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  1. News Article
    Even a mild case of COVID-19 can increase a person’s risk of cardiovascular problems for at least a year after diagnosis, a new study1 shows. Researchers found that rates of many conditions, such as heart failure and stroke, were substantially higher in people who had recovered from COVID-19 than in similar people who hadn’t had the disease. What’s more, the risk was elevated even for those who were under 65 years of age and lacked risk factors, such as obesity or diabetes. “It doesn’t matter if you are young or old, it doesn’t matter if you smoked, or you didn’t,” says study co-author Ziyad Al-Aly at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and the chief of research and development for the Veterans Affairs (VA) St. Louis Health Care System. “The risk was there.” People who had recovered from COVID-19 showed stark increases in 20 cardiovascular problems over the year after infection. For example, they were 52% more likely to have had a stroke than the contemporary control group, meaning that, out of every 1,000 people studied, there were around 4 more people in the COVID-19 group than in the control group who experienced stroke. The risk of heart failure increased by 72%, or around 12 more people in the COVID-19 group per 1,000 studied. Hospitalization increased the likelihood of future cardiovascular complications, but even people who avoided hospitalization were at higher risk for many conditions. “I am actually surprised by these findings that cardiovascular complications of COVID can last so long,” Hossein Ardehali, a cardiologist at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, wrote in an e-mail to Nature. Because severe disease increased the risk of complications much more than mild disease, Ardehali wrote, “it is important that those who are not vaccinated get their vaccine immediately”. Read full story Source: Nature, 10 February 2022
  2. News Article
    There are at least 7,469 research nurses and midwives across the UK and Ireland working within all areas of healthcare, reveals a landmark new census initiated by a group of NIHR 70@70 Senior Nurse & Midwife Research Leaders. The census, incorporating responses from research nurses and midwives across all four UK nations and the Republic of Ireland, reveals nurses and midwives are working at every level in healthcare from Bands 5 – 9 in the UK, and from staff nurse to Directors of Nursing or Midwifery in the Republic of Ireland. This suggests there are opportunities to join the profession at every level, with continued potential for career progression. Clinical research nurses and midwives are a specialist workforce, with knowledge, skills and expertise in both clinical practice and research delivery. The census shows that: 33.7% reported working in joint posts, for example as a clinical research nurse for part of their role as well as a clinical nurse specialist; 72% are working within a single disease/area specialism; 28% reported covering multiple disease areas. NIHR Director of Nursing & Midwifery Professor Ruth Endacott said: “This census reveals the true breadth and depth of our research nursing and midwifery community. We know there are scores of people working incredibly hard day and night helping to bring us new treatments and medicine alongside their healthcare colleagues but we now have a much clearer idea of the size of the workforce. Research nurses and midwives are making a difference to the health of people across the UK and Ireland." Read full story Source: National Institute for Health Research, 9 February 2022
  3. News Article
    The class B drug ketamine could help to treat people suffering from severe suicidal thoughts, a study has suggested. Researchers from the University of Montpellier in France said the sedative could save lives, as it appears to alleviate dark thoughts in patients admitted to hospital for their mental health. The finding was based on a controlled trial involving 156 adults with severe suicidal ideas, which ran from April 2015 to March 2019 in seven French teaching hospitals. The participants included people with bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder. However, patients with a history of schizophrenia were excluded from the study. Although the team found the side effects of ketamine were minor and had diminished by day four, they cautioned that more research was needed to examine its benefits. “Ketamine is a drug with a potential for abuse. Longer follow-up of larger samples will be necessary to examine benefits on suicidal behaviours and long term risks,” they wrote. Commenting on the study, Riccardo De Giorgi, a PhD student at the University of Oxford, said: "These findings indicate that ketamine is rapid, safe, and effective in the short term for acute care in hospitalised suicidal patients.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 4 February 2022 Ketamine for the acute treatment of severe suicidal ideation: double blind, randomised placebo controlled trial
  4. News Article
