Clinic-based or community-based interventions can improve adherence to guideline-directed medication therapies (GDMTs) among patients with heart failure (HF). However, opportunities for such interventions are frequently missed, as providers may be unable to recognise risk patterns for medication non-adherence. Machine learning algorithms can help in identifying patients with high likelihood of non-adherence. While a number of multilevel factors influence adherence, prior models predicting non-adherence have been limited by data availability. We have established an electronic health record (EHR)-based cohort with comprehensive data elements from multiple sources to improve on existing models. We linked EHR data with pharmacy refill data for real-time incorporation of prescription fills and with social determinants data to incorporate neighbourhood factors.

Patients seen at a large health system in New York City (NYC), who were >18 years old with diagnosis of HF or reduced ejection fraction (

Among 39 963 patients in the cohort, the average age was 73±14 years old, 44% were female and 48% were current/former smokers. The common comorbid conditions were hypertension (77%), cardiac arrhythmias (56%), obesity (33%) and valvular disease (33%). During the study period, 33 606 (84%) patients had an active prescription of beta blocker, 32 626 (82%) had ACEi/ARB/ARNI, 11 611 (29%) MRA and 7472 (19%) SGLT2i. Ninety-nine per cent were from urban metropolitan areas.

We will use the established cohort to develop a machine learning model to predict medication adherence, and to support ancillary studies assessing associates of adherence. For external validation, we will include data from an additional hospital system in NYC.

Kidney transplantation offers patients better quality of life and survival compared with dialysis. The risk of end stage renal disease is higher among ethnic minorities and they experience longer wait times on transplant lists. This inequality stems from a high need for kidney transplantation combined with a low rate of deceased donation among ethnic minority groups. This study aimed to explore the perspectives around living donor kidney transplantation of members of the Sikh and Muslim communities with an aim to develop a digital intervention to overcome any barriers.

A qualitative descriptive study using in person focus groups.

University Teaching Hospital and Transplant Centre.

Convenience sampling of participants from the transplant population. Three focus groups were held with 20 participants, all were of South Asian ethnicity belonging to the Sikh and Muslim communities.

Interviews were digitally audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim; transcripts were analysed thematically.

Four themes were identified: (a) religious issues; (b) lack of knowledge within the community; (c) time; (d) cultural identification with transplantation.

Not only is the information given and when it is delivered important, but also the person giving the information is crucial to enhance consideration of live donor kidney transplantation. Information should be in a first language where possible and overtly align to religious considerations. A more integrated approach to transplantation counselling should be adopted which includes healthcare professionals and credible members of the target cultural group.

NCT04327167.

Navigating the organ donation and transplantation system in Canada can be challenging for individuals on transplant journeys. Although it is likely that the COVID-19 pandemic has further contributed to these challenges, the experiences of individuals during the pandemic in Canada have not been well elicited.

To illuminate how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted individuals on transplant journeys in Canada.

Convergent parallel mixed-methods study.

Canada.

Adult patients, caregivers, and donors on transplant journeys across Canada.

Eight focus groups and an online survey between May and November 2021. Focus group transcripts were analysed using an inductive conventional content analysis approach. Survey data were analysed using descriptive statistics. The study was guided by individuals with lived experience of organ donation and transplantation.

A total of 830 participants completed three COVID-19 related survey questions, with 21 participating in the focus groups. Survey results: over 50% of patients and caregivers reported that the pandemic impacted their access to their healthcare team, their mental health (60% and 65%, respectively) and their comfort going out in public (80% and 75%, respectively). Although many donors reported several factors that impacted their transplant journey, the impact appeared to be greater for patients and caregivers. Qualitative results: three themes emerged from the qualitative data that contextualise participant’s experiences: compounding isolation, disruption amid uncertainty and unforeseen benefits.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated many of the challenges that individuals on transplant journeys experience. It will be critical for transplant programmes to consider these factors in future care provision.

Rectal cancer is one of the top 10 cancers worldwide. Up to 80% of patients with rectal tumours have had sphincter-saving surgery, mainly due to the large expectation of anal preservation. However, patients tend to experience low anterior resection syndrome (LARS) after rectal resection, which is disordered bowel function that includes faecal incontinence, urgency, frequent defecation, constipation and evacuation difficulties. LARS, with an estimated prevalence of 41%, has been reported to substantially decrease the quality of life of patients. However, no comprehensive preventive strategies are currently available for LARS. This systematic review aims to synthesise evidence on the current LARS preventive strategies.

