| 1. |
- Nicholas, Richard, et al.
(författare)
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The impact of healthcare systems on the clinical diagnosis and disease-modifying treatment usage in relapse-onset multiple sclerosis : a real-world perspective in five registries across Europe
- 2023
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Ingår i: Therapeutic advances in neurological disorders. - : SAGE Publications. - 1756-2856. ; 16
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Introduction: Prescribing guidance for disease-modifying treatment (DMT) in multiple sclerosis (MS) is centred on a clinical diagnosis of relapsing–remitting MS (RRMS). DMT prescription guidelines and monitoring vary across countries. Standardising the approach to diagnosis of disease course, for example, assigning RRMS or secondary progressive MS (SPMS) diagnoses, allows examination of the impact of health system characteristics on the stated clinical diagnosis and treatment access. Methods: We analysed registry data from six cohorts in five countries (Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Sweden and United Kingdom) on patients with an initial diagnosis of RRMS. We standardised our approach utilising a pre-existing algorithm (DecisionTree, DT) to determine patient diagnoses of RRMS or secondary progressive MS (SPMS). We identified five global drivers of DMT prescribing: Provision, Availability, Funding, Monitoring and Audit, data were analysed against these concepts using meta-analysis and univariate meta-regression. Results: In 64,235 patients, we found variations in DMT use between countries, with higher usage in RRMS and lower usage in SPMS, with correspondingly lower usage in the UK compared to other registers. Factors such as female gender (p = 0.041), increasing disability via Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) score (p = 0.004), and the presence of monitoring (p = 0.029) in SPMS influenced the likelihood of receiving DMTs. Standardising the diagnosis revealed differences in reclassification rates from clinical RRMS to DT-SPMS, with Sweden having the lowest rate Sweden (Sweden 0.009, range: Denmark 0.103 – UK portal 0.311). Those with higher EDSS at index (p < 0.03) and female gender (p < 0.049) were more likely to be reclassified from RRMS to DT-SPMS. The study also explored the impact of diagnosis on DMT usage in clinical SPMS, finding that the prescribing environment and auditing practices affected access to treatment. Discussion: This highlights the importance of a healthcare system’s approach to verifying the clinical label of MS course in facilitating appropriate prescribing, with some flexibility allowed in uncertain cases to ensure continued access to treatment.
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| 2. |
- Drude, Natascha Ingrid, et al.
(författare)
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Planning preclinical confirmatory multicenter trials to strengthen translation from basic to clinical research : a multi-stakeholder workshop report
- 2022
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Ingår i: Translational Medicine Communications. - : Springer Nature. - 2396-832X. ; 7:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Clinical translation from bench to bedside often remains challenging even despite promising preclinical evidence. Among many drivers like biological complexity or poorly understood disease pathology, preclinical evidence often lacks desired robustness. Reasons include low sample sizes, selective reporting, publication bias, and consequently inflated effect sizes. In this context, there is growing consensus that confirmatory multicenter studies -by weeding out false positives- represent an important step in strengthening and generating preclinical evidence before moving on to clinical research. However, there is little guidance on what such a preclinical confirmatory study entails and when it should be conducted in the research trajectory. To close this gap, we organized a workshop to bring together statisticians, clinicians, preclinical scientists, and meta-researcher to discuss and develop recommendations that are solution-oriented and feasible for practitioners. Herein, we summarize and review current approaches and outline strategies that provide decision-critical guidance on when to start and subsequently how to plan a confirmatory study. We define a set of minimum criteria and strategies to strengthen validity before engaging in a confirmatory preclinical trial, including sample size considerations that take the inherent uncertainty of initial (exploratory) studies into account. Beyond this specific guidance, we highlight knowledge gaps that require further research and discuss the role of confirmatory studies in translational biomedical research. In conclusion, this workshop report highlights the need for close interaction and open and honest debate between statisticians, preclinical scientists, meta-researchers (that conduct research on research), and clinicians already at an early stage of a given preclinical research trajectory.
