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Introduction

Premenstrual symptoms occur in 95% of women of reproductive age. Severe, debilitating symptoms (PMS) occur in about 5% of those women. There is no consensus on how symptom severity should be assessed, which has led to a wide variety of symptoms scales, making it difficult to synthesise data on treatment efficacy. The cyclical nature of the condition also makes it difficult to conduct RCTs.

Methods and outcomes

We conducted a systematic review and aimed to answer the following clinical questions: What are the effects of drug treatments in women with premenstrual syndrome? What are the effects of hormonal treatments in women with premenstrual syndrome? What are the effects of psychological interventions in women with premenstrual syndrome? What are the effects of physical therapy in women with premenstrual syndrome? What are the effects of dietary supplements in women with premenstrual syndrome? What are the effects of surgical treatments in women with premenstrual syndrome? We searched: Medline, Embase, The Cochrane Library, and other important databases up to July 2009 (Clinical Evidence reviews are updated periodically; please check our website for the most up-to-date version of this review). We included harms alerts from relevant organisations such as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

Results

We found 56 systematic reviews, RCTs, or observational studies that met our inclusion criteria. We performed a GRADE evaluation of the quality of evidence for interventions.

Conclusions

In this systematic review, we present information relating to the effectiveness and safety of the following interventions: acupuncture; alprazolam; bright light therapy; buspirone; chiropractic manipulation; clomipramine; cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT); danazol; endometrial ablation; evening primrose oil; exercise; gonadorelin analogues; hysterectomy; laparoscopic bilateral oophorectomy; magnesium supplements; metolazone; non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs); oestrogens; oral contraceptives; progesterone; progestogens; pyridoxine; reflexology; relaxation; selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs); spironolactone; and tibolone.

Key Points

A woman has premenstrual syndrome (PMS) if she complains of recurrent psychological and/or physical symptoms occurring during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle, and often resolving by the end of menstruation. Symptom severity can vary between women. Premenstrual symptoms occur in 95% of all women of reproductive age. Severe, debilitating symptoms (PMS) occur in about 5% of those women.There is no consensus on how symptom severity should be assessed, which has led to a wide variety of symptoms scales, making it difficult to synthesise data on treatment efficacy. The cyclical nature of the condition also makes it difficult to conduct RCTs.There is little good evidence for any of the wide range of treatments available, and the selection of treatment is mainly governed by personal choice. The clinician plays a key role in facilitating this choice, and in reassuring women with PMS without coexisting gynaecological problems that there is nothing seriously wrong.

Drug treatments can be effective at reducing premenstrual symptoms, but some are associated with significant adverse effects. There is good evidence that spironolactone improves mood and somatic symptoms in women with PMS. Alprazolam (during the luteal phase), metolazone, and NSAIDs (such as mefenamic acid and naproxen sodium) may also be effective in treating the main physical and psychological symptoms of PMS. Buspirone (luteal or continuous) and gonadorelin analogues seem to improve overall self-rated symptoms. Gonadorelin is effective in improving symptoms, but is associated with serious risks of osteoporosis when used for more than 6 months.Other drug treatments such as clomipramine, danazol, and SSRIs may improve psychological symptoms, but are associated with serious adverse effects.

We don't know whetherprogesterone is effective in reducing symptoms of PMS. There is some evidence thatprogesterone-like drugs reduce premenstrual symptoms, but both progesterone and progesterone-like drugs are associated with several adverse effects. We don't know whether other hormonal treatments such as oestrogen and tibolone are effective in reducing symptoms of PMS. Oral contraceptives containing drospirenone (24/4 schedule [24 out of 28 days]) are likely to be effective in reducing symptoms of PMS.

There is not enough evidence for us to assess the efficacy of CBT in treating the psychological symptoms of PMS.

We also don't know how effective physical therapy techniques (bright light therapy, chiropractic manipulation, exercise, reflexology, relaxation, and acupuncture) are in relieving symptoms of PMS.

We found evidence that pyridoxine (vitamin B6) reduces the overall symptoms of PMS. Calcium supplements may also be effective. We don't know whether other supplements, such as evening primrose oil or magnesium, are a useful treatment for PMS.

Surgery is indicated only if there are coexisting gynaecological problems. There is a consensus that hysterectomy with bilateral oophorectomy or laparoscopic bilateral oophorectomy almost completely eradicate the symptoms of PMS, although we found no RCTs examining this.We don't know whether endometrial ablation has the same effect.

Summary

What is already known about the topic?

Highly active antiretroviral therapy has dramatically decreased morbidity and mortality and improved the quality of life in persons with HIVMedication-taking self-efficacy beliefs may predict medication adherence in persons with HIV.Depressive symptoms and perceived social support consistently influence medication-taking self-efficacy beliefs

What this paper adds.

Depressive symptoms mediated the prediction of medication-taking self-efficacy by perceived social support.Medication adherence self-efficacy mediated the prediction of self-reported medication adherence by perceived social support and depressive symptoms as self-efficacy theory suggests.This study provides researchers with increased understanding of the mediating role of medication-taking self-efficacy beliefs between selected psychological variables and self-reported medication adherence in persons with HIV.

Background

To date, only a few studies have examined the mediating role of self-efficacy on the relationship between depressive symptoms or perceived social support and medication adherence in persons with HIV.

Objectives

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of perceived social support, depressive symptoms and medication-taking self-efficacy on self-reported medication adherence in persons with HIV. A proposed comprehensive model included three mediation hypotheses in order to examine the mediating roles of medication-taking self-efficacy and depressive symptoms

Method

Baseline data from “Adherence to Protease Inhibitors” were used. The 215 persons with HIV aged 19–61 (mean= 40.7, SD= 7.58) were recruited from multiple sites in Pittsburgh, PA (USA) and through self-referral. The participants were assessed using the Beck Depression Inventory, Interpersonal Support Evaluation List, the Medication Taking Self-Efficacy Scale, and the modified Morisky Self-report Medication Taking Scale. Structural equation modeling (EQS version 6.1) was used. The Satorra-Bentler Scaled χ2 test statistics (S-B χ2), comparative fit index (CFI), and the Standardized Root Mean Squared Residual (SRMR) were used to assess the fit of a comprehensive model including three mediation hypotheses.

Results

A comprehensive model with the three hypotheses showed a good model fit (S-B χ2 (24, N=215) = 69.06, p<.001; CFI=0.95; SRMR=0.057). Medication adherence self-efficacy fully mediated the prediction of self-reported medication adherence by perceived social support and depressive symptoms. Depressive symptoms partially mediated the prediction of medication-taking self-efficacy by perceived social support

Conclusions

The findings of this study provide researchers with increased understanding of the mediating role of medication-taking self-efficacy beliefs between selected psychological variables and self-reported medication adherence in persons with HIV. Future studies need to test the moderating effect of gender, ethnicity and risk factors for HIV on this model and the intervention effect of self-efficacy beliefs using longitudinal data.

I have attempted to address some critical issues relating to the introduction of generic aerosol bronchodilators in Canada. I approached Genpharm to obtain information on the data submitted to the HPB, including the number of subjects involved, but the company refused to divulge this information because it was concerned about the use of such information by its competitors. In addition to the in-vitro testing conducted by the HPB, should a single pharmacodynamic study be sufficient to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of a drug that serves such a critical role in the prevention of serious illness and possibly death? If so, what will constitute the minimum requirements for the design of such a study? In general, what should be the minimum standards required for safety, efficacy and bioequivalence of aerosol bronchodilators? The next phase rests with the provincial governments. What criteria will they use to determine whether a generic aerosol bronchodilator will be considered bioequivalent? It is essential that the criteria for bioequivalence be developed by experts, and ideally those criteria should be agreed upon and accepted by federal and provincial regulatory bodies before a product is given the status of bioequivalence. Unless such a step is taken it will be difficult to have confidence that products can be considered interchangeable. The issue of interchangeability of aerosol bronchodilators demands immediate attention. Regulatory agencies are caught between those groups with vested interests on both sides. Since patients will either benefit or suffer as a consequence of regulatory decisions, action must be taken to ensure that the best decisions are made. Scientists, clinicians and government officials should convene as soon as possible to formulate a satisfactory approach to this problem of interchangeability. The medical and pharmaceutical professions need reliable information, and patients should not be denied less expensive generic drugs if it can be determined that they are comparable to the innovator's product.

There is increasing interest in the endoscopic treatment of Barrett's esophagus. Endoscopic treatment has been utilized for many years, but in the past, no specific method has emerged as an appealing treatment option with appropriate safety, efficacy and ease of treatment for both patients and physicians. Recently there has been a growing literature related to the endoscopic ablation of Barrett's esophagus using radiofrequency ablation (RFA) (Halo® system). In order to discuss when RFA is indicated for Barrett's, one needs to know: (1) What is the ‘histology’ of the Barrett's? Does the patient have intestinal metaplasia, low-grade dysplasia, high-grade dysplasia or intramucosal carcinoma? (2) What are the endoscopic options to be considered as opposed to RFA? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? (3) What additional variables need to be examined?

Introduction

Evidence for the efficacy of treatments for autism has improved in recent years. In this systematic review the evidence for both drug and non-drug treatments is appraised and clinical guidance is provided for their use.

Methods and outcomes

We conducted a systematic review and aimed to answer the following clinical questions: What are the effects of early intensive multidisciplinary intervention programmes in children with autism? What are the effects of dietary interventions in children with autism? What are the effects of drug treatments in children with autism? What are the effects of non-drug treatments in children with autism? We searched: Medline, Embase, The Cochrane Library, and other important databases up to May 2009 (Clinical evidence reviews are updated periodically; please check our website for the most up-to-date version of this review). We included harms alerts from relevant organisations such as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

Results

We found 30 systematic reviews, RCTs, or observational studies that met our inclusion criteria. We performed a GRADE evaluation of the quality of evidence for interventions.

Conclusions

In this systematic review we present information relating to the effectiveness and safety of the following interventions: applied behavioural analysis; auditory integration training; Autism Preschool Programme; casein-free diet; chelation; Child’s Talk programme; cognitive behavioural therapy; digestive enzymes; EarlyBird programme; facilitated communication; Floortime therapy; gluten-free diet; immunoglobulins; melatonin; memantine; methylphenidate; More Than Words programme; music therapy; olanzapine; omega-3 fish oil; picture exchange communication system; Portage scheme; probiotics; relationship development interventions; risperidone; secretin; selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs); sensory integration training; social stories; social skills training; Son-Rise programme; TEACCH; vitamin A; vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) plus magnesium; and vitamin C.

Key Points

Autism is one of a group of pervasive developmental disorders, and is characterised by qualitative impairments in communication and social interaction, and by repetitive and stereotyped behaviours and interests. Abnormal development is present before the age of 3 years. A quarter of affected children show developmental regression, with loss of previously acquired skills.One third of children with autism have epilepsy, and three quarters have mental retardation. Only 15% of adults with autism will lead independent lives.Twin and family studies suggest that most cases of autism occur because of a combination of genetic factors. Autism is not caused by perinatal factors or by the MMR vaccine.

It may be difficult to apply the results of research in practice, as improvements in outcomes assessed in RCTs using standardised assessment tools may not correlate with improvements in function in a particular child with autism.

Some interventions are administered by (or in conjunction with) parents, and may be carried out in the home. Consideration of the direct financial costs, indirect costs (through possible lost earnings), and the impact on relationships within the family (to siblings or spouse) must be balanced against likely and possible improvements in outcome for the child with autism.

There is a lack of good-quality evidence on the effectiveness of early multidisciplinary intervention programmes, or for other treatments for children with autism. There is consensus, supported by a systematic review, that early intensive behavioural interventions are likely to be beneficial in children with autism.Attendance at a "More Than Words" training course for parents may improve communication between parents and children, as may participation in Child's Talk. There is consensus that the Autism Preschool Programme and TEACCH may be effective, although no RCTs or cohort studies evaluating these interventions have been found.We don't know whether early intervention using the EarlyBird programme, the Portage scheme, Relationship-Development Intervention, Social stories, music therapy, CBT, facilitated communication or Son-Rise are beneficial in children with autism.