    It is one of many mysteries about Long Covid: Who is more prone to developing it? Are some people more likely than others to experience physical, neurological or cognitive symptoms that can emerge, or linger for, months after their coronavirus infections have cleared? Now, a team of researchers who followed more than 200 patients for two to three months after their Covid diagnoses report that they have identified biological factors that might help predict if a person will develop long Covid. The study, published by the journal Cell, found four factors that could be identified early in a person’s coronavirus infection that appeared to correlate with increased risk of having lasting symptoms weeks later: The level of coronavirus RNA in the blood early in the infection, an indicator of viral load. The presence of certain autoantibodies — antibodies that mistakenly attack tissues in the body as they do in conditions like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. The reactivation of Epstein-Barr virus, a virus that infects most people, often when they are young, and then usually becomes dormant. Having Type 2 diabetes, although the researchers and other experts said that in studies involving larger numbers of patients, it might turn out that diabetes is only one of several medical conditions that increase the risk of Long Covid. The researchers said they had found that there was an association between these factors and Long Covid whether the initial infection was serious or mild. They said that the findings might suggest ways to prevent or treat some cases of Long Covid, including the possibility of giving people antiviral medications soon after an infection has been diagnosed. “I think this research stresses the importance of doing measurements early in the disease course to figure out how to treat patients, even if we don’t really know how we’re going to use all that information yet,” said Jim Heath, the principal investigator of the study. However, the study authors and other experts cautioned that the findings were exploratory and would need to be verified by considerably more research. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The New York Times, 25 January 2022
  5. News Article
    The leadership of a prominent cancer trust acted in a ‘defensive and dismissive’ manner when serious concerns were raised about bullying behaviours and multiple failings in the handling of a major research contract, an external review has found. As previously revealed by HSJ, NHS England commissioned the review into events at The Christie Foundation Trust after whistleblowers raised numerous concerns over a research project with pharmaceutical giant Roche, and about the way they were treated as a result of speaking out. The NHSE review, which was led by Angela Schofield, chair of Harrogate and District FT, was published earlier today within trust board papers. It described the trust’s research division as “ineffective” and said it had “allowed inappropriate behaviours to continue without challenge”. The review added: “It may… be thought to be surprising that NHSE/I found it necessary to commission an external rapid review to look into concerns which had been raised by colleagues within the research and innovation division." “The root cause of this seems to be an apparent failure by those people in leadership positions who were aware of the concerns that had been raised, in the circumstances covered by the review, to listen to and take notice of a number of people who have some serious issues about the way they are treated and wish to contribute to an improvement in the culture." It also summarised the experiences of 20 current and former staff members who said they suffered “detriment as a result of raising concerns”, although it did not make a clear judgement on whether their claims were justified. They said: “An experience of bullying, harassment and racial prejudice was described along with lack of respect at work… Patronising behaviour, humiliation and verbal aggression by managers and clinicians in public and private spaces contributed to the perception that working environments were emotionally unsafe.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 27 January 2022
  6. News Article
    Small changes to periods can follow a Covid vaccine but they quickly return to normal, a leading UK menstruation expert has said. Dr Victoria Male, from Imperial College London, called studies from the US and Norway which tracked women's cycles "reassuring". And she blamed misinformation for fuelling concerns over infertility. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) says there is no evidence Covid vaccines affect the ability to have children. The MHRA has received more than 37,000 reports of unexpected vaginal bleeding, heavier and delayed periods after a Covid jab. It has always said there is no evidence of a link to the vaccine, because women's cycles vary naturally - but scientists called for more research. Dr Male said: "Changes to the menstrual cycle do occur following vaccination - but they are small compared with natural variation and quickly reverse." Women's concerns arose "from misinformation that Covid-19 vaccines cause female infertility", she said. And more studies of pregnancy rates in couples trying to conceive were needed to make it clear they do not. A Covid infection, however, "may reduce sperm count and quality" - and understanding more about that would mean patients could be given the right advice. Read full story Source: BBC News, 27 January 2022
