ANZCTR search results

The aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of context-specific physical activity recommendations and activity plans for increasing physical activity in adults with a previous diagnosis of coronary heart disease. (A) The investigators hypothesise that: Primary hypothesis: 1. Participants will show a greater improvement in steps walked within 180 minutes of receiving motivational messages compared to not receiving the motivational messages. Secondary hypotheses: 2. Participants will show a greater improvement in physical activity duration and heart rate within 180 minutes of receiving motivational messages compared to not receiving the motivational messages. 3. Certain times of the day will be more effective in the proximal outcomes in those randomized to the intervention compared to those who are randomized to not receive the intervention. 4. There will be no difference in distal outcomes in Phase 1 of the study compared to Phase 2. (B) Physical activity can be tracked via Fitbit devices, which our participants will wear 24/7 during the intervention period which will be 90 continuous days at time points 4-6 and 10-12 months. (C) Baseline data will be collected for a full one month prior to initiating the intervention for the initial 4-6 months, and at month 9 (natural baseline) for the 10-12m study period. (D) Our intervention will be sent as messages (seen as notifications via the app) according to a random schedule to participants who will be randomised (to either receive or not receive the messages) at each time-point per day during the intervention period. (E) We will have a smartphone app adapted for this research and we will implement this MRT through it. (F) Data from this MRT will allow us to further design just-in-time interventions for future digital interventions. Just-in-time interventions are simply providing the right support (messages) at the right time. (G) The purpose is to provide behavioural support directly corresponding to real-time needs when participants can participate in positive behaviours. (H) Our hypothesis suggests those participants receiving the intervention messages will show an improvement in physical activity compliance, improvement in heart rate variability, and improvement in heart rate, with an overall improvement in cardiometabolic health at the 12-month time point. (I) 58 participants will be randomised for 90 days at two time points (4-6m and 10-12m).

Intestinal barrier perturbation is a central mechanism to a multitude of diseases but its function has proven elusive to measure. Clearer experimental models of barrier dysfunction induction and reliable non-invasive markers are required. Currently we do not have a good way to intestinal permeability or 'leaky gut' The aim of this study is to help develop blood tests which will help with this measurement. We hypothesise that both the high fat, high carbohydrate meal as well as the injection of corticotropin releasing hormone will cause a significant disruption to the intestinal barrier function that will be measurable with the blood tests that we are testing.

Pressure injuries, also commonly known as pressure ulcers or bedsores, are wounds considered adverse events when acquired in care. Pressure injuries are a burden to patients and their carers, due to pain and distress and can decrease the quality of life. This study aims to determine the usefulness and cost-efficiency of two different silicone dressings compared to usual care for the prevention of pressure injuries in cancer patients who are in palliative care. Who is it for? You may be eligible for this study if you are aged 18 years or older, you have a primary diagnosis of any cancer, and you score three or over on the Resource Utilisation Groups – Activities of Daily Living (RUG-ADL) questionnaire. Study details All participants who choose to enrol in this study will be randomly allocated by chance (similar to flipping a coin) to one of three groups. All three groups will receive standard care for the prevention of pressure injuries, which includes risk assessment, skin inspection and the implementation of appropriate support surfaces (bed and chair seating devices) and repositioning equipment (hoist or slide sheet). It also involves the provision of patient and caregiver/family prevention education, including equipment use and maintenance, the need for regular repositioning, skincare and advice to optimise nutrition for the hospice patient. Participants allocated to group 1 will also have multilayer silicone dressing Brand 1 applied to the sacrum (lower back near buttocks). The dressing will be changed three times a week during the usual nurse visit schedule for at-risk palliative care patients or sooner if the dressing becomes dislodged. Participants allocated to group 2 will also have multilayer silicone dressing Brand 2 applied to the sacrum (lower back near buttocks). The dressing will be changed three times a week during the usual nurse visit schedule for at-risk palliative care patients or sooner if the dressing becomes dislodged. Participants allocated to group 3 will not receive any additional dressings and will be managed via standard care practices only. All participants will receive this care for up to 4 weeks following enrolment, unless they deteriorate, develop a pressure injury or need to be transferred to a hospital or other care facility. It is hoped this research will determine whether the use of silicone dressings is practical and has any impact on the prevention of pressure injuries compared to usual care practices. If the silicone dressings are more effective than usual care, they may be implemented across other care facilities to improve the quality of life for future cancer patients.

We hypothesised that pain generated by tourniquet after exsanguination of lower limb with Esmarch is significantly lower comparing with pain from elevated lower limb for one minute and applied same type of tourniquet. We intend to record pain score generated by these two methods of exsanguination every 2 minutes for 20 minutes of tourniquet type and for 10 minutes after tourniquet is released. Pain curve will be the primary parameters where the pain in each point of time and time of full recovery will be the second paremetres. We will use one leg of participant for Esmarch group and the second leg for elevation group. Sides of interventions will be randomly chosen.

