Clinical trials

Severe asthma is a disease characterised by respiratory and non-respiratory symptoms. The respiratory symptoms can include breathlessness, wheeze and asthma attacks. The disease can come to dominate patients' lives, impacting their social, working and personal lives, leading to depression, anxiety and feelings of social isolation. There are now 7 different biologic treatments available on the NHS in the UK for severe asthma. These treatments have dramatically changed how severe asthma can be treated. Research has typically focused on the benefits of these drugs from a clinical perspective, e.g., improvements in lung function, blood tests and reduction in frequency of asthma attacks and use of steroid tablets. While these are important outcomes, they do not reflect the experiences of patients receiving these treatments, which can vary greatly. First, not all patients benefit to the same degree. Second for patients who do respond, some respond slower than others. Third while these treatments target respiratory symptoms, some patients report wider benefits, such as reductions in fatigue, depression, ability to engage in family life and other daily activities. Fourth, patients report different side effects when starting these treatments and sometimes for months afterwards, including headaches, fatigue, mental fog and joint pain. These experiences are reported by clinicians and patients, but the extent of these four variations is poorly understood, and potential reasons for them have not been explored. To describe these differences between patients' experiences and begin understanding why they are present, we have co-designed a survey with people who have lived experience of severe asthma who are members of the European Lung Foundation's (ELF) Patient Advisory Group (PAG). This process has resulted in a survey that contains content important to patients and is worded in a way that avoids confusion regarding the meaning of the questions.

Around 3500 women a year have surgery to reconstruct a breast/s after cancer. Breast reconstruction can have a positive impact on their lives, but unfortunately 3 or 4 in 10 women have problems with healing after their operation. This is distressing and often leads to more medical care or surgery. These problems are often caused by poor blood flow to the skin and deeper tissues used to reconstruct the breast. The investigators have developed a new device that does not touch the skin and provides immediate, continuous images of skin blood flow (the flow that surgeons cannot see). To test this device the investigators took images of blood flow during breast reconstruction surgery. The investigators found that imaging was good at showing where skin blood flow was poor and led to problems with healing and where flow was good and there were fewer problems after surgery (from minor problems, e.g. delayed healing; to major problems, e.g. loss of new breast). The investigators think this device can help surgeons choose healthy skin during breast reconstruction and so help more patients to heal without surgical problems. The investigators need to test the new imaging device in a large clinical trial to find out how effective it is at improving healing for women after breast reconstruction. Before this, the investigators need to find out if such a trial is possible and acceptable to patients, theatre staff and surgeons. The investigators will recruit 60 women who are having breast surgery and will randomly choose 30 to have surgery without blood flow imaging and 30 to have surgery with blood flow imaging. The investigators will follow up the women whilst in hospital and for the following 6 months to record any problems. In particular the investigators need to find out how many patients will volunteer for the study and the study can collect all the information needed during the 6 months after surgery. The results from this study will be used to plan a much larger clinical trial that will test whether blood flow imaging is effective, improves patient recovery after surgery and provides good value for money for the NHS.

The goal of this observational study is to learn about the impact of the diabetes drug glibenclamide (glyburide) on neurodevelopment in individuals with iDEND (developmental delay, epilepsy and neonatal diabetes) due to the V59M mutation in the KCNJ11 gene. The main question it aims to answer is whether initiating sulphonylurea (SU) therapy in the first year of life results in better neurodevelopmental outcomes in affected individuals, in comparison to starting therapy later than 12 months of age. Participants will undergo a neurodevelopmental assessment comprising parental and teacher completion of standardised questionnaires, and where possible face to face neuropsychological testing. Researchers will compare the outcomes of these standardised tests in the individuals who started SU therapy \<12 months of age in comparison to those who started \>12 months of age.