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| 3. |
- Friede, Tim, et al.
(författare)
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Recent advances in methodology for clinical trials in small populations : the InSPiRe project
- 2018
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Ingår i: Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1750-1172. ; 13
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Where there are a limited number of patients, such as in a rare disease, clinical trials in these small populations present several challenges, including statistical issues. This led to an EU FP7 call for proposals in 2013. One of the three projects funded was the Innovative Methodology for Small Populations Research (InSPiRe) project. This paper summarizes the main results of the project, which was completed in 2017. The InSPiRe project has led to development of novel statistical methodology for clinical trials in small populations in four areas. We have explored new decision-making methods for small population clinical trials using a Bayesian decision-theoretic framework to compare costs with potential benefits, developed approaches for targeted treatment trials, enabling simultaneous identification of subgroups and confirmation of treatment effect for these patients, worked on early phase clinical trial design and on extrapolation from adult to pediatric studies, developing methods to enable use of pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics data, and also developed improved robust meta-analysis methods for a small number of trials to support the planning, analysis and interpretation of a trial as well as enabling extrapolation between patient groups. In addition to scientific publications, we have contributed to regulatory guidance and produced free software in order to facilitate implementation of the novel methods.
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| 4. |
- Heinz, Judith, et al.
(författare)
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Strategies to reduce antibiotic use in women with uncomplicated urinary tract infection in primary care : protocol of a systematic review and meta-analysis including individual patient data
- 2020
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Ingår i: BMJ Open. - : BMJ Publishing Group Ltd. - 2044-6055. ; 10:10
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Introduction: Uncomplicated urinary tract infection (UTI) in women is a common reason to present in general practice and is usually treated with antibiotics to reduce symptom severity and duration. Results of recent clinical trials indicate that non-antibiotic treatment approaches can also be effective. However, it remains unclear which patients would benefit from antibiotic treatment and which can effectively and safely be treated without antibiotics. This systematic review and meta-analysis aims to estimate the effect of treatment strategies to reduce antibiotic use in comparison with immediate antibiotic treatment and to identify prognostic factors and moderators of treatment effects. A further aim is to identify subgroups of patients benefiting from a specific therapy.Methods and analysis: A systematic literature search will be performed to identify randomised controlled trials which investigated the effect of treatment strategies to reduce antibiotic use in female adults with uncomplicated UTI compared with immediate antibiotic treatment. Therefore, the primary outcome of the meta-analysis is incomplete recovery. Anonymised individual patient data (IPD) will be collected. Aggregate data will be used for pairwise comparisons of treatment strategies using meta-analysis models with random effects accounting for potential between-study heterogeneity. Potential effect moderators will be explored in meta-regressions. For IPD, generalised linear mixed models will be used, which may be adjusted for baseline characteristics. Interactions of baseline variables with treatment effects will be explored. These models will be used to assess direct comparisons of treatment, but might be extended to networks.Ethics and dissemination: The local institutional review and ethics board judged the project a secondary analysis of existing anonymous data which meet the criteria for waiver of ethics review. Dissemination of the results will be via published scientific papers and presentations. Key messages will be promoted for example, via social media or press releases.
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| 5. |
- Kaußner, Yvonne, et al.