Methylphenidate may reduce hyperactivity in children with autism. Methylphenidate may increase social withdrawal and irritability. Growth and blood pressure monitoring are required.

Risperidone may improve behaviour in children with autism compared with placebo, but its use is limited by adverse effects such as weight gain, drowsiness, prolactinaemia, and tremors.

There is consensus that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) improve symptoms in children with autism, although no RCTs have been found. The adverse effects of SSRIs, including possible increases in agitation, hostility, and suicidal ideation, are well documented.

We don't know whether auditory integration training, sensory integration training, chelation, a gluten- and casein-free diet, digestive enzymes, omega-3 fish oil, secretin, vitamin A, vitamin B6 plus magnesium, melatonin, olanzapine, or vitamin C are beneficial for treating children with autism, as few studies have been found.

Background

Previous studies of drug trials submitted to regulatory authorities have documented selective reporting of both entire trials and favorable results. The objective of this study is to determine the publication rate of efficacy trials submitted to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in approved New Drug Applications (NDAs) and to compare the trial characteristics as reported by the FDA with those reported in publications.

Methods and Findings

This is an observational study of all efficacy trials found in approved NDAs for New Molecular Entities (NMEs) from 2001 to 2002 inclusive and all published clinical trials corresponding to the trials within the NDAs. For each trial included in the NDA, we assessed its publication status, primary outcome(s) reported and their statistical significance, and conclusions. Seventy-eight percent (128/164) of efficacy trials contained in FDA reviews of NDAs were published. In a multivariate model, trials with favorable primary outcomes (OR = 4.7, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.33–17.1, p = 0.018) and active controls (OR = 3.4, 95% CI 1.02–11.2, p = 0.047) were more likely to be published. Forty-one primary outcomes from the NDAs were omitted from the papers. Papers included 155 outcomes that were in the NDAs, 15 additional outcomes that favored the test drug, and two other neutral or unknown additional outcomes. Excluding outcomes with unknown significance, there were 43 outcomes in the NDAs that did not favor the NDA drug. Of these, 20 (47%) were not included in the papers. The statistical significance of five of the remaining 23 outcomes (22%) changed between the NDA and the paper, with four changing to favor the test drug in the paper (p = 0.38). Excluding unknowns, 99 conclusions were provided in both NDAs and papers, nine conclusions (9%) changed from the FDA review of the NDA to the paper, and all nine did so to favor the test drug (100%, 95% CI 72%–100%, p = 0.0039).

Conclusions

Many trials were still not published 5 y after FDA approval. Discrepancies between the trial information reviewed by the FDA and information found in published trials tended to lead to more favorable presentations of the NDA drugs in the publications. Thus, the information that is readily available in the scientific literature to health care professionals is incomplete and potentially biased.

Lisa Bero and colleagues review the publication status of all efficacy trials carried out in support of new drug approvals from 2001 and 2002, and find that a quarter of trials remain unpublished.

Editors' Summary

Background.

All health-care professionals want their patients to have the best available clinical care—but how can they identify the optimum drug or intervention? In the past, clinicians used their own experience or advice from colleagues to make treatment decisions. Nowadays, they rely on evidence-based medicine—the systematic review and appraisal of clinical research findings. So, for example, before a new drug is approved for the treatment of a specific disease in the United States and becomes available for doctors to prescribe, the drug's sponsors (usually a pharmaceutical company) must submit a “New Drug Application” (NDA) to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The NDA tells the story of the drug's development from laboratory and animal studies through to clinical trials, including “efficacy” trials in which the efficacy and safety of the new drug and of a standard drug for the disease are compared by giving groups of patients the different drugs and measuring several key (primary) “outcomes.” FDA reviewers use this evidence to decide whether to approve a drug.

Why Was This Study Done?

Although the information in NDAs is publicly available, clinicians and patients usually learn about new drugs from articles published in medical journals after drug approval. Unfortunately, drug sponsors sometimes publish the results only of the trials in which their drug performed well and in which statistical analyses indicate that the drug's improved performance was a real effect rather than a lucky coincidence. Trials in which a drug did not show a “statistically significant benefit” or where the drug was found to have unwanted side effects often remain unpublished. This “publication bias” means that the scientific literature can contain an inaccurate picture of a drug's efficacy and safety relative to other therapies. This may lead to clinicians preferentially prescribing newer, more expensive drugs that are not necessarily better than older drugs. In this study, the researchers test the hypothesis that not all the trial results in NDAs are published in medical journals. They also investigate whether there are any discrepancies between the trial data included in NDAs and in published articles.

What Did the Researchers Do and Find?

The researchers identified all the efficacy trials included in NDAs for totally new drugs that were approved by the FDA in 2001 and 2002 and searched the scientific literature for publications between July 2006 and June 2007 relating to these trials. Only three-quarters of the efficacy trials in the NDAs were published; trials with favorable outcomes were nearly five times as likely to be published as those without favorable outcomes. Although 155 primary outcomes were in both the papers and the NDAs, 41 outcomes were only in the NDAs. Conversely, 17 outcomes were only in the papers; 15 of these favored the test drug. Of the 43 primary outcomes reported in the NDAs that showed no statistically significant benefit for the test drug, only half were included in the papers; for five of the reported primary outcomes, the statistical significance differed between the NDA and the paper and generally favored the test drug in the papers. Finally, nine out of 99 conclusions differed between the NDAs and the papers; each time, the published conclusion favored the test drug.

What Do These Findings Mean?

These findings indicate that the results of many trials of new drugs are not published 5 years after FDA approval of the drug. Furthermore, unexplained discrepancies between the data and conclusions in NDAs and in medical journals are common and tend to paint a more favorable picture of the new drug in the scientific literature than in the NDAs. Overall, these findings suggest that the information on the efficacy of new drugs that is readily available to clinicians and patients through the published scientific literature is incomplete and potentially biased. The recent introduction in the US and elsewhere of mandatory registration of all clinical trials before they start and of mandatory publication in trial registers of the full results of all the predefined primary outcomes should reduce publication bias over the next few years and should allow clinicians and patients to make fully informed treatment decisions.

Additional Information.

Please access these Web sites via the online version of this summary at http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050217.

This study is further discussed in a PLoS Medicine Perspective by An-Wen Chan

PLoS Medicine recently published a related article by Ida Sim and colleagues: Lee K, Bacchetti P, Sim I (2008) Publication of clinical trials supporting successful new drug applications: A literature analysis. PLoS Med 5: e191. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0050191

The Food and Drug Administration provides information about drug approval in the US for consumers and for health-care professionals; detailed information about the process by which drugs are approved is on the Web site of the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (in English and Spanish)

NDAs for approved drugs can also be found on this Web site

The ClinicalTrials.gov Web site provides information about the US National Institutes of Health clinical trial registry, background information about clinical trials, and a fact sheet detailing the requirements of the FDA Amendments Act 2007 for trial registration

The World Health Organization's International Clinical Trials Registry Platform is working toward setting international norms and standards for the reporting of clinical trials (in several languages)

Background

To date no comparative trials have been done, to our knowledge, of fixed-dose artemisinin combination therapies (ACTs) for the treatment of Plasmodium falciparum malaria in pregnancy. Evidence on the safety and efficacy of ACTs in pregnancy is needed as these drugs are being used increasingly throughout the malaria-affected world. The objective of this study was to compare the efficacy, tolerability, and safety of artemether-lumefantrine, the most widely used fixed ACT, with 7 d artesunate monotherapy in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy.

Methods and Findings

An open-label randomised controlled trial comparing directly observed treatment with artemether-lumefantrine 3 d (AL) or artesunate monotherapy 7 d (AS7) was conducted in Karen women in the border area of northwestern Thailand who had uncomplicated P. falciparum malaria in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy. The primary endpoint was efficacy defined as the P. falciparum PCR-adjusted cure rates assessed at delivery or by day 42 if this occurred later than delivery, as estimated by Kaplan-Meier survival analysis. Infants were assessed at birth and followed until 1 y of life. Blood sampling was performed to characterise the pharmacokinetics of lumefantrine in pregnancy. Both regimens were very well tolerated. The cure rates (95% confidence interval) for the intention to treat (ITT) population were: AS7 89.2% (82.3%–96.1%) and AL 82.0% (74.8%–89.3%), p = 0.054 (ITT); and AS7 89.7% (82.6%–96.8%) and AL 81.2% (73.6%–88.8%), p = 0.031 (per-protocol population). One-third of the PCR-confirmed recrudescent cases occurred after 42 d of follow-up. Birth outcomes and infant (up to age 1 y) outcomes did not differ significantly between the two groups. The pharmacokinetic study indicated that low concentrations of artemether and lumefantrine were the main contributors to the poor efficacy of AL.

Conclusion

The current standard six-dose artemether-lumefantrine regimen was well tolerated and safe in pregnant Karen women with uncomplicated falciparum malaria, but efficacy was inferior to 7 d artesunate monotherapy and was unsatisfactory for general deployment in this geographic area. Reduced efficacy probably results from low drug concentrations in later pregnancy. A longer or more frequent AL dose regimen may be needed to treat pregnant women effectively and should now be evaluated. Parasitological endpoints in clinical trials of any antimalarial drug treatment in pregnancy should be extended to delivery or day 42 if it comes later.

Trial Registration: Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN86353884

Rose McGready and colleagues show that an artemether-lumefantrine regimen is well tolerated and safe in pregnant Karen women with uncomplicated falciparum malaria, but efficacy is inferior to artesunate, probably because of low drug concentrations in later pregnancy.

Editors' Summary

Background.

Plasmodium falciparum, a mosquito-borne parasite that causes malaria, kills nearly one million people every year. Although most deaths occur among young children, malaria during pregnancy is also an important public-health problem. In areas where malaria transmission is high (stable transmission), women acquire a degree of immunity. Although less symptomatic than women who lack natural protection, their babies are often small and sickly because malaria-related anemia (lack of red blood cells) and parasites in the placenta limit the nutrients supplied to the baby before birth. By contrast, in areas where malaria transmission is low (unstable transmission or sporadic outbreaks), women have little immunity to P. falciparum. If these women become infected during pregnancy, “uncomplicated” malaria (fever, chills, and anemia) can rapidly progress to “severe” malaria (in which vital organs are damaged), which can be fatal to the mother and/or her unborn child unless prompt and effective treatment is given.

Why Was This Study Done?

Malaria parasites are now resistant to many of the older antimalarial drugs (for example, quinine). So, since 2006, the World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended that uncomplicated malaria during the second and third trimester of pregnancy is treated with short course (3 d) fixed-dose artemisinin combination therapy (ACT; quinine is still used in early pregnancy because it is not known whether ACT damages fetal development, which mainly occurs during the first 3 mo of pregnancy). Artemisinin derivatives are fast-acting antimalarial agents that are used in combination with another antimalarial drug to reduce the chances of P. falciparum becoming resistant to either drug. The most widely used fixed-dose ACT is artemether–lumefantrine (AL) but, although several trials have examined the safety and efficacy of this treatment in non-pregnant women, little is known about how well it works in pregnant women. In this study, the researchers compare the efficacy, tolerability, and safety of AL with a 7-d course of artesunate monotherapy (AS7; another artemisinin derivative) in the treatment of uncomplicated malaria in pregnancy in northwest Thailand, an area with unstable but highly drug resistant malaria transmission.

What Did the Researchers Do and Find?

