ANZCTR search results

Over one third of the young adult population in developed countries are university students. The very nature of being a student at a university requires large amounts of sitting, with university students self-reporting greater than 7 hr/day sedentary. These sedentary behaviour levels have increased over the last 10-years and are higher than the general young adult population. With the closure of university campuses due to the COVID-19 pandemic forcing students from face-to-face to online learning and then continuing with hybrid delivery when able, sedentary behaviour has increased in this population. Greater than 7 hr/day of self-reported sedentary time has been associated with an increased risk of dying from any cause. Additionally, the university years have been identified as an important time for future life patterns, including health-related behaviours. Within the University of Canberra Faculty of Health we have the opportunity to promote less sitting in this young adult population and improve health outcomes for not only our students but also the patients of our future health workforce. Few studies have focused on reducing sedentary behaviour in university students and none have used choice architecture interventions. Choice architecture interventions, or ‘nudging’, make subtle changes to the micro-environment (university, home, online), disrupting habitual behaviour and motivating the choice for a healthier option. Applied to the physical, social and learning environments, prompts will be embedded in lectures and tutorials encouraging active breaks every 30 minutes of sitting. Posters and brief educational videos will be co-produced with students to provide information on the relationship between sedentary behaviour, health and academic outcomes, including the use of descriptive social norms. The aim of this project is to reduce students’ total self-reported sedentary behaviour by incorporating 'nudges' to sit less within their academic content (lectures, tutorials) and by providing brief education and prompts to spend less time in sedentary behaviour via the co-designed video and posters.

Cardiac arrest is the most common cause of death in otherwise healthy adults. Each year in NSW Ambulance responds to over 8,000 Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrests (OHCA). Of the approximately 3,000 arrests where resuscitation is attempted, only 12% survive to hospital discharge overall. Mechanical cardiopulmonary resuscitation (MCPR) devices deliver uninterrupted effective manual chest compressions throughout patient extrication and transfer in a moving ambulance (currently NSW Paramedics cannot provide ongoing chest compressions in these scenarios). This allows for emergent transportation of patients in cardiac arrest to hospital and either directly for coronary angiography or full cardio-respiratory support with Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO). ECMO-CPR (ECPR) restores perfusion/circulation in a patient by a machine and allows doctors time to investigate/treat the cause of the cardiac arrest (i.e. myocardial infarction and coronary angioplasty/stenting). A cardiac arrest treatment with a bundle of care of expedited transfer from OHCA scene to hospital, MCPR and coronary angiography and/or ECPR may be of benefit above traditional more extended on scene resuscitation.

This research will explore the efficacy of Dynamic Temporal and Tactile Cuing (DTTC or Dynamic Therapy) a well-established treatment that has only been tested in small scale studies. The study will compare Dynamic Therapy with usual care which is the speech therapy that children routinely receive in the community. We will also estimate the cost of therapy and make recommendations for which treatment option is most cost-effective. The study is a two-arm randomised controlled trial. This is the first such study for children with apraxia who are under 8 years old.

The CHARISMA trial is a prospective double-blind, placebo-controlled randomised study to evaluate the effect of adding colchicine to standard medical therapy in patients who have non-obstructive but high-risk plaques in their coronary arteries as demonstrated on cardiac CT angiogram (CCTA). A total of 100 participants will be recruited over the study period. Participants will be randomised to either 1) standard medical therapy or 2) standard therapy plus colchicine 0.5mg daily for 12 months. At the end of 12 months, all participants will then undergo a repeat CCTA. We hypothesise that the addition of colchicine to standard medical therapy will have demonstrate a reduction in markers of coronary inflammation as assessed by peri-coronary adipose tissue attenuation.

This study aims to modify and evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of a highly novel therapy approach that has been trialled with other neurological populations (e.g. stroke, traumatic brain injury). The intervention is predicted to improve the informativeness and efficiency of everyday communication and quality of life in people living with early stage dementia. The study will recruit 15 adults with a diagnosis of dementia and progressive language impairment. Each participant will act as his or her own control. The study will provide pilot data to inform a future large-scale trial, help to optimise the treatment protocol, and discern the most appropriate candidates for the intervention.

This study is a double-blind, single dose, two period crossover study to compare the PK, PD, immunogenicity and safety of three Tocilizumab products (DRL_TC, RP and RMP) in Normal Healthy Volunteers. IP will be given subcutaneosly.

The aim of the RESCUE study is to collect information on the effectiveness of the Pfizer and Astra Zeneca COVID-19 vaccination in patients with AI disease (autoimmune rheumatic and inflammatory bowel disease). In addition, it will help to determine if stopping current therapy for 1 week after the vaccine will make any difference to the effectiveness of the vaccines. The effectiveness of the vaccines shall be measured by the spike protein antibody levels.

The Sleep Course is a remotely-delivered psychological treatment that has been designed to help people improve their sleep and waking patterns, and daytime functioning (e.g. fatigue, emotional wellbeing). It is designed for adults who report sleep difficulty. It involves four lessons delivered over a 6 week period. Participants also receive telephone support from trained psychologists. The aim of our study is to evaluate the efficacy of the Sleep Course in a group of diverse individuals who experience sleep difficulty. We hypothesise that people in the Sleep Course will report greater sleep improvements compared to a participants waiting to receive treatment.

This trial is investigating the feasibility of pre-operative high-dose radiation in early breast cancer patients. Who is it for? You may be eligible for this trial if you are a female aged 60 or over, with unifocal breast cancer graded <3 on core biopsies. You must also be oestrogen and progesterone receptor positive, and clinically node negative. Study details Parents recruited to this study will be offered a high radiation dose delivered in a single treatment using an MRI-guided linear accelerator, 6 weeks prior to surgery. They will be followed up for disease response and progression. It is hoped that this study will help investigators examine the feasibility of pre-operative single dose radiotherapy, which may reduce patient inconvenience as well as potentially decreasing side effects of extended radiation treatment.

Each year, researchers and doctors work to find better tests, treatments, and services for children. They often use questionnaires that ask about a child’s general health (also called ‘health related quality of life’) to understand how these tests, treatments and services improve children’s lives. However, sometimes this can be hard as there is a lack of sound evidence on how well these health related quality of life (HRQoL) questionnaires perform in children. More evidence on the performance of these questionnaires is required in Australia to guide decision making. We hope the results of this work may help us to better measure overall health in children in order to provide better health care to children in the future. This study will compare lots of different HRQoL questionnaires in children (sometimes called a ‘multi-instrument comparison study’). The study will involve an initial and follow-up survey. The follow-up survey will be a simplified version of the initial survey that will be sent out 2-8 weeks after completion of the first survey. For the small sub-set (N=200) of participants the follow-up survey will be sent two days after the completion of the initial survey. The performance of these various child HRQoL questionnaires will be analysed and compared. We will also look at a subset of disease groups to see how generic HRQoL questionnaires perform compared with disease-specific questionnaires. We plan collect data on 4,900 Australian children (from children who are well through to those that are very sick). The objectives of the study are to: (1) understand how well various child HRQoL questionnaires can be filled out by parents and how well they measure problems and improvements in health (i.e. consistency, acceptability, feasibility, reliability, responsiveness and validity) and (2) provide government, health practitioners and researchers with a practical set of tools that are ‘fit for purpose’ in judging the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of child health interventions.