Research

Assessing the effectiveness and safety of 5 days vs standard 7 days of oral flucloxacillin for lower leg cellulitis.

If you have a painful lower leg and are diagnosed with cellulitis, you may be asked if you would like to take part in a clinical trial.

Benefits include that participants may see an improvement in their cellulitis and avoid needing to use antibiotics or for longer than is necessary. Participants will be helping to further our knowledge of how to treat patients with cellulitis and this will benefit others with the same condition in the future.

For more information: The COAT Study | Southampton Clinical Trials Unit | University of Southampton 

This research aims to find the shortest antibiotic treatment duration needed to treat urinary tract infections (UTIs) effectively. 

UTIs, both bladder and kidney infections, are among the most common infections treated with antibiotics. Over four million prescriptions for UTIs are issued to women in the UK every year. However, there is little evidence to help clinicians decide how many days of antibiotic treatment are necessary. We need to use the shortest treatment duration which ensures that the infection is properly treated. This could avoid bacteria becoming antibiotic resistant, ensuring antibiotics remain effective.

For more information: DURATION — Oxford University - Primary Care Clinical Trials Unit

CORAL stands for COenzyme Q10 in heaRt fAiLure, and is a clinical trial run by the Bristol Trials Centre at the University of Bristol.

Heart failure is a long-term condition that causes difficulty breathing, tiredness and leg swelling, which can all impact daily life. Between 10 and 15% of people over the age of 75 have heart failure and it is responsible for around 5% of all emergency hospital admissions. Most people with heart failure have two or more long-term medical conditions and usually take a number of different medicines every day.

Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) is a nutrient that is available to buy in chemists and health food shops as a supplement. It is known to remove potentially damaging free radicals that can harm cells and also has an essential role in energy production. CoQ10 may improve how much energy and exercise people with heart failure can do, which in turn may improve their daily lives.

The CORAL study aims to find out whether taking CoQ10 for 12 months can improve quality of life in patients with a diagnosis of heart failure.

For more information: CORAL – Coenzyme Q10 in heart failure

Acne is very common, and as well as causing physical symptoms (e.g. pain, scarring), it often makes people feel distressed and can lead to depression.

There is good evidence that certain acne creams, gels and face washes (called ‘topical acne treatments’) work well for most acne, and don’t always need prescription. However, lots of young people don’t know about these treatments, or stop using them too soon because of side-effects or because they think they’re not working.

This often means that young people spend lots of money on cosmetic products that don’t really help, or end up being prescribed oral antibiotics where this might have been avoidable.

Acne Care Online will be an online toolkit that supports young people to:

• understand their treatment options and know where to get effective acne treatments
• avoid side effects from topical treatments (like stinging)
• use their treatment regularly to make sure it has the best chance of working

For more information: Acne Care Online | Primary Care Research Centre | University of Southampton

INDIGO Community: Investigating DIGital Outcomes in a community setting for patients living with and beyond a diagnosis of cancer.

Very little is known about how cancer and its treatments affect the lives of patients, particularly in the long-term.

Researchers at Imperial College London are looking for participants to fill in an online survey about life after cancer diagnosis so that better longer-term care and support can be provided for those who have been treated for cancer.

For more information or to fill out the survey, click here

NHS England has rolled out online access to test results for patients via the NHS App.  Viewing test results online may improve patient engagement and satisfaction. It could also lead to patient anxiety and could mean more patients contact their GP practices to discuss results. Making sure patients can understand their blood results online could therefore have an important impact on primary care workload.

Patients need to know what to do next when they receive a test result; if this is not communicated well then patients could come to harm. It is important to make sure that all patients can understand their test result, and that no groups are disadvantaged by the move to online test result communication.

For more information: Accessible Results

DaRe2THINK is a transformational project that will test a new way of running clinical trials at General Practices in the NHS. The trial will use health information already collected in the NHS to reduce the burden of research, for both patients and NHS staff. This will allow the NHS to reach new and larger groups of patients that could benefit from new treatments opening the possibility of research to populations that would not have previously taken part.

AF is a common heart rhythm condition that leads to a high chance of stroke, frequent hospital admissions and poor quality of life. Patients can also develop trouble remembering, concentrating or making every-day decisions that can lead to dementia. Blood thinning tablets, or anticoagulants, greatly reduce the number of patients with AF that will suffer a stroke but are usually only given to older patients or those with other health issues.

DaRe2THINK will test if a newer class of blood thinning tablets widely used in the NHS are cost-effective in younger patients with AF and can reduce the devastating impact of stroke and other blood clots.

For more information: DaRe2THINK Trial – Patients & Public – DaRe2THINK

Join Dementia Research is a service which allows anyone, with or without dementia, to register their interest in national dementia research. It helps people with dementia, their carers, or anyone interested in dementia research to be matched to studies. Signing up could make a real difference to you and others.

Please see the information leaflet for more information about this important service.

Information in patient records is important for medical research to develop new treatments and test the safety of medicines. At Pioneer we support National medical research by sending some information anonymously from patient records to CPRD.

CPRD is a government organisation that provides anonymised patient data for research to improve patient and public health. You cannot be identified from the information sent to CPRD.

If you do not want anonymised information from your patient record to be used in research you can opt out by speaking to our practice manager or Dr Cary who leads research at the practice. For more information about how anonymised data is used please visit: www.cprd.com/public