The researchers enrolled 253 women with uncomplicated malaria during the second and third trimesters of pregnancy into their open-label trial (a trial in which the patients and their health-care workers know who is receiving which drug regimen). Half the women received each type of treatment. The trial's main outcome was the “PCR-adjusted cure rate” at delivery or 42 d after treatment if this occurred after delivery. This cure rate was assessed by examining blood smears for parasites and then using a technique called PCR to determine which cases of malaria were new infections (classified as treatment successes along with negative blood smears) and which were recurrences of an old infection (classified as treatment failures). The PCR-adjusted cure rates were 89.7% and 81.2% for AS7 and AL, respectively. Both treatments were well tolerated, few side effects were seen with either treatment, and infant health and development at birth and up to 1 y old were similar with both regimens. Finally, an analysis of blood samples taken 7 d after treatment with AL showed that blood levels of lumefantrine were below those previously associated with treatment failure in about a third of the women tested.

What Do These Findings Mean?

Although these findings indicate that the AL regimen is a well tolerated and safe treatment for uncomplicated malaria in pregnant women living in northwest Thailand, the efficacy of this treatment was lower than that of artesunate monotherapy. In fact, neither treatment reached the 90% cure rate recommended by WHO for ACTs and it is likely that cure rates in a more realistic situation (that is, not in a trial where efforts are made to make sure everyone completes their treatment) would be even lower. The findings also suggest that the reduced efficacy of the AL regimen in pregnant women compared to the efficacy previously seen in non-pregnant women may be caused by lower drug blood levels during pregnancy. Thus, a higher-dose AL regimen (or an alternative ACT) may be needed to successfully treat uncomplicated malaria during pregnancy.

Additional Information.

Please access these Web sites via the online version of this summary at http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050253.

The MedlinePlus encyclopedia contains a page on malaria (in English and Spanish)

Information is available from the World Health Organization on malaria (in several languages), and their 2006 Guidelines for the Treatment of Malaria includes specific recommendations for the treatment of pregnant women

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provide information on malaria and on malaria during pregnancy (in English and Spanish)

Information is available from the Roll Back Malaria Partnership on malaria during pregnancy, on artemisinin-based combination therapies, and on malaria in Thailand

Background

First implemented in 1990, patient navigation interventions are emerging as an approach to reduce cancer disparities. However, there is lack of consensus about how patient navigation is defined, what patient navigators do, and what their qualifications should be. Little is known about the efficacy and cost effectiveness of patient navigation.

Methods

We conducted a qualitative synthesis of published literature on cancer patient navigation. Using the keywords “navigator” or “navigation” and “cancer,” we identified 45 articles from Pubmed and reference searches that were published or in press through October 2007. 16 provided data on efficacy of navigation in improving timeliness and receipt of cancer screening, diagnostic follow-up care, and treatment. Patient navigation services are defined and differentiated from other outreach services.

Results

Overall there is evidence for some degree of efficacy for patient navigation in increasing participation in cancer screening and adherence to diagnostic follow-up care following an abnormality, with increases in screening ranging from 10.8% to 17.1% and increases in adherence to diagnostic follow-up care ranging from 21% to 29.2%, when compared to control patients. There is less evidence regarding efficacy of patient navigation in reducing either late stage cancer diagnosis or delays in initiation of cancer treatment or improving outcomes during cancer survivorship. There were methodological limitations in most studies, such as lack of control groups, small sample sizes, and contamination with other interventions.

Conclusions

Although cancer-related patient navigation interventions are being increasingly adopted across the U.S. and Canada, further research is necessary to evaluate their efficacy and cost-effectiveness in improving cancer care.

Social– cognitive and behavioral theories of change disagree on what the relevant controlling variables for initiating behavior change are. Correlations between baseline smoking cessation self-efficacy and the changes in breath carbon monoxide (CO) and the reduction in breath CO and increases in smoking cessation self-efficacy from baseline were obtained from a contingency management smoking cessation procedure. A test of the difference between the cross-lag correlations suggested a nonspurious causal relationship between smoking cessation self-efficacy and changes in breath CO. Path analyses showed that decreases in breath CO (reductions in smoking) predicted later increases in smoking cessation self-efficacy. Baseline self-reports of smoking cessation self-efficacy were not significantly correlated with subsequent changes in breath CO. Rather, significant correlations were found between reductions in breath CO and later increases in smoking cessation self-efficacy. These results suggest that self-efficacy may be a cognitive response to one’s own behavior, and are inconsistent with a social– cognitive view of self-efficacy’s role in behavior change. Implications for the development of smoking cessation programs and health-promoting behavior changes in general are discussed.

Background

Worldwide, vaginal transmission now accounts for more than half of newly acquired HIV-1 infections. Despite the urgency to develop and implement novel approaches capable of preventing HIV transmission, this process has been hindered by the lack of adequate small animal models for preclinical efficacy and safety testing. Given the importance of this route of transmission, we investigated the susceptibility of humanized mice to intravaginal HIV-1 infection.

Methods and Findings

We show that the female reproductive tract of humanized bone marrow–liver–thymus (BLT) mice is reconstituted with human CD4+ T and other relevant human cells, rendering these humanized mice susceptible to intravaginal infection by HIV-1. Effects of HIV-1 infection include CD4+ T cell depletion in gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT) that closely mimics what is observed in HIV-1–infected humans. We also show that pre-exposure prophylaxis with antiretroviral drugs is a highly effective method for preventing vaginal HIV-1 transmission. Whereas 88% (7/8) of BLT mice inoculated vaginally with HIV-1 became infected, none of the animals (0/5) given pre-exposure prophylaxis of emtricitabine (FTC)/tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF) showed evidence of infection (Chi square = 7.5, df = 1, p = 0.006).

Conclusions

The fact that humanized BLT mice are susceptible to intravaginal infection makes this system an excellent candidate for preclinical evaluation of both microbicides and pre-exposure prophylactic regimens. The utility of humanized mice to study intravaginal HIV-1 transmission is particularly highlighted by the demonstration that pre-exposure prophylaxis can prevent intravaginal HIV-1 transmission in the BLT mouse model.

J. Victor Garcia and colleagues show that mice with immune systems reconstituted from human bone marrow, liver, and thymus transplants provide a model for prevention of intravaginal HIV infection.

Editors' Summary

Background.

Since the first cases of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in 1981, the AIDS epidemic has spread rapidly. About 33 million people are now infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the cause of AIDS. More than half of newly acquired infections now occur in women, mostly through unprotected vaginal sex with an infected male partner. Women are biologically more susceptible than men to HIV infection during vaginal intercourse and often cannot persuade their partner to use a condom. Consequently, alternative strategies that prevent intravaginal transmission of HIV (infection through the vagina) are urgently needed, particularly strategies that women can use without their partner's agreement. A vaccine would be ideal but it could be many years before an effective HIV vaccine is available so researchers are investigating other preventative strategies such as the use of microbicides—compounds that protect against HIV when applied inside the vagina—and pre-exposure treatment (prophylaxis) with antiretroviral drugs.

Why Was This Study Done?

Before any new strategy to prevent intravaginal HIV transmission is tried by women, it has to be tested in animals. Currently, this can only be done in macaques, an expensive option. In this study, the researchers have investigated whether “humanized BLT” mice could be used instead. When HIV enters the human body during vaginal intercourse, it sticks to dendritic cells (a type of immune system cell) in the vaginal lining. These cells carry the virus to the body's lymphoid tissues (collections of immune cells), where it infects and kills CD4+ T cells (another type of immune cell). Dendritic cells and CD4+ T cells have molecules on their surface that HIV recognizes. Mice are not normally susceptible to infection with HIV because their immune system cells lack these molecules. Humanized BLT mice have a nearly human immune system—BLT stands for bone marrow, liver, thymus. They are produced by implanting pieces of human fetal liver and thymus (the organ where T cells learn to recognize foreign invaders) under the kidney capsule of immunodeficient mice (animals born without an immune system) and then transplanting human hematopoietic stem cells (the source of the major immune system cells) into the mice.

What Did the Researchers Do and Find?

When the researchers examined the female reproductive tract of humanized BLT mice for human immune system cells, they found CD4+ T cells, dendritic cells and macrophages, all of which are involved in HIV infection. Furthermore, half of the blood cells of the BLT mice were human. Most of the BLT mice, the researchers report, were susceptible to intravaginal HIV infection as shown, for example, by a rapid loss of human CD4+ T cells from their blood. However, BLT mice pretreated with antiretroviral drugs (a mixture of emtricitabine and tenofovir disoproxil fumarate) were resistant to intravaginal HIV infection. As in human HIV infections, CD4+ T cells were also depleted in several other organs of the BLT mice after intravaginal HIV infection. Again, this depletion was prevented by antiretroviral pre-exposure prophylaxis. Finally, human CD4+ T cells also disappeared from the gut-associated lymphoid tissue (an important site for HIV replication and CD4+ T cell depletion during human HIV disease) of the BLT mice after infection with HIV.

What Do These Findings Mean?

These findings show that humanized BLT mice are susceptible to intravaginal infection with HIV and that many aspects of HIV infection in these mice closely mimic infection in people. In addition, by showing that pre-exposure prophylaxis with antiretroviral drugs prevents HIV infection, these results suggest that humanized BLT mice could be used to test new strategies designed to prevent intravaginal infection. As with all animal models, any approach that works in humanized BLT mice will still have to be tested in people. Nevertheless, these findings provide preclinical evidence that pre-exposure prophylaxis with antiretroviral drugs may be an effective way to prevent intravaginal transmission of HIV and, therefore, provide valuable support for clinical trials of this approach.

Additional Information.

Please access these Web sites via the online version of this summary at http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050016.

Information is available from the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases on HIV infection and AIDS and on HIV infection in women

HIVInSite has comprehensive information on all aspects of HIV/AIDS, including articles on women and HIV and on safer sex, which includes information on pre-exposure prophylaxis and microbicides

Information is available from Avert, an international AIDS charity, on HIV prevention, on women, HIV, and AIDS, and on microbicides

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides information on HIV/AIDS, including information on HIV/AIDS among women and on CDC trials of pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV prevention (in English and some information in Spanish)

PrEP Watch is a comprehensive information source on pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV prevention

Clopidogrel is a mainstay in the treatment of patients with acute coronary syndromes or those receiving endovascular prostheses. However, its efficacy has been challenged in the recent past by studies suggesting variable individual responsiveness and by new, more potent competitors, such as prasugrel and ticagrelor. But what is the actual body of evidence in support of clopidogrel? Is there any dark side of the moon? What is the role of prasugrel, which has already been approved in Europe and in the United States? And what will be the future role of ticagrelor, when approved for routine clinical practice? We hereby concisely summarize the scope of this clinical choice, providing arguments in favor and against each of the three antiplatelet agents: clopidogrel, prasugrel, and ticagrelor.

Antioxidants are assumed to provide numerous benefits, including better health, a reduced rate of aging, and improved exercise performance. Specifically, antioxidants are commonly “prescribed” by the media, supplement industry, and “fitness experts” for individuals prior to training and performance, with assumed benefits of improved fatigue resistance and recovery. This has provoked expansion of the supplement industry which responded by creation of a plethora of products aimed at facilitating the needs of the active individual. However, what does the experimental evidence say about the efficacy of antioxidants on skeletal muscle function? Are antioxidants actually as beneficial as the general populous believes? Or, could they in fact lead to deleterious effects on skeletal muscle function and performance? This Mini Review addresses these questions with an unbiased look at what we know about antioxidant effects on skeletal muscle, and what we still need to know before conclusions can be made.

Objectives

This study was aimed to evaluate the efficacy and tolerability of bisoprolol, in Indian patients diagnosed with stage I essential hypertension as first-line drug.

Design

This was an open-label, phase IV, multicentric prospective study.

Settings

239 outpatient centres across India.