(författare)
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Reducing antibiotic use in uncomplicated urinary tract infections in adult women : a systematic review and individual participant data meta-analysis
- 2022
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Ingår i: Clinical Microbiology and Infection. - : Elsevier. - 1198-743X .- 1469-0691. ; 28:12, s. 1558-1566
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) investigated analgesics, herbal formulations, delayed prescription of antibiotics, and placebo to prevent overprescription of antibiotics in women with uncomplicated urinary tract infections (uUTI).Objectives: To estimate the effect of these strategies and to identify symptoms, signs, or other factors that indicate a benefit from these strategies.Data sources: MEDLINE, EMBASE, Web of Science, LILACS, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and of Controlled Trials, and ClinicalTrials.Study eligibility criteria, participants and interventions: RCTs investigating any strategies to reduce antibiotics vs. immediate antibiotics in adult women with uUTI in primary care.Methods: We extracted individual participant data (IPD) if available, otherwise aggregate data (AD). Bayesian random-effects meta-analysis of the AD was used for pairwise comparisons. Candidate moderators and prognostic indicators of treatment effects were investigated using generalised linear mixed models based on IPD.Results: We analysed IPD of 3524 patients from eight RCTs and AD of 78 patients. Non-antibiotic strategies increased the rates of incomplete recovery (OR 3.0; 95% credible interval (CrI), 1.7–5.5; Bayesian p-value (pB) = 0.0017; τ = 0.6), subsequent antibiotic treatment (OR 3.5; 95% CrI, 2.1–5.8; pB = 0.0003) and pyelonephritis (OR 5.6; 95% CrI, 2.3–13.9; pB = 0.0003). Conversely, they decreased overall antibiotic use by 63%.Patients positive for urinary erythrocytes and urine culture were at increased risk for incomplete recovery (OR 4.7; 95% CrI, 2.1–10.8; pB = 0.0010), but no difference was apparent where both were negative (OR 0.8; 95% CrI, 0.3–2.0; pB = 0.667). In patients treated using non-antibiotic strategies, urinary erythrocytes and positive urine culture were independent prognostic indicators for subsequent antibiotic treatment and pyelonephritis.Conclusions: Compared to immediate antibiotics, non-antibiotic strategies reduce overall antibiotic use but result in poorer clinical outcomes. The presence of erythrocytes and tests to confirm bacteria in urine could be used to target antibiotic prescribing.
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| 6. |
- Miller, Frank, 1971-, et al.
(författare)
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Sample size re-estimation and continuous monitoring of the variance in longitudinal trials
- 2014
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Ingår i: Adaptive Designs & Multiple Testing Procedures. ; , s. 21-21
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In many clinical trials, frequent longitudinal data is collected from each patient. For example in chronic pain trials, daily pain measurements of the patients can be collected during several weeks which leads to a large number of highly correlated post-baseline measurements for each patient.Blinded sample size re-estimation or continuous monitoring of the variance (Friede and Miller, 2012) can deal with situations where uncertainty regarding the true variance exists. In trials with longitudinal data, the situation is common that at interim looks a restricted number of patients have completed the study but a large number has started treatment and first post-baseline data is collected but endpoint data is not yet available. Nevertheless, it is reasonable that the partial data available from these patients gives useful information about the variance of the endpoint (Wüst and Kieser, 2003; Wachtlin and Kieser, 2013).In this talk, we first quantify the gain of including partial data from patients when estimating the variance. Variability of sample size is often reduced but the amount of reduction depends on the correlation between measurements. Then, our main interest is to investigate the usefulness of a parametric model assumption for the covariance structure. We quantify the gain from the model assumption when the assumed model is correct and discuss consequences when a wrong model is assumed.
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| 7. |
- Ondra, Thomas, et al.
(författare)
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Methods for identification and confirmation of targeted subgroups in clinical trials : A systematic review
- 2016
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Ingår i: Journal of Biopharmaceutical Statistics. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1054-3406 .- 1520-5711. ; 26:1, s. 99-119
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Important objectives in the development of stratified medicines include the identification and confirmation of subgroups of patients with a beneficial treatment effect and a positive benefit-risk balance. We report the results of a literature review on methodological approaches to the design and analysis of clinical trials investigating a potential heterogeneity of treatment effects across subgroups. The identified approaches are classified based on certain characteristics of the proposed trial designs and analysis methods. We distinguish between exploratory and confirmatory subgroup analysis, frequentist, Bayesian and decision-theoretic approaches and, last, fixed-sample, group-sequential, and adaptive designs and illustrate the available trial designs and analysis strategies with published case studies.
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