  7. News Article
    Doctors have discovered an “antibody signature” that can help identify patients most at risk of developing long Covid, a condition where debilitating symptoms of the disease can persist for many months. Researchers at University hospital Zurich analysed blood from Covid patients and found that low levels of certain antibodies were more common in those who developed long Covid than in patients who swiftly recovered. When combined with the patient’s age, details of their Covid symptoms and whether or not they had asthma, the antibody signature allowed doctors to predict whether people had a moderate, high or very high risk of developing long-term illness. “Overall, we think that our findings and identification of an immunoglobulin signature will help early identification of patients that are at increased risk of developing long Covid, which in turn will facilitate research, understanding and ultimately targeted treatments for long Covid,” said Onur Boyman, a professor of immunology who led the research. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Guardian, 25 January 2022
  8. News Article
    Hospitals are not able to cope with current pressures, senior doctors have warned, as a new study links long A&E waits to an increased risk of death. Patients waiting more than five hours within an emergency department are at an increased risk of dying, according to a study published in the Emergency Medicine Journal (EMJ). The study’s findings come as emergency care performance across England continues to deteriorate, and as pressures across hospitals mean that more patients are waiting for more than four hours in A&E departments than ever before. According to the research, death rates for patients waiting between six and eight hours before admission to hospital were 8% higher, and they were 10% higher for those waiting eight to 12 hours. The study was based on data collected prior to the pandemic, and national A&E waiting times have since deteriorated further. In November last year, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) warned that long delays and overcrowding in A&Es may have caused thousands of deaths during the pandemic. Researchers said that although cause and effect could not be established between longer waits and deaths after 30 days of hospital admission, they recognised a statistically significant trend. The paper said: “Long stays in the emergency department are associated with exit block and crowding, which can delay access to vital treatments. And they are associated with an increase in subsequent hospital length of stay, especially for older patients. Read full story Source: The Independent, 19 January 2022
  9. News Article
    There is no significant relationship between the number of managers or the amount spent on management and the quality of NHS hospital services, research has concluded. Researchers at the London School of Economics studied the performance of all 129 non-specialist acute trusts between 2012-13 and 2018-19. They measured hospital performance on five indicators covering financial position, elective and emergency waiting times, level of admissions and mortality. This was then compared to the number of managers each trust employed and the amount spent on management staff. The researchers also attempted to measure the quality of management based on answers given to relevant questions in the annual NHS staff survey. Reviewing the evidence they analysed, the LSE team state: “We find no evidence of an association between our measures of quantity of managerial input and quality of management… Furthermore, we find no associations between our measures of quantity of management input and five measures of hospital performance.” They add: “This holds, irrespective of how we define managerial input, whether by number of managers or expenditure on management. These results are generally robust to how we account for variation between hospitals and within hospitals over time.” This leads the researchers to conclude: “Hospitals hiring more managers do not see an improvement in the quality of management leading to better performance, and increasing the numbers of managers does not appear to improve hospital performance through any other direct or indirect mechanism.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 17 January 2022
  10. News Article
    The debilitating disease multiple sclerosis could be caused by the common virus behind "kissing disease", scientists claim. A new study from Harvard University suggests the chronic disease could be from an infection of Epstein-Barr, a herpes virus that causes infectious mononucleosis. Mono or glandular fever, as it’s otherwise known, is colloquially known as "the kissing disease" for being highly contagious through saliva. While causing fatigue, fever, rash, and swollen glands, researchers propose that the Epstein-Barr virus could also establish a latent, lifelong infection that may be a leading cause of multiple sclerosis. Affecting 2.8 million people, there is no known cure for the chronic inflammatory disease of the central nervous system. “The hypothesis that EBV causes MS has been investigated by our group and others for several years, but this is the first study providing compelling evidence of causality,” the study’s senior author Alberto Ascherio, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard Chan School, said in a press release. “This is a big step because it suggests that most MS cases could be prevented by stopping EBV infection, and that targeting EBV could lead to the discovery of a cure for MS.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 13 January 2022