Participants

After ethical approval, patients who were willing to sign informed consent, who are newly diagnosed with JNC VII stage I essential hypertension (systolic blood pressure 140–159 mm Hg or diastolic blood pressure 90–99 mm Hg) and who are prescribed bisoprolol were enrolled in the study. Patients with significant organ disease or complications, women of childbearing age refusing reliable contraceptive method, patients with known contraindications (like symptomatic bradycardia, significant atrioventricular blockade, sick sinus syndrome) and patients with known hypersensitivity reactions to bisoprolol and unwilling patients were excluded.

Primary and secondary outcomes measures

The primary outcome measure was percentage of patients achieving blood pressure (BP) ≤140/90 mm Hg at the end of 12 weeks, while multiple secondary outcome measures were assessed.

Results

Of 2418 patients screened, 2161 patients were recruited (66.64% men, mean age 51.7±9.8 years, smokers 19.19%) and 2131 (96.44%) patients achieved BP control. There was significant reduction in systolic blood pressure (−25.29; SD: 13.22 mm Hg), diastolic blood pressure (−14.14; SD: 7.67 mm Hg) and heart rate (−12/min; SD: 6.15) compared with baseline (all p values <0.05). The median dose of bisoprolol and average period required for the response were 5 mg/day and 33 days, respectively. Bisoprolol was found to be well tolerated in the patients up to 10 mg/day. A total of 1.9% patients showed adverse events, which were mild to moderate in severity without any severe adverse event. None required treatment withdrawal.

Conclusion

Bisoprolol is an effective and safe option to control BP. Thus, it can be used as one of the first-line antihypertensive in Indian patients.

Article summary

Article focus

What is the efficacy of bisoprolol in essential hypertension patients?

What is the average dose of bisoprolol required for BP control?

What is the tolerability of bisoprolol in essential hypertensive patients?

Key messages

Bisoprolol is safe and effective in stage I essential hypertensive patients in India.

The average dose required was 5 mg/day.

Target BP was achieved in 96.44% patients.

Strengths and limitations of this study

First-ever study done for bisoprolol in large Indian population.

Study re-affirms bisoprolol as first-line drug in the management of hypertension.

Open-label study.

Short duration—3 months study.

Objectives and Background:

Libraries are increasingly called upon to demonstrate student learning outcomes and the tangible benefits of library educational programs. This study reviewed and compared the efficacy of traditionally used measures for assessing library instruction, examining the benefits and drawbacks of assessment measures and exploring the extent to which knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors actually paralleled demonstrated skill levels.

Methods:

An overview of recent literature on the evaluation of information literacy education addressed these questions: (1) What evaluation measures are commonly used for evaluating library instruction? (2) What are the pros and cons of popular evaluation measures? (3) What are the relationships between measures of skills versus measures of attitudes and behavior? Research outcomes were used to identify relationships between measures of attitudes, behaviors, and skills, which are typically gathered via attitudinal surveys, written skills tests, or graded exercises.

Results and Conclusions:

Results provide useful information about the efficacy of instructional evaluation methods, including showing significant disparities between attitudes, skills, and information usage behaviors. This information can be used by librarians to implement the most appropriate evaluation methods for measuring important variables that accurately demonstrate students' attitudes, behaviors, or skills.

Background

There have been no major advances in tuberculosis (TB) drug development since the first East African/British Medical Research Council short course chemotherapy trial 35 years ago. Since then, the landscape for conducting TB clinical trials has profoundly changed with the emergence of HIV infection, the spread of resistant TB bacilli strains, recent advances in mycobacteriological capacity, and drug discovery. As a consequence questions have arisen on the most appropriate approach to design and conduct current TB trials. To highlight key issues discussed: Is a superiority, equivalence, or non-inferiority design most appropriate? What should be the primary efficacy outcome? How to consider re-infections in the definition of the outcome? What is the optimal length of patient follow-up? Is blinding appropriate when treatment duration in test arm is shorter? What are the appropriate assumptions for sample size calculation?

Methods

Various drugs are currently in the development pipeline. We are presenting in this paper the design of the most recently completed phase III TB trial, the OFLOTUB project, which is the pivotal trial of a registration portfolio for a gatifloxacin-containing TB regimen. It is a randomized, open-label, multicenter, controlled trial aiming to evaluate the efficacy and safety of a gatifloxacin-containing 4-month regimen (trial registration: ClinicalTrial.gov database: NCT00216385).

Results

In the light of the recent scientific and regulatory discussions, we discuss some of the design issues in TB clinical trials and more specifically the reasons that guided our choices, in order to best answer the trial objectives, while at the same time satisfying regulatory authority requirements.

Conclusion

When shortening TB treatment, we are advocating for a non-inferiority, non-blinded design, with a composite unfavorable endpoint assessed 12 months post treatment completion, and added trial procedures specifically aiming to: (1) minimize endpoint unavailability; and (2) distinguish between relapse and re-infection.

Background

Many breast cancer patients use complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). We aimed to determine what advice health food store employees present to individuals seeking treatment options for breast cancer.

Methods

Eight data gatherers asked employees of all retail health food stores in a major Canadian city, what they recommended for a patient with breast cancer. The data gatherers inquired about product safety, potential drug interactions, costs and efficacy. They also enquired about employee training related to the products.

Results

Thirty-four stores were examined. A total of 33 different products were recommended, none of which are supported by sufficient evidence of efficacy. The average cost of the products they recommended was $58.09 (CAD) (minimum $5.28, median $32.99, maximum $600) per month. Twenty-three employees (68%) did not ask whether the patient took prescription medications. Fifteen employees (44%) recommended visiting a healthcare professional (naturopaths (9), physicians (5), nutritionists (1). Three employees (8.8%) discussed potential adverse effects of the products. Eight employees (23.5%) discussed the potential for drug interactions. Two employees (5.9%) suggested a possible cure with the products and one employee (2.9%) suggested discontinuing Tamoxifen. Four employees (11.8%) recommended lifestyle changes and three employees (8.8%) recommended books for further reading on the products.

Conclusion

This study draws attention to the heterogeneity of advice provided by natural health food stores to individuals seeking treatments for breast cancer, and the safety and cost implications of some of the products recommended. Physicians should enquire carefully about the use of natural health food products by patients with breast cancer. Regulators need to consider regulations to protect vulnerable patients from incurring significant costs in their purchasing of natural health food products lacking evidence of benefit and of questionable safety.

Background

The efficacy of statin therapy in patients with established chronic heart failure (CHF) is a subject of much debate.

Methods and Findings

We conducted three systematic literature searches to assess the evidence supporting the prescription of statins in CHF. First, we investigated the participation of CHF patients in randomized placebo-controlled clinical trials designed to evaluate the efficacy of statins in reducing major cardiovascular events and mortality. Second, we assessed the association between serum cholesterol and outcome in CHF. Finally, we evaluated the ability of statin treatment to modify surrogate endpoint parameters in CHF.

Using validated search strategies, we systematically searched PubMed for our three queries. In addition, we searched the reference lists from eligible studies, used the “see related articles” feature for key publications in PubMed, consulted the Cochrane Library, and searched the ISI Web of Knowledge for papers citing key publications.

Search 1 resulted in the retrieval of 47 placebo-controlled clinical statin trials involving more than 100,000 patients. CHF patients had, however, been systematically excluded from these trials. Search 2 resulted in the retrieval of eight studies assessing the relationship between cholesterol levels and outcome in CHF patients. Lower serum cholesterol was consistently associated with increased mortality. Search 3 resulted in the retrieval of 18 studies on the efficacy of statin treatment in CHF. On the whole, these studies reported favorable outcomes for almost all surrogate endpoints.

Conclusions

Since CHF patients have been systematically excluded from randomized, controlled clinical cholesterol-lowering trials, the effect of statin therapy in these patients remains to be established. Currently, two large, randomized, placebo-controlled statin trials are under way to evaluate the efficacy of statin treatment in terms of reducing clinical endpoints in CHF patients in particular.

A systematic review found that patients with heart failure have been excluded from randomised controlled trials on the use of statins. Evidence from other studies on the effectiveness of statins for patients with heart failure is weak and conflicting.

Editors' Summary

Background.

When medical researchers test a drug—or some other treatment—for a particular medical condition, they often decide not to include in their study anyone who has, in addition to the disease they are interested in, certain other health problems. This is because including patients with two or more conditions can complicate the analysis of the results and make it hard to reach firm conclusions. However, excluding patients in this way can result in uncertainty as to whether treatments are effective for anyone who suffers from the disease in question, or just for people like those who took part in the research.

A great deal of research has been conducted with drugs known as statins, which lower cholesterol levels in the blood. (A raised level of cholesterol is known to be a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease, which causes heart attacks and strokes.) As a result of this research, statins have been accepted as effective and safe. They are now, in consequence, among the most commonly prescribed medicines. Heart failure, however, is not the same thing as a heart attack. It is the name given to the condition where the muscles of the heart have become weakened, most often as a result of aging, and the heart becomes gradually less efficient at pumping blood around the body. (Some people with heart failure live for many years, but 70% of those with the condition die within ten years.) It is common for people with cardiovascular disease also to have heart failure. Nevertheless, some researchers who have studied the effects of statins have made the decision not to include in their studies any patients with cardiovascular disease who, in addition, have heart failure.

Why Was This Study Done?

The researchers in this study were aware that patients with heart failure have often been excluded from statin trials. They felt it was important to assess the available evidence supporting the prescription of statins for such patients. Specifically, they wanted to find out the following: how often have patients with heart failure been included in statin trials, what evidence is available as to whether it is beneficial for patients with heart failure to have low cholesterol, and what evidence is there that prescribing statins helps these patients?

What Did the Researchers Do and Find?

They did not do any new work involving patients. Instead, they did a very thorough search for all relevant studies of good quality that had already been published and they reviewed the results. “Randomized clinical trials” (RCTs) are the most reliable type of medical research. The researchers found there had been 47 such trials (involving over 100,000 patients) on the use of statins for treating cardiovascular disease, but all these trials had excluded heart failure patients. They found eight studies (which were not RCTs) looking at cholesterol levels and heart failure. These studies found, perhaps surprisingly, that death rates were higher in those patients with heart failure who had low cholesterol. However, they also found 18 studies (again not RCTs) on the use of statins in patients with heart failure. These 18 studies seemed to suggest that statins were of benefit to the patients who received them.

What Do These Findings Mean?

The evidence for or against prescribing statins for people with heart failure is limited, conflicting, and unclear. Further research involving RTCs is necessary. (Two such trials are known to be in progress.)

Additional Information.

Please access these Web sites via the online version of this summary at http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0030333.

General information about statins is available from the Web site of Patient UK

The American Heart Association Web site is a good source of information about all types of heart disease, including heart attacks and heart failure

For a definition of randomized controlled trials see Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit

More detailed information about the quality of evidence from medical research may be found in the James Lind Library

Background

Meta-analyses of antidepressant medications have reported only modest benefits over placebo treatment, and when unpublished trial data are included, the benefit falls below accepted criteria for clinical significance. Yet, the efficacy of the antidepressants may also depend on the severity of initial depression scores. The purpose of this analysis is to establish the relation of baseline severity and antidepressant efficacy using a relevant dataset of published and unpublished clinical trials.

Methods and Findings

We obtained data on all clinical trials submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the licensing of the four new-generation antidepressants for which full datasets were available. We then used meta-analytic techniques to assess linear and quadratic effects of initial severity on improvement scores for drug and placebo groups and on drug–placebo difference scores. Drug–placebo differences increased as a function of initial severity, rising from virtually no difference at moderate levels of initial depression to a relatively small difference for patients with very severe depression, reaching conventional criteria for clinical significance only for patients at the upper end of the very severely depressed category. Meta-regression analyses indicated that the relation of baseline severity and improvement was curvilinear in drug groups and showed a strong, negative linear component in placebo groups.

