Break in cancer treatment cuts side effects and does not affect life expectancy, study finds A trial has shown that breaks from first-line treatments for patients with metastatic and/or locally advanced kidney cancer did not cause meaningful detriment to their life expectancy or quality of life.…
Why it is too soon to celebrate the Alzheimer’s ‘wonder drug’ The US approval of aducanumab — the first disease-modifying drug for Alzheimer’s disease — based on a trial with a surrogate endpoint, has caused quite a stir. Here we look at the controversy and what the approval might mean for Alzheimer’s research.…
Critical appraisal: how to evaluate research for use in clinical practice The ability to make appropriate evidence-based decisions in clinical practice relies on pharmacists having the skills to extract and translate the most relevant and useful information from published literature.…
NHS DigiTrials: how the search for COVID-19 treatments is revolutionising clinical trials The UK health service’s data-led approach to trials has helped to save millions of lives from COVID-19 worldwide — here’s how the NHS is setting an exciting new blueprint for all clinical trials.…
Knowing how to read research papers makes us better pharmacists, so I started a journal club When she noticed that colleagues were uncomfortable with research papers, meaning they were locked out of clinical conversations, community pharmacist Iqra Sarwar took action.…
RECOVERY trial halts recruitment to colchicine arm because of a lack of ‘convincing’ evidence The anti-inflammatory drug colchicine has shown no significant difference in improving survival rates from usual care in patients with COVID-19.…
New drug cuts the risk of death in bladder cancer by 30% compared with chemotherapy, study suggests A trial comparing new antibody-drug conjugate enfortumab vedotin with chemotherapy in patients with bladder cancer has found that overall survival was longer in the group receiving the new drug.…
Half of asthma patients in the UK overusing SABAs, study finds In a UK asthma programme, 284,683 out of 574,913 patients were found to be “potentially overusing” short-acting β2-agonists.…
Gout drug could cut length of hospitalisation in patients with moderate to severe COVID-19 Using the gout drug colchicine as a treatment for COVID-19 could reduce the length of both supplemental oxygen therapy and hospitalisation in patients, a small trial finds.…
Government to fund COVID-19 clinical trial using different vaccines for first and second doses The COVID-19 Heterologous Prime Boost study will seek to establish the effects of using different vaccines for the first and second dose.…