  11. News Article
    A new study has linked COVID-19 to complications during pregnancy. Scottish researchers found that women who catch the virus near the end of pregnancy were more vulnerable to birth-related complications. They are more likely to suffer them than women who catch Covid in early pregnancy or not at all. The researchers say getting vaccinated is crucial to protect pregnant women and their babies from life-threatening complications. The latest findings come from the Covid in Pregnancy Study (Cops), which carried out research across Scotland to learn about the incidence and outcomes of Covid-19 infection and vaccination in pregnancy. It is one of the first national studies of pregnancy and Covid. They found that preterm births, stillbirths and newborn deaths were more common among women who had the virus 28 days, or less, before their delivery date. The majority of complications occurred in unvaccinated women. The results, which have been published in Nature Medicine, come after recent data showed 98% of pregnant women admitted to UK intensive care units with coronavirus symptoms were unvaccinated. Researchers are now calling for measures to increase vaccine uptake in pregnant women. Read full story Source: BBC News, 13 January 2022
  12. News Article
    Data from a new study suggests that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 can persist in different parts of the body for months after infection, including the heart and brain. Scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found the virus can spread widely from the respiratory tract to almost every other organ in the body and linger for months. The researchers described the study as the "most comprehensive analysis to date" of the virus's persistence throughout the body and brain. They performed autopsies on 44 patients who died either from or with COVID-19 to map and quantify virus distribution across the body. Daniel Chertow, principal investigator in the NIH’s emerging pathogens section, said along with his colleagues that RNA from the virus was found in patients up to 230 days after symptom onset. The findings, released in a pre-print manuscript, shed new light on patients who suffer from Long Covid. The study found that the virus had replicated across multiple organ systems even among patients with asymptomatic to mild COVID-19. While the "highest burden" of infection was in the lungs and airway, the study showed the virus can "disseminate early during infection and infect cells throughout the entire body,” including in the brain, as well as in ocular tissue, muscles, skin, peripheral nerves and tissues in the cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, endocrine and lymphatic systems. "Our data support an early viremic phase, which seeds the virus throughout the body following pulmonary infection," the researchers wrote. Read full story Source: The Hill, 27 December 2021
  13. News Article
    Mass lateral flow testing cut the number of people needing hospital treatment for Covid by 32% and relieved significant pressure on the NHS when the measures were piloted last year, a study has shown. Liverpool conducted the first city-wide testing scheme using rapid antigen tests in November last year, amid debate about whether or not lateral flow tests (LFTs) were accurate enough to detect the virus in asymptomatic carriers. It expanded the project to cover the whole of the Liverpool region, offering people LFTs whether or not they had symptoms. Key workers did daily tests before going to work to show they were not infectious. Now an analysis has shown that it was more successful than Liverpool’s scientists and public health teams had anticipated, after they compared Covid cases and outcomes in the region with other parts of England. Professor Iain Buchan, dean of the Institute of Population Health, who led the evaluation, said: “This time last year, as the Alpha variant was surging, we found that Liverpool city region’s early rollout of community rapid testing was associated with a 32% fall in Covid-19 hospital admissions after careful matching to other parts of the country in a similar position to Liverpool but without rapid testing. “We also found that daily lateral flow testing as an alternative to quarantine for people who had been in close contact with a known infected person enabled emergency services to keep key teams such as fire crews in work, underpinning public safety.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 19 December 2021
  14. News Article