Conclusions

Drug–placebo differences in antidepressant efficacy increase as a function of baseline severity, but are relatively small even for severely depressed patients. The relationship between initial severity and antidepressant efficacy is attributable to decreased responsiveness to placebo among very severely depressed patients, rather than to increased responsiveness to medication.

Kirsch and colleagues show that, in antidepressant trials, there is a greater difference in efficacy between drug and placebo amongst more severely depressed patients. However, this difference seems to result from a poorer response to placebo amongst more depressed patients.

Editors' Summary

Background.

Everyone feels miserable occasionally. But for some people—those with depression—these sad feelings last for months or years and interfere with daily life. Depression is a serious medical illness caused by imbalances in the brain chemicals that regulate mood. It affects one in six people at some time during their life, making them feel hopeless, worthless, unmotivated, even suicidal. Doctors measure the severity of depression using the “Hamilton Rating Scale of Depression” (HRSD), a 17–21 item questionnaire. The answers to each question are given a score and a total score for the questionnaire of more than 18 indicates severe depression. Mild depression is often treated with psychotherapy or talk therapy (for example, cognitive–behavioral therapy helps people to change negative ways of thinking and behaving). For more severe depression, current treatment is usually a combination of psychotherapy and an antidepressant drug, which is hypothesized to normalize the brain chemicals that affect mood. Antidepressants include “tricyclics,” “monoamine oxidases,” and “selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors” (SSRIs). SSRIs are the newest antidepressants and include fluoxetine, venlafaxine, nefazodone, and paroxetine.

Why Was This Study Done?

Although the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), and other licensing authorities have approved SSRIs for the treatment of depression, some doubts remain about their clinical efficacy. Before an antidepressant is approved for use in patients, it must undergo clinical trials that compare its ability to improve the HRSD scores of patients with that of a placebo, a dummy tablet that contains no drug. Each individual trial provides some information about the new drug's effectiveness but additional information can be gained by combining the results of all the trials in a “meta-analysis,” a statistical method for combining the results of many studies. A previously published meta-analysis of the published and unpublished trials on SSRIs submitted to the FDA during licensing has indicated that these drugs have only a marginal clinical benefit. On average, the SSRIs improved the HRSD score of patients by 1.8 points more than the placebo, whereas NICE has defined a significant clinical benefit for antidepressants as a drug–placebo difference in the improvement of the HRSD score of 3 points. However, average improvement scores may obscure beneficial effects between different groups of patient, so in the meta-analysis in this paper, the researchers investigated whether the baseline severity of depression affects antidepressant efficacy.

What Did the Researchers Do and Find?

The researchers obtained data on all the clinical trials submitted to the FDA for the licensing of fluoxetine, venlafaxine, nefazodone, and paroxetine. They then used meta-analytic techniques to investigate whether the initial severity of depression affected the HRSD improvement scores for the drug and placebo groups in these trials. They confirmed first that the overall effect of these new generation of antidepressants was below the recommended criteria for clinical significance. Then they showed that there was virtually no difference in the improvement scores for drug and placebo in patients with moderate depression and only a small and clinically insignificant difference among patients with very severe depression. The difference in improvement between the antidepressant and placebo reached clinical significance, however, in patients with initial HRSD scores of more than 28—that is, in the most severely depressed patients. Additional analyses indicated that the apparent clinical effectiveness of the antidepressants among these most severely depressed patients reflected a decreased responsiveness to placebo rather than an increased responsiveness to antidepressants.

What Do These Findings Mean?

These findings suggest that, compared with placebo, the new-generation antidepressants do not produce clinically significant improvements in depression in patients who initially have moderate or even very severe depression, but show significant effects only in the most severely depressed patients. The findings also show that the effect for these patients seems to be due to decreased responsiveness to placebo, rather than increased responsiveness to medication. Given these results, the researchers conclude that there is little reason to prescribe new-generation antidepressant medications to any but the most severely depressed patients unless alternative treatments have been ineffective. In addition, the finding that extremely depressed patients are less responsive to placebo than less severely depressed patients but have similar responses to antidepressants is a potentially important insight into how patients with depression respond to antidepressants and placebos that should be investigated further.

Additional Information.

Please access these Web sites via the online version of this summary at http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050045.

The MedlinePlus encyclopedia contains a page on depression (in English and Spanish)

Detailed information for patients and caregivers is available on all aspects of depression (including symptoms and treatment) from the US National Institute of Medical Health and from the UK National Health Service Direct Health Encyclopedia

MedlinePlus provides a list of links to further information on depression

Clinical Guidance for professionals, patients, caregivers and the public is provided by the UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence

Background

Loperamide is widely used in adults for acute diarrhea. However, its use in children has been discouraged by the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics owing to concerns over safety and efficacy in young children.

Methods and Findings

To assess the efficacy and adverse effects of loperamide compared with placebo for acute diarrhea in children, we reviewed Medline, EMBase, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and bibliographies of known clinical trials and of review articles, and we also interviewed key investigators in the field. We undertook a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials of children younger than 12 y of age with acute diarrhea, comparing loperamide with placebo. Included trials reported data on diarrhea duration or severity, or provided data on adverse effects. Compared with patients who received placebo, patients allocated to loperamide were less likely to continue to have diarrhea at 24 h (prevalence ratio 0.66, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.57 to 0.78), had a shorter duration of diarrhea by 0.8 d (95% CI: 0.7 to 0.9 d), and had a lower count of stools at 24 h (0.84, 95% CI: 0.77 to 0.92). Results were similar when random-effects summaries were estimated. Serious adverse events, defined as ileus, lethargy, or death, were reported in eight out of 927 children allocated to loperamide (0.9%, 95% CI: 0.4% to 1.7%). Serious adverse events were not reported in any of the 764 children allocated to placebo (0%, 95% CI: 0% to 0.5%). Among the children allocated to loperamide, serious adverse events were reported only among children younger than 3 y.

Conclusions

In children who are younger than 3 y, malnourished, moderately or severely dehydrated, systemically ill, or have bloody diarrhea, adverse events outweigh benefits even at doses ≤0.25 mg/kg/d. In children who are older than 3 y with no/minimal dehydration, loperamide may be a useful adjunct to oral rehydration and early refeeding.

In seriously ill children under 3 years of age with diarrhea the adverse effects of loperamide outweighed the benefits, but the drug could be useful as part of treatment for other children.

Editors' Summary

Background.

While diarrhea is often thought of as a mild, inconvenient condition, it is estimated that, worldwide, 1.6–2.5 million children under 5 y old die each year from diarrhea, most of them in developing countries. Dehydration is the key factor in the deaths of these children. In richer countries, diarrhea is rarely deadly, but it has been calculated that, in the United States, the annual national health-care cost associated with the condition amounts to around US$1.5 billion. Some of the cost results from the purchase of anti-diarrheal drugs. Loperamide is one of the most widely used of these drugs. In most countries, it can be obtained without a prescription. The use of loperamide is intended to reduce the frequency of bowel movements, but taking it will not lead to rehydration, nor will it kill the infectious organisms responsible for the condition.

Why Was This Study Done?

The World Health Organization and other health authorities have concerns that loperamide may not be effective in young children and that it may not be safe. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration approves its use for children older than 2 y of age. The researchers wanted to know whether loperamide could play a useful part in treating diarrhea in children.

What Did the Researchers Do and Find?

They did not do any new work with children suffering from diarrhea. Instead, they searched the medical literature for previously conducted trials involving the use of loperamide. They used these previously conducted trials to estimate whether use of loperamide influenced the duration of diarrhea or the number of diarrheal stools in children under 12 y of age. They also used these trials to examine adverse effects of loperamide. In total they found 13 studies that met the criteria they had set for inclusion in their study. More than 900 children in these studies had been given loperamide for their diarrhea; each trial also had a control group of children whose treatment did not include loperamide. Most of the children in the studies had only mild diarrhea. The researchers found that, compared with children in the control groups, those treated with loperamide were less likely to continue to have diarrhea 24 h later, had a shorter duration of diarrhea, and had a lower count of diarrheal stools. However, eight of the children given loperamide and none of the control group did have serious adverse effects. All those who had serious adverse effects were less than 3 y of age.

What Do These Findings Mean?

The researchers concluded that if a child is less than 3 y of age, malnourished, moderately or severely dehydrated, or has bloody diarrhea, the risk of adverse events from loperamide treatment outweighs the benefits, even at low doses. In other children, loperamide may be a useful part of treatment. However, they advise that rehydrating the child (by giving fluids orally) and progressively returning him or her to a normal diet should still be the main focus in the treatment of childhood diarrhea.

Additional Information.

Please access these Web sites via the online version of this summary at http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0040098.

For advice on the treatment of diarrhea, visit the Web sites of BestTreatments (produced by BMJ Publications) and of FamilyDoctor (produced by the American Academy of Family Physicians)

The World Health Organization has a Web page about diarrhea that gives a global perspective on this major cause of childhood death

UNICEF (the children's organization of the United Nations) includes diarrhea in its Facts for Life series, which aims to provide parents and other caregivers with the information they need to save and improve children's lives; the messages contained in Facts for Life are based on the latest scientific findings, but are presented in nontechnical language

Background

Despite its health benefits, physical inactivity is pervasive, particularly among those living in lower-income urban communities. In such settings, neighborhood safety may impact willingness to be regularly physically active. We examined the association of perceived neighborhood safety with pedometer-determined physical activity and physical activity self-efficacy.

Methods and Findings

Participants were 1,180 predominantly racial/ethnic minority adults recruited from 12 urban low-income housing complexes in metropolitan Boston. Participants completed a 5-d pedometer data-collection protocol and self-reported their perceptions of neighborhood safety and self-efficacy (i.e., confidence in the ability to be physically active). Gender-stratified bivariate and multivariable random effects models were estimated to account for within-site clustering. Most participants reported feeling safe during the day, while just over one-third (36%) felt safe at night. We found no association between daytime safety reports and physical activity among both men and women. There was also no association between night-time safety reports and physical activity among men (p = 0.23) but women who reported feeling unsafe (versus safe) at night showed significantly fewer steps per day (4,302 versus 5,178, p = 0.01). Perceiving one's neighborhood as unsafe during the day was associated with significantly lower odds of having high physical activity self-efficacy among both men (OR 0.40, p = 0.01) and women (OR 0.68, p = 0.02).

Conclusions

Residing in a neighborhood that is perceived to be unsafe at night is a barrier to regular physical activity among individuals, especially women, living in urban low-income housing. Feeling unsafe may also diminish confidence in the ability to be more physically active. Both of these factors may limit the effectiveness of physical activity promotion strategies delivered in similar settings.

Garry Bennett and colleagues measured exercise levels and obtained opinions on neighborhood safety. They concluded that residing in a neighborhood perceived to be unsafe at night is a barrier to regular physical activity.

Editors' Summary

Background.

Nowadays we are all encouraged to do more physical activity, as it has been shown that inactivity increases the risk of many medical conditions, including obesity, heart attacks, and strokes. Inactive people die younger. Previous research has shown that people on a low income and those from ethnic or racial minorities have the lowest activity levels. There are, however, many barriers to being active. It has been claimed that people who live in neighborhoods that are unsafe face particular difficulties. They might want to walk, cycle, or take other forms of outdoor exercise near their home, but they fear they would be injured as a result of a violent attack. It is usually the poorest members of society who live in unsafe areas. It is also known that those poor people who belong to minority racial or ethnic groups are particularly likely to feel unsafe.

Why Was This Study Done?

The researchers who did this study wanted to find out whether people in a low-income urban area in the US considered themselves to be unsafe in their neighborhood, and how much physical activity they took part in. Their aim was to establish whether there was an association between the perceived safety level and the amount of activity taken, or if the two were unrelated. Other researchers have tried to look for such an association before, but they have usually relied on how much activity people say they remember taking, not on the actual measured amount. The results from such research have been very varied and inconclusive.