This protocol is reported according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Protocols (PRISMA-P) checklist. Literature in PubMed (via Medline), Embase and the Cochrane Library from inception to July 2023 will be searched to identify articles relevant to preventive effectiveness against LARS. The Cochrane Collaboration’s risk of bias tool for randomised controlled trials and the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale for clinical controlled trials, cohort studies and case–control studies will be used to assess the risk of bias. We will group the included studies by the type of LARS prevention strategy and present an overview of the main findings in the form of evidence mapping. A meta-analysis is planned if there is no substantial clinical heterogeneity between the included studies. The Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) will be used to evaluate the quality of the evidence.

Ethical approval is not needed for systematic review of published data. The findings will be published in a peer-reviewed journal and disseminated at scientific conferences.

CRD42023402886.

There is an urgent need to support primary care organisations in implementing safe and high-quality virtual consultations. We have previously performed qualitative research to capture the views of 1600 primary care physicians across 20 countries on the main benefits and challenges of using virtual consultations. Subsequently, a prototype of a framework to guide the implementation of high-quality virtual primary care was developed.

To explore general practitioners’ perspectives on the appropriateness and relevance of each component of the framework’s prototype, to further refine it and optimise its practical use in primary care facilities.

Participants will be primary care physicians with active experience providing virtual care, recruited through convenience and snowball sampling. This study will use a systematic and iterative online Delphi research approach (eDelphi), with a minimum of three rounds. A pre-round will be used to circulate items for initial feedback and adjustment. In subsequent rounds, participants will be asked to rate the relevance of the framework’s components. Consensus will be defined as >70% of participants agreeing/strongly agreeing or disagreeing/strongly disagreeing with a component. Data will be collected using structured online questionnaires. The primary outcome of the study will be a list of the essential components to be incorporated in the final version of the framework.

The study has received ethical approval conceded by the Imperial College London Science, Engineering and Technology Research Ethics Committee (SETREC) (reference no .6559176/2023). Anonymous results will be made available to the public, academic organisations and policymakers.

Recurrent miscarriage is a common condition with a substantial associated morbidity. A hypothesised cause of recurrent miscarriage is chronic endometritis (CE). The aetiology of CE remains uncertain. An association between CE and recurrent miscarriage has been shown. This study will aim to determine if preconceptual administration of doxycycline, in women with recurrent miscarriages, and CE, reduces first trimester miscarriages, increasing live births.

Chronic Endometritis and Recurrent Miscarriage is a multicentre, double-blind adaptive trial with an embedded translational substudy. Women with a history of two or more consecutive first trimester losses with evidence of CE on endometrial biopsy (defined as ≥5 CD138 positive cells per 10 mm²) will be randomised to oral doxycycline or placebo for 14 days. A subset will be recruited to a mechanistic substudy in which microbial swabs and preintervention/postintervention endometrial samples will be collected. Up to 3062 women recruited from 29 National Health Service (NHS) hospital sites across the UK are expected to be screened with up to 1500 women randomised in a 1:1 ratio. Women with a negative endometrial biopsy (defined as 2) will also be followed up to test validity of the tool. The primary outcome is live births plus pregnancies ≥24 + 0 weeks gestation at the end of the trial, in the first or subsequent pregnancy. Secondary clinical outcomes will also be assessed. Exploratory outcomes will assess the effect of doxycycline treatment on the endometrial microbiota, the differentiation capacity of the endometrium and the senescent profile of the endometrium with CE.

Ethical approval has been obtained from the NHS Research Ethics Committee Northwest-Haydock (19/NW/0462). Written informed consent will be gained from all participants. The results will be published in an open-access peer-reviewed journal and reported in the National Institute for Health and Care Research journals library.

ISRCTN23947730.

Poor sleep quality adversely affects the overall well-being and outcomes of patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). However, it has not been well studied in Africans with CKD. We determined the prevalence of poor sleep quality and associated factors among patients with CKD.

This was a cross-sectional study that involved patients with CKD .

The study was carried out in the outpatient clinic of nine hospitals in Nigeria.