    People who were hospitalised with COVID-19 and continued to experience symptoms at five months show limited further recovery one year after hospital discharge, a key finding of the Post-hospitalisation COVID-19 study (PHOSP-COVID) has revealed. The NIHR/UKRI-funded study, led by the NIHR Leicester Biomedical Research Centre, also confirmed that people who were less likely to make a full recovery from COVID-19 were female, obese, and required invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) to support their breathing during their hospital stay. The study found that one year after hospital discharge, less than three in ten patients reported they felt fully recovered, largely unchanged from at five months. The most common ongoing symptoms were fatigue, muscle pain, physically slowing down, poor sleep and breathlessness. Participants felt their health-related quality of life remained substantially worse one year after hospital discharge, compared to pre-COVID. This suggests the physical and mental health impairments reported in the study are unlikely to be pre-existing conditions. Professor Chris Brightling said: “The PHOSP-COVID study is further evidence of the UK’s ability to combine expertise across both disease area and geography to rapidly gather data to help us understand the longer term implications of Long-COVID in hospitalised patients with persistent symptoms. Our findings show that people who were hospitalised and went on to develop Long-COVID are not getting substantially better a year after they were discharged from hospital. Many patients in our study had not fully recovered at five months and most of these reported little positive change in their health condition at one year. “When you consider that over half a million people in the UK have been admitted to hospital as a result of COVID-19, we are talking about a sizeable population at risk of persistent ill-health and reduced quality of life.” Read full story Source: National Institute for Health Research, 16 November 2021
  15. News Article
    Health experts have expressed fears over the impact tighter Covid restrictions in England could have on cancer patients as alarming new figures reveal that the number taking part in clinical trials plummeted by almost 60% during the pandemic. Almost 40,000 cancer patients in England were “robbed” of the chance to take part in life-saving trials during the first year of the coronavirus crisis, according to a report by the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), which said COVID-19 had compounded longstanding issues of trial funding, regulation and access. Figures obtained from the National Institute for Health Research by the ICR show that the number of patients recruited on to clinical trials for cancer in England fell to 27,734 in 2020-21, down 59% from an average of 67,057 over the three years previously. The number of patients recruited for trials fell for almost every type of cancer analysed. Health experts said the relentless impact of Covid on the ability of doctors and scientists to run clinical trials was denying many thousands of cancer patients access to the latest treatment options and delaying the development of cutting-edge drugs. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 9 December 2021
  16. News Article
    Blood pressure drugs could prevent millions of people worldwide from developing type 2 diabetes, a large study suggests. Lowering high blood pressure is an effective way to slash the risk of the disease in the future, according to the research published in the Lancet. Doctors already prescribe cheap blood pressure drugs to reduce the chances of a life-threatening heart attack or stroke. However, until now, the question of whether these drugs could also help fend off the threat of type 2 diabetes had been unanswered. Now researchers have found the protective effects of the drugs are much wider than previously thought. The study shows they may directly reduce someone’s risk of type 2 diabetes, a condition that an estimated 13.6 million people in the UK are at high risk of developing. Currently, health experts say being a healthy weight and adopting a healthy lifestyle is the best way to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes. Researchers say existing drugs – particularly ACE inhibitors and ARBs – should now be considered for some patients who are at higher risk of the disease. Prof Kazem Rahimi, lead researcher of the study at the University of Oxford and a consultant cardiologist, said: “Our research provides clear evidence that giving ACE inhibitors or ARBs, which are widely available and affordable worldwide, to patients at high risk could curb the growing burden of type 2 diabetes.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 11 November 2021
  17. News Article