What Did the Researchers Do and Find?

Working in one low-income district of one US city (Boston), they found over 1,000 people to participate in their study, most of whom were from ethnic minorities. They asked them the question: “How safe do you feel walking alone in your neighborhood?” Response options included “safe,” “a little unsafe,” and “unsafe.” The same question was asked about walking alone in the daylight and walking alone after dark. The people in the study also agreed to wear a pedometer for five days. This instrument measures the number of steps that the wearer takes. It is thus a much more accurate way of finding out about activity levels than asking people how much activity they think they have engaged in.

Four out of five people said they did feel safe during the day, but there was no association between daytime safety and physical activity. This was the case for both men and women. Two-thirds of the people in the study felt unsafe in the night-time. There was no association between perceived night-time safety and physical activity among men, but women who reported feeling unsafe at night took around 1,000 fewer steps per day than other women. That amounts to around 20% less physical activity.

What Do These Findings Mean?

Even the women who felt safe at night were only taking around 5,000 steps per day, around half of what the US Surgeon General recommends for good health. So all the women in the study would benefit from more physical activity. However, the much lower amount of activity of the women who felt unsafe does suggest that a perceived lack of safety is an important factor, which could increase the risks to their health. It is interesting that the association between perceived safety and activity was not found in men and only applied to night-time safety. However, the authors argue that their findings provide preliminary evidence that perceived low neighborhood safety may serve as a barrier to physical activity in low-income areas. They discuss in the article the need for further research.

Additional Information.

Please access these Web sites via the online version of this summary at http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0040306.

• The UK National Health Service publishes the online NHS Direct Health Encyclopedia, which describes the benefits of exercise and gives recommendations

• Information on exercise may also be found on MedlinePlus, a service of the US National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health

Analysis of virological and clinical outcomes from a randomized trial that was terminated early suggest that combined treatment of seasonal influenza in adult outpatients with oseltamivir plus zanamivir is no more effective than either oseltamivir or zanamivir monotherapy.

Background

Neuraminidase inhibitors are thought to be efficacious in reducing the time to alleviation of symptoms in outpatients with seasonal influenza. The objective of this study was to compare the short-term virological efficacy of oseltamivir-zanamivir combination versus each monotherapy plus placebo.

Methods and Findings

We conducted a randomized placebo-controlled trial with 145 general practitioners throughout France during the 2008–2009 seasonal influenza epidemic. Patients, general practitioners, and outcome assessors were all blinded to treatment assignment. Adult outpatients presenting influenza-like illness for less than 36 hours and a positive influenza A rapid test diagnosis were randomized to oseltamivir 75 mg orally twice daily plus zanamivir 10 mg by inhalation twice daily (OZ), oseltamivir plus inhaled placebo (O), or zanamivir plus oral placebo (Z). Treatment efficacy was assessed virologically according to the proportion of patients with nasal influenza reverse transcription (RT)-PCR below 200 copies genome equivalent (cgeq)/µl at day 2 (primary outcome), and clinically to the time to alleviation of symptoms until day 14. Overall 541 patients (of the 900 planned) were included (OZ, n = 192; O, n = 176; Z, n = 173), 49% male, mean age 39 years. In the intention-to-treat analysis conducted in the 447 patients with RT-PCR-confirmed influenza A, 46%, 59%, and 34% in OZ (n = 157), O (n = 141), and Z (n = 149) arms had RT-PCR<200 cgeq/µl (−13.0%, 95% confidence interval [CI] −23.1 to −2.9, p = 0.025; +12.3%, 95% CI 2.39–22.2, p = 0.028 for OZ/O and OZ/Z comparisons). Mean day 0 to day 2 viral load decrease was 2.14, 2.49, and 1.68 log10 cgeq/µl (p = 0.060, p = 0.016 for OZ/O and OZ/Z). Median time to alleviation of symptoms was 4.0, 3.0, and 4.0 days (+1.0, 95% CI 0.0–4.0, p = 0.018; +0.0, 95% CI −3.0 to 3.0, p = 0.960 for OZ/O and OZ/Z). Four severe adverse events were observed. Nausea and/or vomiting tended to be more frequent in the combination arm (OZ, n = 13; O, n = 4; and Z, n = 5 patients, respectively).

Conclusions

In adults with seasonal influenza A mainly H3N2 virus infection, the oseltamivir-zanamivir combination appeared less effective than oseltamivir monotherapy, and not significantly more effective than zanamivir monotherapy. Despite the theoretical potential for the reduction of the emergence of antiviral resistance, the lower effectiveness of this combination calls for caution in its use in clinical practice.

Trial registration

www.ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00799760

Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary

Editors' Summary

Background

In the last few years, use of the neuraminidase inhibitors, oseltamivir and zanamivir, has been considered a key strategy for limiting the impact of influenza both in individuals (by reducing morbidity and mortality) and collectively (by slowing the virus' spread to buy time for vaccine production, the cornerstone of influenza control). However, there are concerns that widespread use of a single antiviral drug may lead to resistant strains, which could dramatically reduce its effectiveness in future. Theoretically, if well tolerated, and if producing at least additive antiviral activity, the combination of two antiviral agents could offer several advantages such as reducing disease severity and reducing the viral shedding period, which in turn could lead to lower infection rates and reduced resistance especially in immunocompromised patients. Importantly, combining two drugs could ensure optimal treatment of all types of circulating influenza virus and subtypes or variants. The combination of two neuraminidase inhibitors is feasible as both oseltamivir and zanamivir are licensed for seasonal influenza and have different key mutations associated with resistance to each drug.

Why Was This Study Done?

As yet, there have been no robust randomized controlled trials that compare the effectiveness of monotherapy with either oseltamivir or zanamivir with the effectiveness of a oseltamivir-zanamivir combination. Such a study would be important for influenza pandemic planning.

What Did the Researchers Do and Find?

The researchers conducted a randomized, placebo-controlled trial within 145 general practitioners throughout France during the seasonal influenza epidemic in 2008–2009. Adults who visited their general practitioner with symptoms of an influenza-like illness for less than 36 hours and who had a positive influenza A rapid test were randomized to one of three arms: (1) oral oseltamivir 75 mg twice daily plus zanamivir 10 mg by inhalation twice daily, (2) oral oseltamivir 75 mg twice daily plus inhaled placebo, or (3) zanamivir 10 mg by inhalation twice daily plus oral placebo. The effects of the drugs or combination of drugs was assessed virologically, by looking at the proportion of patients with nasal influenza reverse transcription (RT)-PCR below a particular level on day 2 of treatment. Clinical measures of effectiveness included the time to resolution of illness, the number of patients with alleviation of symptoms at the end of treatment, and the incidence of secondary complications of influenza such as otitis, bronchitis, sinusitis, and pneumonia. In the study, patients, general practitioners, and outcome assessors were all blinded to treatment assignments. Due to the emergence of the H1N1 pandemic in 2009, the study's independent data-monitoring committee requested that the researchers terminate the trial early and analyze the results earlier than planned.

541 patients (of the 900 planned) were enrolled in the study (192 in group 1; 176 in group 2; and 173 in group 3) of whom 447 were infected with influenza A. Overall the oseltamivir-zanamivir combination was both virologically and clinically significantly less effective than the oseltamivir monotherapy. In addition, the clinical effects of the oseltamivir-zanamivir combination on time to resolution of symptoms were not significantly different from that of zanamivir monotherapy, suggesting that oseltamivir does not add clinical benefit to zanamivir monotherapy.

What Do These Findings Mean?

The results of this study essentially show that in France during the Winter of 2009 prepandemic (of which 85% was due to of H3N2 virus), in adults with seasonal influenza A virus infection, the combination of oseltamivir and zanamivir was less effective than oseltamivir monotherapy and not significantly more effective than zanamivir monotherapy. These results call for caution in the use of the oseltamivir-zanamivir combination in treatment of adult outpatients. In addition, as the clinical and virological effects of oseltamivir monotherapy over zanamivir monotherapy were superior in this trial, oseltamivir should be the recommended treatment during influenza seasons with predominant H3N2 viruses. However, the results of this study should be confirmed in the coming years on future circulating influenza viruses.

Additional Information

Please access these Web sites via the online version of this summary at http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000362.

Wikipedia has information on H3N3 influenza A virus (note that Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit; available in several languages)

The World Health Organization has a global alert and response site on seasonal influenza

Patient UK provides information about antivirals for influenza

Answers.com has information about oseltamivir and about zanamivir

The Four Artemisinin-Based Combinations (4ABC) Study Group reports a randomized, non-inferiority trial comparing the efficacy and safety of four ACTs in children with mild Plasmodium falciparum malaria from seven sub-Saharan African countries.

Background

Artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) are the mainstay for the management of uncomplicated malaria cases. However, up-to-date data able to assist sub-Saharan African countries formulating appropriate antimalarial drug policies are scarce.

Methods and Findings

Between 9 July 2007 and 19 June 2009, a randomized, non-inferiority (10% difference threshold in efficacy at day 28) clinical trial was carried out at 12 sites in seven sub-Saharan African countries. Each site compared three of four ACTs, namely amodiaquine-artesunate (ASAQ), dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine (DHAPQ), artemether-lumefantrine (AL), or chlorproguanil-dapsone-artesunate (CD+A). Overall, 4,116 children 6–59 mo old with uncomplicated Plasmodium falciparum malaria were treated (1,226 with AL, 1,002 with ASAQ, 413 with CD+A, and 1,475 with DHAPQ), actively followed up until day 28, and then passively followed up for the next 6 mo. At day 28, for the PCR-adjusted efficacy, non-inferiority was established for three pair-wise comparisons: DHAPQ (97.3%) versus AL (95.5%) (odds ratio [OR]: 0.59, 95% CI: 0.37–0.94); DHAPQ (97.6%) versus ASAQ (96.8%) (OR: 0.74, 95% CI: 0.41–1.34), and ASAQ (97.1%) versus AL (94.4%) (OR: 0.50, 95% CI: 0.28–0.92). For the PCR-unadjusted efficacy, AL was significantly less efficacious than DHAPQ (72.7% versus 89.5%) (OR: 0.27, 95% CI: 0.21–0.34) and ASAQ (66.2% versus 80.4%) (OR: 0.40, 95% CI: 0.30–0.53), while DHAPQ (92.2%) had higher efficacy than ASAQ (80.8%) but non-inferiority could not be excluded (OR: 0.35, 95% CI: 0.26–0.48). CD+A was significantly less efficacious than the other three treatments. Day 63 results were similar to those observed at day 28.

Conclusions

This large head-to-head comparison of most currently available ACTs in sub-Saharan Africa showed that AL, ASAQ, and DHAPQ had excellent efficacy, up to day 63 post-treatment. The risk of recurrent infections was significantly lower for DHAPQ, followed by ASAQ and then AL, supporting the recent recommendation of considering DHAPQ as a valid option for the treatment of uncomplicated P. falciparum malaria.

Trial Registration

ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00393679; Pan African Clinical Trials Registry PACTR2009010000911750

Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary

Editors' Summary

Background

Malaria is a global public-health problem. Half the world's population is at risk of this mosquito-borne parasitic disease, which kills a million people (mainly children living in sub-Saharan Africa) every year. Although several parasites cause malaria, Plasmodium falciparum is responsible for most of these deaths. During the second half of the 20th century, the main treatments for malaria were inexpensive “monotherapies” such as chloroquine and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine. Unfortunately, the malaria parasite quickly developed resistance to many of these monotherapies, and in the 1990 s, there was a widespread upsurge in P. falciparum malaria. To combat this increase, the World Health Organization (WHO) now recommends artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) for first-line treatment of P. falciparum malaria in all regions where there is drug-resistant malaria. In ACT, artemisinin derivatives (new, fast-acting antimalarial drugs) are used in combination with another antimalarial drug (a partner drug) to reduce the chances of P. falciparum becoming resistant to either drug.

