Clinical trials

The purpose of this study is to assess pharmacokinetic parameters of atorvastatin at different doses when combined with the standard first line tuberculosis (TB) treatment regimen in adults with drug sensitive pulmonary TB. The pharmacokinetics parameters will be correlated with Pharmcodynamic measures and a PK/PD model that will identify an optimal dosing regimen of atorvastatin that is appropriate for the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis will be developed.

Tuberculosis (TB) is caused by mycobacterial organism. It is the leading infectious disease cause of death globally. According to recent estimates from the World Health Organization (WHO), over 10 million new cases and 1.6 million deaths from TB occurred in 2021. The vast majority of TB cases and TB deaths are in developing countries. Nigeria has the highest TB burden in Africa with a high number of undetected TB cases as well. The spread of HIV has fueled the TB epidemic, and TB is the leading cause of death among patients infected with HIV and has assumed the lead position as the number one infectious disease cause of death globally. Even though the COVID-19 was associated with a huge mortality, TB contributed significantly to death and one of the single predictors of death among COVID-19 infected individuals. TB predominantly affects young adults in their most productive years of life and has substantial impact on economic development. Emerging evidence has shown that lipid lowering drugs like statins can make the TB bacteria more susceptible to current treatment regimen. The ATORTUB group recently completed Phase II A and Phase IIB studies to assess the safety, tolerability and efficacy of atorvastatin when administered with the current standard of care. The investigators demonstrated that atorvastatin is well tolerated, save, and has beneficial microbiological and radiological impacts in tuberculosis, thus, warrants further studies. This phase IIC trial sets out to evaluate the safety and efficacy of different doses of atorvastatin containing regimen, determine rate of decline of viable sputum bacilli, the time to stable sputum conversion, improvement in chest ray severity scores and lung function parameters post randomization in the different treatment arms. The phase II C is a Selection Trial with Extended follow-up STEP and has been devised as a pilot phase III where patients are studied for longer period (12months post randomization) than the usual phase IIB. Thus, providing additional data that will justify a successful phase III trial.

This protocol seeks to develop a colonoscopy training program in Nigeria in order to increase the number of health care providers proficient in colonoscopy. The goal is to improve capacity for screening and early diagnosis of colorectal cancer (CRC) by training and expanding the healthcare workforce that is competent in endoscopy techniques. The project has three components, a needs assessment, simulation training, and training on live patients. The first part of this project determines the number of providers and endoscopy procedures currently performed in Nigeria, as well as patient access to facilities that have colonoscopy capabilities, through a mixed methods approach. Surveys, focus in-depth interviews with key stakeholders, and use geographic information system (GIS) modeling technology will be employed to perform a needs assessment. The second component of this project investigates whether a locally developed low fidelity (LF) simulation colonoscopy training model is an effective teaching, training, and assessment tool for skill acquisition and confidence compared to a high-fidelity (HF) colonoscopy model. The third component of this project is training healthcare providers on real patients who have an indication for colonoscopy. This project seeks to build capacity for endoscopy services in order to increase capacity for screening and early diagnosis of CRC. At the end of the project, it is expected the number of providers trained to perform colonoscopy in a resource limited setting like Nigeria will increase.

This project is a case-control study which seeks to identify modifiable risk factors for breast and colorectal cancer in Nigeria. Both cases and controls will be required to complete a risk factor questionnaire which contains information about their diet, physical activity, past medical history and life style factors. They will also be required to provide information on their body composition through the use of a bioimpedance machine which measures the body mass index, fat and total body water percentage. Based on the existing ARGO platform where a current colorectal cancer study is going on, approximately 400 patients with a prior diagnosis or a new diagnosis will be recruited into this study. Comparatively, we will select our 400 controls from two groups of participants who are free of cancer and gastrointestinal diseases.

The goal of this clinical trial is to learn if platelet rich plasma works to treat early stage trigger finger in adults. It will also learn about the safety platelet rich plasma. The main questions it aims to answer are: Does platelet rich plasma lower the pain associated with trigger finger of participants? Does it improve the hand grip strength and Q DASH score of participants? Researchers will compare platelet rich plasma to Depo-Medrol steroid (a known standard of care for early stage trigger finger) to see if platelet rich plasma works to treat early trigger finger. Participants will: Take platelet rich plasma or a depo-medrol steroid intralesional injection at recruitment into the intervention Visit the clinic once every 4 weeks for checkups and parameter measurements. Investigator will will keep a record of participants progress in symptom remission