled trials; however, it does require considerable resources from families and clinicians. The purpose of investigating innovative treatments for early stuttering is to provide users with effective alternate approaches that have the potential to improve health care efficiency and client care. Accordingly, the primary aim of this study is to evaluate whether the experimental treatment is at least as efficacious as the standard treatment.

The primary purpose of this study is to examine the effect of triple combination anti viral drug (TCAD) in influenza infection in immunocompromised subjects. TCAD may potentially produce a greater reduction in viral load in these subjects and potentially block drug resistance therefore reducing morbidity in influenza A infection in immunocompromised subjects.

There is currently very little evidence comparing pain felt by the patient post operatively between the two most commonly used local anaesthetic blocks for cataract surgery, the peribulbar (pericone) block and the sub-Tenon's (parabulbar) block. We think that the peribulbar block will have a lower pain score and analgesic use over the 24 hour period due to the less invasive nature of providing the anaesthetic.

Brief summary: Preeclampsia and fetal intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) are common complications during pregnancy that can cause long lasting health effects for mother and baby in later life. It is believed both conditions are caused by abnormal development of the placenta (whenua/after-birth) and can often recur in future pregnancies. There are several therapies that have been studied to prevent these diseases but, until now, none have been proven to be very effective. Heparin is a drug that prevents blood clots and is believed to help the placenta to develop well. Some studies have suggested that heparin may reduce the risk of preeclampsia and IUGR but this has not been properly assessed in a randomised trial. Our study will invite women who have had a previous pregnancy severely affected by these conditions. Half of the women will be given the heparin injection each day as well as current standard of care (aspirin for all women and calcium for women with previous preeclampsia) and the other half will receive the current standard of care. All women will be monitored very closely. At the end of the study we will be able to assess if the heparin injections reduce the risk of preeclampsia and IUGR.