Sleep quality, depressive and anxiety symptoms and quality of life (QoL) were assessed among 307 patients with CKD using Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index Questionnaire, Hospital Anxiety Depression Scale Questionnaire and 12-item Short Form Health Survey Quality of Life Questionnaire, respectively. The prevalence of poor sleep quality and associated factors were determined. A p

The mean age of the study participants was 51.40±15.17 years. The male:female ratio was 1.5:1 One hundred and twenty-one (39.4%) of the patients were on maintenance haemodialysis (MHD). The prevalence of poor sleep quality, anxiety symptoms and depressive symptoms among the patients was 50.2%, 37.8% and 17.6%, respectively. The prevalence of poor sleep quality in the CKD stages 3, 4, 5 and 5D was 38.1%, 42.6%, 52.2% and 58.7%, respectively. The prevalence of poor sleep quality was significantly higher in MHD patients compared with predialysis CKD (59.5% vs 43.6%; p=0.008). Factors associated with poor sleep quality were CKD stage (p=0.035), anaemia (p=0.003), pruritus (p=0.045), anxiety symptoms (p≤0.001), depressive symptoms (p≤0.001) and reduced QoL (p≤0.001). On multivariate analysis, factors associated with poor sleep were anxiety (AOR 2.19; 95% CI 1.27 to 3.79; p=0.005), anaemia (AOR 5.49; 95% CI 1.43 to 21.00;p=0.013) and reduced physical component of QoL (AOR 4.11; 95% CI 1.61 to 10.47; p=0.003).

Poor sleep quality is common among patients with CKD especially in the advanced stage. The significant factors associated with poor sleep quality were QoL, anaemia and anxiety symptoms. These factors should be adequately managed to improve the overall outcomes of patients with CKD.

Drug–drug interactions (DDIs) are common and can result in patient harm. Electronic health records warn clinicians about DDIs via alerts, but the clinical decision support they provide is inadequate. Little is known about clinicians’ real-world DDI decision-making process to inform more effective alerts.

Apply cognitive task analysis techniques to determine informational cues used by clinicians to manage DDIs and identify opportunities to improve alerts.

Clinicians submitted incident forms involving DDIs, which were eligible for inclusion if there was potential for serious patient harm. For selected incidents, we met with the clinician for a 60 min interview. Each interview transcript was analysed to identify decision requirements and delineate clinicians’ decision-making process. We then performed an inductive, qualitative analysis across incidents.

Inpatient and outpatient care at a major, tertiary Veterans Affairs medical centre.

Physicians, pharmacists and nurse practitioners.

Themes to identify informational cues that clinicians used to manage DDIs.

We conducted qualitative analyses of 20 incidents. Data informed a descriptive model of clinicians’ decision-making process, consisting of four main steps: (1) detect a potential DDI; (2) DDI problem-solving, sensemaking and planning; (3) prescribing decision and (4) resolving actions. Within steps (1) and (2), we identified 19 information cues that clinicians used to manage DDIs for patients. These cues informed their subsequent decisions in steps (3) and (4). Our findings inform DDI alert recommendations to improve clinicians’ decision-making efficiency, confidence and effectiveness.

Our study provides three key contributions. Our study is the first to present an illustrative model of clinicians’ real-world decision making for managing DDIs. Second, our findings add to scientific knowledge by identifying 19 cognitive cues that clinicians rely on for DDI management in clinical practice. Third, our results provide essential, foundational knowledge to inform more robust DDI clinical decision support in the future.

Disease self-management and medication therapy can cause burden to patients that can influence adherence. The conceptual model ‘patients’ lived experience with medicine’ (PLEM) brings new insights into medication-related burden (MRB) from patient perspective. This study aimed to test the applicability of the PLEM model by interviewing chronically ill patients in Finland and to investigate the MRB experienced by the Finnish patients.

Focus group discussion study conducted online via Zoom. Directed qualitative content analysis guided by the PLEM model.

Outpatient primary care in Finland.

Chronically ill outpatients (n=14) divided into five focus groups according to their chronic condition: asthma (n=3), heart disease (n=3), diabetes (n=6), intestinal disease (n=2).

Our findings were mainly in line with the PLEM model although some new contributing factors to MRB emerged. In general, the participants were satisfied with their medication, and that it enabled them to live normal lives. The most common causes of MRB were medication routines and the healthcare system. The participants introduced two new aspects contributing to MRB: medication-related environmental anxiety associated with the waste resulting from medicine use, and the effect of medication use on their working life. Our findings are consistent with previous findings that a higher level of MRB may lead to independently modifying the medication regimen or not taking the medicine.

Our findings provide further evidence that the PLEM model is an applicable tool also in the Finnish context for gaining better understanding of MRB in chronically ill patients self-managing their long-term medications. The model provides a promising tool to understand the connection between MRB and the rationale for not always taking medicines as prescribed. Further research is needed to explore the potential of the model in extending patient perspectives in chronic disease management.

Diabetes in pregnancy, whether pre-gestational (chronic) or gestational (de novo hyperglycaemia), increases the risk of adverse birth outcomes. It is unclear whether gestational diabetes increases the risk of postnatal morbidity in infants. Cree First Nations in Quebec are at high risk for diabetes in pregnancy. We assessed whether pre-gestational or gestational diabetes may increase infant hospitalisation (an infant morbidity indicator) incidence, and whether this may be related to more frequent infant hospitalisations in Cree and other First Nations in Quebec.