    England has the highest death rates of frail and older hospitalised patients in the western world, a landmark global study has found. Harvard University, the London School of Economics (LSE) and the thinktank Health Foundation, all part of the International Collaborative on Costs, Outcomes and Needs in Care (Icconic), a global network of healthcare researchers, used thousands of official medical records to compare the cost and quality of care in 10 OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries. Patient deaths are commonly used measures of performance in healthcare systems but until now there have been few sources of comparable death rates across countries. In order to assess outcomes in frail and older patients, researchers focused on two groups that represent priority areas for the NHS and other healthcare systems: those in hospital with a hip fracture and those admitted with heart failure who have diabetes. On both measures, England had higher mortality rates than all the other countries, which included the US, Germany, France, Sweden and Spain. Dr Jennifer Dixon, the chief executive of the Health Foundation, said: “The findings of the Icconic study warrant urgent further investigation, particularly the finding of higher mortality among patients with hip fracture in the year after their admission for emergency treatment." “That patients in England with hip fracture spend far longer in hospital after surgery than they would in other countries also highlights an opportunity to improve efficiency by reducing the avoidable use of hospital care. Less avoidably long stays would mean existing capacity could be better used to address the backlogs in hospital care as a result of the pandemic. This could contribute to both better outcomes for patients and, as hip fracture is the most common reason for emergency surgery, significantly improved productivity for hospitals across the country.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 10 November 2021
  18. News Article
    Campaigners have called for a change in how epilepsy services are delivered after "alarming" new research revealed that nearly 80% cent of deaths in young adults could have been avoided. It comes as researchers behind the first ever national review into deaths linked to the condition warned that "little has improved in epilepsy care" despite previous findings of premature mortality. They describe the situation as a "major public health problem in Scotland", adding that deaths "are not reducing, people are dying young, and many deaths are potentially avoidable”. In particular, the Edinburgh University team found that adults aged 16 to 24 were five times more likely to die compared to the general population, a problem they said may be linked to the "vulnerable period of transition from paediatric to adult care". Overall, for adults with epilepsy aged 16 to 54, the mortality rate was more than double that for the age group as a whole, with as many as 76% of these deaths potentially preventable and the majority occurring among patients from the most deprived areas. Read full story Source: The Herald, 11 November 2021
  19. News Article
    The COVID-19 crisis triggered high levels of anxiety and depression among doctors in the UK, Italy and Spain, a new study has found The research of 5,000 survey responses, across the three countries, found Italian doctors were most likely to have suffered during the crisis last year. The study, published in PLOS ONE, measured the mental wellbeing of doctors in Catalonia (Spain), Italy and the UK during June, November and December 2020. It found that around one in four medical doctors in Italy had experienced symptoms of anxiety in June and December 2020, with around one in five reporting symptoms of depression over the same period. In Catalonia around 16% of doctors reported anxiety and around 17% experienced depression. In the UK around 12% of doctors reported anxiety and around 14% had symptoms of depression. The study is among the first cross-country analysis of mental wellbeing among healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic and the first to focus on medical doctors. Across all countries, female doctors and doctors under 60 were more likely to have anxiety or depression. Professor Quintana-Domeque, professor of economics at the University of Exeter Business School, who carried out the study said: “The COVID-19 pandemic has been classified as a traumatic event, with healthcare workers arguably having the most direct and longest exposure to this disease." “The results of this study suggest that institutional support for healthcare workers, and in particular doctors, is important in protecting and promoting their mental health in the current and in future pandemics.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 3 November 2021
  20. News Article
    A drug developed over 20 years ago to treat cancer could help patients living with crippling pain, according to new research. Kenpaullone switches on a gene that douses chronic inflammation, say scientists. Experiments on mice and humans found it was remarkably successful at alleviating nerve injury and bone tumour symptoms. The US team is hopeful clinical trials will see equally successful results in humans suffering a host of conditions. Up to 8 million people in the UK live with chronic pain. Major causes include arthritis and spine damage. Lead author Professor Wolfgang Liedtke said: “New drugs and other therapies against chronic pain need to be safe, i.e., the fewer side effects the better. “It’s especially important they be non-addictive and non-sedative, while being effective against nerve injury pain and cancer pain, preferably with a minimal time to official approval." Read full story Source: The Independent, 27 October 2021
  21. News Article