Overseas-born gay, bisexual men and other men who have sex with men (Ob-GBM) populations are at an increased risk of HIV in Australia. Despite the availability of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), they experience socio-cultural, and systemic barriers to accessing PrEP as an effective HIV prevention biomedical tool. Behavioural economics is a relatively new field, that is being applied by governments in policies and interventions to alter an individual’s behaviour in a predictable and cost-effective manner. It can be a powerful approach that blends psychological insights with economic decision-making processes of individuals, through ‘nudges’. A nudge is any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behaviour in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives, such as using the default option, or social norms. For example, in health, nudges have been applied to improve the rate of organ donations, and to increase the rate of attendance at hospital consultations. In the field of HIV, the application of behavioural economics is also novel, and this study aims to contribute to the evidence of applications of nudges in HIV-related interventions. This study aims to run an online (social media) nudge campaign to improve PrEP awareness and access through an ad campaign on social media platforms that target particularly among (overseas-born gay, bisexual men, and men who have sex with men (Ob-GBM) populations in Australia.

People with chronic pain find that osteoarthritis can severely disrupt their life, robbing them of the pleasure of conducting simple daily activities. The present lack of effective medications means chronic pain is inadequately managed. Regular medications such as paracetamol are non-curative. Stronger medications, on the other hand, can cause drowsiness and/or unsteadiness. Furthermore, for opioids, the induced analgesia attenuates over time. The potential of cannabinoids for the treatment of osteoarthritis so far has not been fully appreciated. Published systematic reviews in the literature for the safety, efficacy and tolerability of cannabinoids in arthritis are scarce and have limitations that prevent meta-analyses. The aims of this study are: Stage 1: Determine the pharmacokinetics of CBD and PEA applied to skin Stage 2: Perform a randomised phase IIa double blind, placebo-controlled, three-arm cross-over study to examine the tolerability and efficacy of CBD and PEA in osteoarthritic joint pain. This research has been initiated by Prof Nicholas Manolios, Head of Department of Rheumatology, Westmead Hospital. This research has been funded by the Westmead Research Foundation. The funding body has no input into conduct of the research.

This trial will investigate the use of a social humanoid robot to deliver a novel cognitive flexibility intervention designed to help people to use flexible thinking patterns to overcome cognitive biases or distortions. It is intended that this trial will support university students by teaching them new techniques to help overcome thinking traps and how to better deal with negative automatic thoughts.

The proposed study will involve implementing and testing Tuning Relationships with Music (TRM) at the Gippsland Centre Against Sexual Assault. TRM is an intervention that aims to help parents and adolescents (10 – 18 years) impacted by sexual and/or physical violence improve the quality of their relationship.. A pilot study (Colegrove et al., 2018) found that participation in Tuning Relationships with Music (TRM) led to significant reductions in parent-adolescent conflict and parent reactivity, and improved parental responsiveness. This study is a next step to evaluate how effective TRM is when used in the real-world setting. It is hypothesised that participation will lead to changes in parent responsiveness and reactivity, parent-adolescent health, and parent/adolescent mental health. It is also hypothesised that the study will advance knowledge about whether counsellors experience TRM as an acceptable and appropriate intervention for parents and adolescents impacted by sexual and/or physical abuse.

The COVID-19 rehabilitation service at the University of Canberra Hospital has been established in April 2022. The service hinges on sound principles of thorough patient assessment and medical screening; individualized patient-centred care planning; carefully prescribed and supervised graded exercise therapy by trained therapists; and holistic management of a wide range of physical, cognitive, psychological and social problems to best meet the needs of our ACT people still struggling to recover from COVID-19. From benchmarking exercises, we know that there is no other established multidisciplinary COVID-19 recovery service in Australia. As a collaborative research team, we want to take this opportunity to capture data regarding this service’s usual practice, and hope to demonstrate that this novel approach to COVID-19 rehabilitation (including graded exercise therapy) is feasible and safe. Usual practice will include prescribed exercises where indicated, including retraining of respiratory muscles where these are weak (a potential contributor to breathlessness, particularly in ICU survivors). We also want to capture the patients’ experience of this service, to ascertain the acceptability of this model of care. If we can demonstrate that this approach does not harm patients, and is acceptable to patients, we may encourage COVID-19 rehabilitation clinics around the world to re-think their approach to COVID-19 recovery, and lead the world in generating the evidence needed to inform best practice.

This study is looking at how COVID-19 has affected people including their fitness, health and quality of life after their initial infection. Where effects persist for 12 weeks after infection, this is known as Long COVID. Even people who had relatively mild COVID-19 at the time can experience long COVID symptoms. Doctors are in the early stages of understanding this condition and there are a variety of different symptoms affecting many parts of the body. Symptoms can include fatigue, breathlessness, a cough that won’t go away, joint pain, muscle aches, hearing and eyesight problems, headaches, loss of smell and taste as well as problems affecting the heart, lungs, kidneys and gut. Mental health problems have also been reported including depression, anxiety and struggling to think clearly or ‘brain fog’. Clinicians will use questionnaires developed across the world for this purpose, to help gather this information and observe the treatments used. Information obtained from this study will help clinicians understand how best to identify and manage Long COVID.