Why Was This Study Done?

WHO currently recommends five ACTs—amodiaquine-artesunate (ASAQ), dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine (DHAPQ), artemether-lumefantrine (AL), artesunate-mefloquine, and artesunate-sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine—for the treatment of malaria. Its treatment guidelines state that the choice of ACT in a country or region should be based on the local level of resistance to the non-artemisinin-based partner drug in the combination. However, data on resistance levels to these partner drugs are scarce or unavailable for many sub-Saharan African countries. To help these countries make an informed choice about their national antimalarial treatment policies, in this randomized, non-inferiority trial, the researchers compare the efficacy and safety of four ACTs in African children with uncomplicated (mild) P. falciparum malaria. In a randomized trial, groups of randomly chosen patients with a specific disease are given different treatments and then followed to compare the outcomes of these interventions. A non-inferiority trial investigates whether one treatment is not worse than another treatment.

What Did the Researchers Do and Find?

Each of twelve sites in seven sub-Saharan African countries compared three ACTs out of ASAQ, DHAPQ, AL, and chlorproguanil-dapsone-artesunate (CD+A). Overall, 4,116 young children with uncomplicated malaria were treated with ACT, actively followed up for 28 days (their parents brought them back to the site for pre-arranged check-ups), and passively followed up for six months (parents brought their children back if they developed any illnesses). At each visit, blood samples were examined for the presence of parasites, and a technique called PCR was used to determine which cases of malaria were new infections and which were recurrences of the original infection. The researchers then calculated the percentage of patients with no infection or with a new infection (the PCR-adjusted adequate clinical and parasitological response [ACPR]) and the percentage of patients with no infection (the PCR-unadjusted ACPR). For the PCR-adjusted efficacy, three pair-wise comparisons (DHAPQ versus AL, DHAPQ versus ASAQ, and ASAQ versus AL) showed non-inferiority at 28 days. That is, for example, similar percentages of patients given DHAPQ or AL (97.3% and 95.5%, respectively) had either no infection or a new infection. CD+A was less efficacious than the other three treatments. For the PCR-unadjusted efficacy, AL was significantly less efficacious than DHAPQ and ASAQ; DHAPQ had a higher efficacy than ASAQ, but non-inferiority could not be excluded. That is, the difference in efficacy of these two drugs might have happened by chance.

What Do These Findings Mean?

These findings suggest that AL, ASAQ, and DHAPQ are all efficacious for the treatment of uncomplicated malaria in children; CD+A was withdrawn partway through the trial because of side effects, but these findings also suggest that it was less efficacious than the other ACTs. Importantly, the PCR-unadjusted results indicate that the risk of children becoming re-infected with malaria parasites soon after treatment was lowest for DHAPQ, followed by ASAQ, and then AL. Because these findings are based on pooled results from seven sub-Saharan African countries, they are likely to be generalizable and thus of use in setting national antimalarial drug policies throughout the region. AL and ASAQ are already included in the antimalarial drug policies of many sub-Saharan African countries, note the researchers, but these findings support the WHO recommendation that DHAPQ should also be considered for the treatment for uncomplicated P. falciparum malaria.

Additional Information

Please access these websites via the online version of this summary at http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001119.

Information is available from WHO on malaria (in several languages); the 2010 World Malaria Report provides details of the current global malaria situation; the WHO Guidelines for the Treatment of Malaria and the report Assessment and Monitoring of Antimalarial Drug Efficacy for the Treatment of Uncomplicated Malaria are available

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provide information on malaria (in English and Spanish), including a selection of personal stories about malaria

Information is available from the Roll Back Malaria Partnership on the global control of malaria including fact sheets about ACTs and about malaria in Africa

MedlinePlus provides links to additional information on malaria (in English and Spanish)

A comparison of data held by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) against data from journal reports of clinical trials enables estimation of the extent of publication bias for antipsychotics.

Background

Publication bias compromises the validity of evidence-based medicine, yet a growing body of research shows that this problem is widespread. Efficacy data from drug regulatory agencies, e.g., the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), can serve as a benchmark or control against which data in journal articles can be checked. Thus one may determine whether publication bias is present and quantify the extent to which it inflates apparent drug efficacy.

Methods and Findings

FDA Drug Approval Packages for eight second-generation antipsychotics—aripiprazole, iloperidone, olanzapine, paliperidone, quetiapine, risperidone, risperidone long-acting injection (risperidone LAI), and ziprasidone—were used to identify a cohort of 24 FDA-registered premarketing trials. The results of these trials according to the FDA were compared with the results conveyed in corresponding journal articles. The relationship between study outcome and publication status was examined, and effect sizes derived from the two data sources were compared. Among the 24 FDA-registered trials, four (17%) were unpublished. Of these, three failed to show that the study drug had a statistical advantage over placebo, and one showed the study drug was statistically inferior to the active comparator. Among the 20 published trials, the five that were not positive, according to the FDA, showed some evidence of outcome reporting bias. However, the association between trial outcome and publication status did not reach statistical significance. Further, the apparent increase in the effect size point estimate due to publication bias was modest (8%) and not statistically significant. On the other hand, the effect size for unpublished trials (0.23, 95% confidence interval 0.07 to 0.39) was less than half that for the published trials (0.47, 95% confidence interval 0.40 to 0.54), a difference that was significant.

Conclusions

The magnitude of publication bias found for antipsychotics was less than that found previously for antidepressants, possibly because antipsychotics demonstrate superiority to placebo more consistently. Without increased access to regulatory agency data, publication bias will continue to blur distinctions between effective and ineffective drugs.

Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary

Editors' Summary

Background

People assume that, when they are ill, health-care professionals will ensure that they get the best available treatment. But how do clinicians know which treatment is likely to be most effective? In the past, clinicians used their own experience to make such decisions. Nowadays, they rely on evidence-based medicine—the systematic review and appraisal of trials, studies that investigate the efficacy and safety of medical interventions in patients. Evidence-based medicine can guide clinicians, however, only if all the results from clinical trials are published in an unbiased manner. Unfortunately, “publication bias” is common. For example, the results of trials in which a new drug did not perform better than existing drugs or in which it had unwanted side effects often remain unpublished. Moreover, published trials can be subject to outcome reporting bias—the publication may only include those trial outcomes that support the use of the new treatment rather than presenting all the available data.

Why Was This Study Done?

If only strongly positive results are published and negative results and side-effects remain unpublished, a drug will seem safer and more effective than it is in reality, which could affect clinical decision-making and patient outcomes. But how big a problem is publication bias? Here, researchers use US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reviews as a benchmark to quantify the extent to which publication bias may be altering the apparent efficacy of second-generation antipsychotics (drugs used to treat schizophrenia and other mental illnesses that are characterized by a loss of contact with reality). In the US, all new drugs have to be approved by the FDA before they can be marketed. During this approval process, the FDA collects and keeps complete information about premarketing trials, including descriptions of their design and prespecified outcome measures and all the data collected during the trials. Thus, a comparison of the results included in the FDA reviews for a group of trials and the results that appear in the literature for the same trials can provide direct evidence about publication bias.

What Did the Researchers Do and Find?

The researchers identified 24 FDA-registered premarketing trials that investigated the use of eight second-generation antipsychotics for the treatment of schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. They searched the published literature for reports of these trials, and, by comparing the results of these trials according to the FDA with the results in the published articles, they examined the relationship between the study outcome (did the FDA consider it positive or negative?) and publication and looked for outcome reporting bias. Four of the 24 FDA-registered trials were unpublished. Three of these unpublished trials failed to show that the study drug was more effective than a placebo (a “dummy” pill); the fourth showed that the study drug was inferior to another drug already in use in the US. Among the 20 published trials, the five that the FDA judged not positive showed some evidence of publication bias. However, the association between trial outcome and publication status did not reach statistical significance (it might have happened by chance), and the mean effect size (a measure of drug effectiveness) derived from the published literature was only slightly higher than that derived from the FDA records. By contrast, within the FDA dataset, the mean effect size of the published trials was approximately double that of the unpublished trials.

What Do These Findings Mean?

The accuracy of these findings is limited by the small number of trials analyzed. Moreover, this study considers only the efficacy and not the safety of these drugs, it assumes that the FDA database is complete and unbiased, and its findings are not generalizable to other conditions that antipsychotics are used to treat. Nevertheless, these findings show that publication bias in the reporting of trials of second-generation antipsychotic drugs enhances the apparent efficacy of these drugs. Although the magnitude of the publication bias seen here is less than that seen in a similar study of antidepressant drugs, these findings show how selective reporting of clinical trial data undermines the integrity of the evidence base and can deprive clinicians of accurate data on which to base their prescribing decisions. Increased access to FDA reviews, suggest the researchers, is therefore essential to prevent publication bias continuing to blur distinctions between effective and ineffective drugs.

Additional Information

Please access these web sites via the online version of this summary at http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001189.

The US Food and Drug Administration provides information about drug approval in the US for consumers and health-care professionals

Detailed information about the process by which drugs are approved is on the web site of the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research; also, FDA Drug Approval Packages are available for many drugs; the FDA Transparency Initiative, which was launched in June 2009, is an agency-wide effort to improve the transparency of the FDA

FDA-approved product labeling on drugs marketed in the US can be found at the US National Library of Medicine's DailyMed web page

Wikipedia has a page on publication bias (note: Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit; available in several languages)

MedlinePlus provides links to sources of information on schizophrenia and on psychotic disorders (in English and Spanish)

Patient experiences of psychosis, including the effects of medication, are provided by the charity HealthtalkOnline

Catherine Cornu and colleagues performed a meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials of metformin efficacy on cardiovascular morbidity or mortality in patients with type 2 diabetes and showed that although metformin is considered the gold standard, its benefit/risk ratio remains uncertain.

Background

The UK Prospective Diabetes Study showed that metformin decreases mortality compared to diet alone in overweight patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Since then, it has been the first-line treatment in overweight patients with type 2 diabetes. However, metformin-sulphonylurea bitherapy may increase mortality.

Methods and Findings

This meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials evaluated metformin efficacy (in studies of metformin versus diet alone, versus placebo, and versus no treatment; metformin as an add-on therapy; and metformin withdrawal) against cardiovascular morbidity or mortality in patients with type 2 diabetes. We searched Medline, Embase, and the Cochrane database. Primary end points were all-cause mortality and cardiovascular death. Secondary end points included all myocardial infarctions, all strokes, congestive heart failure, peripheral vascular disease, leg amputations, and microvascular complications. Thirteen randomised controlled trials (13,110 patients) were retrieved; 9,560 patients were given metformin, and 3,550 patients were given conventional treatment or placebo. Metformin did not significantly affect the primary outcomes all-cause mortality, risk ratio (RR) = 0.99 (95% CI: 0.75 to 1.31), and cardiovascular mortality, RR = 1.05 (95% CI: 0.67 to 1.64). The secondary outcomes were also unaffected by metformin treatment: all myocardial infarctions, RR = 0.90 (95% CI: 0.74 to 1.09); all strokes, RR = 0.76 (95% CI: 0.51 to 1.14); heart failure, RR = 1.03 (95% CI: 0.67 to 1.59); peripheral vascular disease, RR = 0.90 (95% CI: 0.46 to 1.78); leg amputations, RR = 1.04 (95% CI: 0.44 to 2.44); and microvascular complications, RR = 0.83 (95% CI: 0.59 to 1.17). For all-cause mortality and cardiovascular mortality, there was significant heterogeneity when including the UK Prospective Diabetes Study subgroups (I2 = 41% and 59%). There was significant interaction with sulphonylurea as a concomitant treatment for myocardial infarction (p = 0.10 and 0.02, respectively).