    Clinical trials run in the UK will be automatically registered from 2022, the country’s Health Research Authority has announced. The new system seeks to ensure that every single clinical trial with be listed on a trial registry from the outset. UK researchers have been formally required to register trials since 2013, but that rule was never enforced, and many trials remained unregistered. Trial registration is a key pillar of clinical trial transparency. It helps scientists to gain an overview of who is currently researching which treatments, preventing needless duplication of medical research efforts . In addition, because investigators have to specify in advance what exactly they will be measuring, trial registration supports research integrity by discouraging post hoc statistical shenanigans and evidence distortion. While there are various rules and regulations around trial registration, no other country currently enforces these nationwide. The new trial registration system forms part of the wider UK national Make it Public strategy, which aims to ensure that every single clinical trial run in the UK is registered and makes its results public. The strategy was developed in the wake of a 2018-2019 parliamentary enquiry into clinical trial transparency. Read full story Source: TranspariMED, 20 October 2021
  22. News Article
    The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine can still target a key mutation that has emerged in two new variants of coronavirus, laboratory studies show. However, this is only one of many mutations that are found in the new forms of the virus. So while the study has been welcomed, it is not being seen as definitive scientific evidence about how the vaccine will perform. New variants have been detected in the UK and South Africa. Both forms of the virus are spreading more quickly and this has raised questions over what level of protection vaccines can offer against them. The widely held view is that vaccines will still work, but researchers are on the hunt for proof. Read full story Source: BBC News, 8 January 2021
  23. News Article
    An experimental treatment involving stem cells from umbilical cords could significantly reduce deaths and quicken recovery time for patients suffering the most severe form of COVID-19, a study suggests. US researchers reported a 91% survival rate in seriously ill patients given the stem cell infusion, compared to 42% in a second group who did not receive the treatment. Researchers said the treatment also appeared to be safe, with no serious adverse reactions reported. Read full story Source: The Independent, 5 January 2021
  24. News Article
    The architects behind the new NHS Race and Health Observatory have vowed that it will deliver actionable recommendations within months to tackle the structural racism that exists throughout healthcare. Victor Adebowale and Mala Rao called for an observatory to tackle the ethnic health inequalities in the UK in a special issue of The BMJ that they co-edited in February (bmj.com/racism-in-medicine) and NHS England confirmed at the end of the May that the centre would go ahead. Speaking at a meeting to discuss the aims of the observatory on 12 June, Adebowlae told more than 20 assembled stakeholders that he wanted the new centre “to fire on all cylinders,” making recommendations for changes to services that are likely to affect the health outcomes of people from black and ethnic minority backgrounds “within a couple of months.” Read full story Source: BMJ, 15 June 2020
  25. News Article
    The NIHR-supported PRINCIPLE trial is to start investigating the inhaled corticosteroid budesonide to find out if it can help treat COVID-19 in patients who aren’t in hospital. Led by the University of Oxford, the PRINCIPLE is the UK’s national platform trial for COVID-19 treatments that can be taken at home. It is evaluating treatments that can help people aged over 50 recover quickly from COVID-19 illness and prevent the need for hospital admission. The study, funded by NIHR and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has so far recruited more than 2100 volunteers from across the UK with support from NIHR’s Clinical Research Network. Inhaled budesonide is often used to treat asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, with no serious side-effects associated with short-term use. In some patients with COVID-19, the body’s immune response to the virus can cause high levels of inflammation that can damage cells in the airways and lungs. Inhaling budesonide into the airways targets anti-inflammatory treatment where it is needed most, and can potentially minimise any lung damage that might otherwise be caused by the virus. Patients taking part in the study will be randomly assigned to receive an inhaler in the post, alongside the usual care from their clinician. They will be asked to inhale two puffs twice a day for 14 days with each puff providing a 400 microgram dose of budesonide. They will be followed up for 28 days and will be compared with participants who have been assigned to receive the usual standard-of-care only. Read full story Source: National Institute for Health Research, 27 November 2020
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