Population-based birth cohort study through administrative health data linkage.

Singleton infants (≤1 year) born to mothers in Cree (n=5070), other First Nations (9910) and non-Indigenous (48 200) communities in rural Quebec.

Both diabetes in pregnancy and infant hospitalisation rates were much higher comparing Cree (23.7% and 29.0%) and other First Nations (12.4% and 34.1%) to non-Indigenous (5.9% and 15.5%) communities. Compared with non-diabetes, pre-gestational diabetes was associated with an increased risk of any infant hospitalisation to a greater extent in Cree and other First Nations (relative risk (RR) 1.56 (95% CI 1.28 to 1.91)) than non-Indigenous (RR 1.26 (1.15 to 1.39)) communities. Pre-gestational diabetes was associated with increased risks of infant hospitalisation due to diseases of multiple systems in all communities. There were no significant associations between gestational diabetes and risks of infant hospitalisation in all communities. The population attributable risk fraction of infant hospitalisations (overall) for pre-gestational diabetes was 6.2% in Cree, 1.6% in other First Nations and 0.3% in non-Indigenous communities.

The study is the first to demonstrate that pre-gestational diabetes increases the risk of infant hospitalisation overall and due to diseases of multiple systems, but gestational diabetes does not. High prevalence of pre-gestational diabetes may partly account for the excess infant hospitalisations in Cree and other First Nations communities in Quebec.

The public’s accepting attitude toward people living with HIV is crucial in reducing HIV-related stigma and discrimination, increasing people’s access to HIV service. This study examines the inequalities in accepting attitudes toward people living with HIV in Ethiopia from 2005 to 2016.

This cross-sectional study was based on the 2005, 2011 and 2016 Ethiopian Demographic Health Surveys. A total of 17 075, 28 478 and 25 542 adults were included in the 2005, 2011 and 2016 surveys, respectively. Socioeconomic inequality was investigated using the concentration curve and Erreygers’ concentration index (ECI), which is scaled from –1 (pro-poor) to +1 (pro-rich). The ECI was decomposed to identify the contributors to socioeconomic inequality using generalised linear regression with the logit link function.

Accepting attitude toward people living with HIV was 17.9% (95% CI: 16.6%, 19.3%) in 2005, which increased to 33.5% (95% CI: 31.8%, 35.3%) in 2011 and 39.6% (95% CI: 37.6%, 41.9%) in 2016. ECI was 0.342 (p

The current study found that there was pro-rich inequality from 2005 to 2016. People with higher socioeconomic status had a better attitude toward people living with HIV. Comprehensive knowledge about HIV/AIDS, education status, residence, and access to electronic and paper-based media, as well as HIV testing, contribute to a better accepting attitude toward people living with HIV. It is of utmost importance for the country to enhance accepting attitude toward people living with HIV to reduce stigma and discrimination. This requires whole-system response according to the primary healthcare approach toward ending the epidemic of HIV/AIDS in the country.

To assess the association between birth weight and childhood asthma risk using data from the 2019–2020 National Survey of Children’s Health database.

Cross-sectional study.

The USA.

A representative cohort of American children.

The exposure of this study was birth weight regardless of gestational age. Birth weight was divided into three groups: 2500 g.

Primary outcomes were parent-reported diagnosis of asthma.

The Rao-Scott ² test was used to compare the groups. The main analyses examined the association between birth weight and parent-report asthma in children using univariable and multivariable logistic models adjusting for preterm birth, age, sex, race, family poverty, health insurance, smoking, maternal age. Subgroup analysis was performed based on interaction test.

A total of 60 172 children aged 3–17 years were enrolled in this study; of these, 5202 (~8.6%) had asthma. Children with asthma were more likely to be born preterm, with low birth weight (LBW) or very LBW (VLBW). The incidence of asthma was the highest in VLBW children at 20.9% and showed a downward trend with an increase in birth weight class, with rates of 10.7% and 8.1% in the LBW and normal birthweight groups, respectively. Children with VLBW (OR 1.97; 95% CI 1.29 to 3.01) had higher odds of developing asthma in the adjusted analysis model. However, VLBW was only shown to be a risk factor for asthma among Hispanics, black/African-Americans and children between the ages of 6 and 12 years, demonstrating racial and age disparities.

VLBW increases the risk of childhood asthma; however, racial and age disparities are evident.