Conclusions

Although metformin is considered the gold standard, its benefit/risk ratio remains uncertain. We cannot exclude a 25% reduction or a 31% increase in all-cause mortality. We cannot exclude a 33% reduction or a 64% increase in cardiovascular mortality. Further studies are needed to clarify this situation.

Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary

Editors' Summary

Background

Worldwide, more than 350 million people have diabetes, and this number is increasing rapidly. Diabetes is characterized by dangerous amounts of sugar (glucose) in the blood. Blood sugar levels are normally controlled by insulin, a hormone produced by the pancreas. In people with type 2 diabetes (the most common form of diabetes), blood sugar control fails because the fat and muscle cells that usually respond to insulin by removing excess sugar from the blood become less responsive to insulin. Type 2 diabetes can be controlled with diet and exercise and with antidiabetic pills, each of which works in a different way to maintain a healthy blood sugar level. Metformin, for example, stops the liver making glucose and increases the body's response to insulin, whereas sulfonylureas help the pancreas make more insulin. The long-term complications of diabetes, which include an increased risk of cardiovascular problems such as heart disease and stroke, reduce the life expectancy of people with diabetes by about ten years compared to people without diabetes.

Why Was This Study Done?

In 1998, a large randomized clinical trial called the UK Prospective Diabetes Study (UKPDS 34) reported that metformin in combination with dietary control reduced all-cause mortality in overweight patients with type 2 diabetes when compared to dietary control alone. Specifically, the risk of death from any cause among patients taking metformin was about a third lower than the risk of death among patients not taking metformin—a risk ratio (RR) of 0.64. This reduction in risk was significant (that is, it was unlikely to have occurred by chance) because its 95% confidence interval (95% CI; there is a 95% chance that the “true” RR lies within this interval) of 0.45–0.91 did not overlap 1.0. Given this finding, metformin is now recommended as the first-line treatment for type 2 diabetes. However, UKPDS 34 also reported an increase in death in non-overweight patients who took metformin plus sulfonylurea compared to those who took sulfonylurea alone (RR: 1.60; 95% CI: 1.02–2.52), a result considered non-significant by the UKPDS 34 researchers and largely ignored ever since. So do the benefits of metformin outweigh its risks? In this meta-analysis, the researchers re-evaluate the risk-to-benefit balance of metformin in the treatment of patients with type 2 diabetes. A meta-analysis is a statistical method that combines the results of several studies.

What Did the Researchers Do and Find?

The researchers identified 13 randomized controlled trials that evaluated the effect of metformin on cardiovascular morbidity (illness) and mortality in patients with type 2 diabetes. More than 13,000 patients participated in these studies, three-quarters of whom received metformin and a quarter of whom received other treatments or a placebo. Compared to other treatments, metformin treatment had no effect on the risk of all-cause mortality (RR: 0.99; 95% CI: 0.75–1.31) or cardiovascular mortality (RR: 1.05; 95% CI: 0.67–1.64), the primary end points of this study. However, the results of the individual trials varied more than would be expected by chance (“heterogeneity”). Exclusion of the UKPDS 34 trial from the meta-analysis had no effect on the estimated risk ratio for all-cause mortality or cardiovascular deaths, but the heterogeneity disappeared. Finally, metformin treatment had no significant effect on the risk of cardiovascular conditions such as heart attacks, strokes, and heart failure; there was no heterogeneity among the trials for these secondary end points.

What Do These Findings Mean?

These findings show no evidence that metformin has any beneficial effect on all-cause mortality, on cardiovascular mortality, or on cardiovascular morbidity among patients with type 2 diabetes. These findings must be cautiously interpreted because only a few randomized controlled trials were included in this study, and only a few patients died or developed any cardiovascular illnesses. Importantly, however, from these findings, it is impossible to exclude beyond reasonable doubt the possibility that metformin causes up to a 25% reduction or a 31% increase in all-cause mortality. Similarly, these findings cannot exclude the possibility that metformin causes up to a 33% reduction or a 64% increase in cardiovascular mortality. Given that a large number of patients take metformin for many years as a first-line treatment for diabetes, further studies are urgently needed to clarify this situation.

Additional Information

Please access these web sites via the online version of this summary at http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001204.

The International Diabetes Federation provides information about all aspects of diabetes

The US National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse provides information about diabetes for patients, health-care professionals, and the general public, including detailed information on diabetes medicines (in English and Spanish)

The UK National Health Service Choices web site provides information for patients and carers about type 2 diabetes and includes peoples stories about diabetes

The charity Diabetes UK also provides detailed information for patients and carers, including information on diabetes medications, and has a further selection of stories from people with diabetes

MedlinePlus provides links to further resources and advice about diabetes and about diabetes medicines; it also provides information about metformin (in English and Spanish)

The charity Healthtalkonline has interviews with people about their experiences of diabetes and of controlling diabetes with oral medications

Thomas Campbell and colleagues report findings of a randomized trial conducted in multiple countries regarding the efficacy of antiretroviral regimens with simplified dosing.

Background

Antiretroviral regimens with simplified dosing and better safety are needed to maximize the efficiency of antiretroviral delivery in resource-limited settings. We investigated the efficacy and safety of antiretroviral regimens with once-daily compared to twice-daily dosing in diverse areas of the world.

Methods and Findings

1,571 HIV-1-infected persons (47% women) from nine countries in four continents were assigned with equal probability to open-label antiretroviral therapy with efavirenz plus lamivudine-zidovudine (EFV+3TC-ZDV), atazanavir plus didanosine-EC plus emtricitabine (ATV+DDI+FTC), or efavirenz plus emtricitabine-tenofovir-disoproxil fumarate (DF) (EFV+FTC-TDF). ATV+DDI+FTC and EFV+FTC-TDF were hypothesized to be non-inferior to EFV+3TC-ZDV if the upper one-sided 95% confidence bound for the hazard ratio (HR) was ≤1.35 when 30% of participants had treatment failure.

An independent monitoring board recommended stopping study follow-up prior to accumulation of 472 treatment failures. Comparing EFV+FTC-TDF to EFV+3TC-ZDV, during a median 184 wk of follow-up there were 95 treatment failures (18%) among 526 participants versus 98 failures among 519 participants (19%; HR 0.95, 95% CI 0.72–1.27; p = 0.74). Safety endpoints occurred in 243 (46%) participants assigned to EFV+FTC-TDF versus 313 (60%) assigned to EFV+3TC-ZDV (HR 0.64, CI 0.54–0.76; p<0.001) and there was a significant interaction between sex and regimen safety (HR 0.50, CI 0.39–0.64 for women; HR 0.79, CI 0.62–1.00 for men; p = 0.01). Comparing ATV+DDI+FTC to EFV+3TC-ZDV, during a median follow-up of 81 wk there were 108 failures (21%) among 526 participants assigned to ATV+DDI+FTC and 76 (15%) among 519 participants assigned to EFV+3TC-ZDV (HR 1.51, CI 1.12–2.04; p = 0.007).

Conclusion

EFV+FTC-TDF had similar high efficacy compared to EFV+3TC-ZDV in this trial population, recruited in diverse multinational settings. Superior safety, especially in HIV-1-infected women, and once-daily dosing of EFV+FTC-TDF are advantageous for use of this regimen for initial treatment of HIV-1 infection in resource-limited countries. ATV+DDI+FTC had inferior efficacy and is not recommended as an initial antiretroviral regimen.

Trial Registration

www.ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00084136

Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary.

Editors' Summary

Background

Despite the enormous gains in reducing HIV-related illness and death over the past decade, there are still considerable challenges to meeting the global goal of universal access to highly active antiretroviral treatment—a combination of effective drugs that attack the HIV virus in various ways—to everyone living with HIV/AIDS who could benefit from treatment. In recognition of the related financial, technical, and system obstacles to providing universal access to HIV treatment, in 2010 the UN agency responsible for HIV/AIDS—UNAIDS—launched an ambitious plan called Treatment 2.0, which aims to simplify the way HIV treatment is currently provided. One of the main focuses of Treatment 2.0 is to simplify drug regimes for the treatment of HIV and to make treatment regimes less toxic. In line with Treatment 2.0, the World Health Organization currently recommends that antiretroviral regimens for the initial treatment of HIV should include two nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (zidovudine or tenofovir disoproxil fumarate [DF] with lamivudine or emtricitabine) and a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (efavirenz or nevirapine.)

Why Was This Study Done?

Most of the evidence about the safety and effectiveness of clinical trials come from clinical trials in high-income countries and thus is not generally representative of the majority of people with HIV. So in this study, the researchers conducted a randomized controlled trial in diverse populations in many different settings to investigate whether antiretroviral regimens administered once daily were as effective as twice-daily regimens and also whether a regimen containing the drug atazanavir administered once daily was as safe and effective as a regimen containing efavirenz—data from previous studies have suggested that atazanavir has characteristics, such as its side effect profile, which may make it more suitable for low income settings.

What Did the Researchers Do and Find?

The researchers recruited eligible patients from centers in Brazil, Haiti, India, Malawi, Peru, South Africa, Thailand, the United States, and Zimbabwe—almost half (47%) were women. Then the researchers randomly assigned participants to one of three regimens: efavirenz 600 mg daily plus co-formulated lamivudine-zidovudine 150 mg/300 mg twice daily (EFV+3TC-ZDV); or atazanavir 400 mg once daily, plus didanosine-EC 400 mg once daily, plus emtricitabine 200 mg once daily (ATV+DDI+FTC); or efavirenz 600 mg once daily plus coformulated emtricitabine-tenofovir-DF 200 mg/300 mg once daily (EFV+FTC-TDF). During the study period ATV+DDI+FTC was found to be inferior to EFV+3TC-ZDV, so the Multinational Data Safety Monitoring Board ordered this arm of the trial to stop. Then a year later, due to the low number of treatment failures (deaths, severe HIV disease, or serious opportunistic infections) in the remaining two arms, the board advised the trial to stop early. So the researchers analyzed the data obtained up to this point and pooled the results from all of the centers.

The researchers found that during an average of 184 weeks of follow-up, there were 95 treatment failures (18%) among 526 participants taking EFV+FTC-TDF compared to 98 failures among 519 participants taking EFV+3TC-ZDV. During an average 81 weeks follow-up, there were 108 failures (21%) among 526 participants assigned to ATV+DDI+FTC and 76 (15%) among 519 participants assigned to EFV+3TC-ZDV. As for safety, 243 (46%) participants assigned to EFV+FTC-TDF reached a safety endpoint (grade 3 disease, abnormal lab measurement, or the need to change drug) compared to 313 (60%) in the EFV+3TC-ZDV group. Importantly, the researchers found that there was greater risk of safety events for women assigned to EFV+3TC-ZDV and also that the atazanavir-based regimen had a higher relative efficacy in women compared to men.

What Do These Findings Mean?

These findings suggest that in diverse populations, EFV+FTC-TDF is as effective as EFV+3TC-ZDV but importantly, the once-daily dosing of EFV+FTC-TDF makes this regimen useful for the initial treatment of HIV, especially in low-income countries. Therefore, as per the guidance in Treatment 2.0, EFV+FTC-TDF in a single combination tablet that can be taken once a day is an attractive option. These findings also indicate that as ATV+DDI+FTC was found to be inferior to the other regimens, this combination should not be used in the initial treatment of HIV. These findings also add to the evidence that antiretroviral efficacy and safety can differ between women and men and support further development of sex-specific recommendations for antiretroviral regimen options.

Additional Information

Please access these Web sites via the online version of this summary at http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001290.

The UNAIDS website has more information about Treatment 2.0; and the WHO website provides technical information

For an introduction to the treatment of HIV/AIDS see http://www.avert.org/treatment.htm; the AVERT site also has personal stories from women living with HIV/AIDS

AIDSmap provides information for individuals and communities affected by HIV/AIDS

The ACTG website provides information about research to improve treatment of HIV and related complications