To explore the challenges experienced by people with intellectual disability, their carers and health and social care professionals when using and managing medication.

A synthesis of qualitative research using meta-ethnography.

We searched seven databases: MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, Science, Social Science and Conference Proceedings Citation Indices (Web of Science), Cochrane Library, PsycINFO and Proquest Dissertations and Theses from inception to September 2022 (updated in July 2023).

We included studies exploring the challenges and perceptions of people with intellectual disability, their carers and health and social care professionals regarding medication management and use.

We reviewed 7593 abstracts and 475 full texts, resulting in 45 included papers. Four major themes were identified: (1) Medication-related issues, (2) navigating autonomy and relationships, (3) knowledge and training needs and (4) inequalities in the healthcare system. We formulated a conceptual framework centred around people with intellectual disability and described the interconnectedness between them, their carers and health and social care professionals in the process of managing and using medication. We identified challenges that could be associated with the person, the medication and/or the context, along with a lack of understanding of these challenges and a lack of capability or resources to tackle them. We developed an overarching concept of ‘collective collaboration’ as a potential solution to prevent or mitigate problems related to medication use in people with intellectual disability.

The effective management of medication for people with intellectual disability requires a collaborative and holistic approach. By fostering person-centred care and shared decision-making, providing educational and practical support, and nurturing strong relationships between all partners involved to form a collective collaboration surrounding people with intellectual disability, improved medication adherence and optimised therapeutic outcomes can be achieved.

CRD42022362903.

The use of e-health interventions has grown in demand due to their accessibility, low implementation costs and their potential to improve the health and well-being of people across a large geographical area. Despite these potential benefits, little is known about the cost-effectiveness of self-guided e-health interventions. The aim of the study was to compare the cost and consequences of ‘iSupport’, an e-health intervention to reduce mental health issues in dementia carers.

A cost-consequence analysis (CCA) of a multi-centre, single-blind randomised controlled trial of iSupport. The CCA was conducted from a public sector (National Health Service, social care and local authority) perspective plus a wider societal perspective. Delivery costs of iSupport were collected using a bottom-up micro-costing approach.

352 participants were recruited from three centres in England, Wales and Scotland.

Participants eligible for inclusion were adults over the age of 18 years who self-identified as an unpaid carer with at least 6 months of experience caring for an individual with a diagnosis of dementia. Between 12 November 2021 and 31 March 2023, 2332 carers were invited to take part in the study. 352 participants were randomised: 175 randomised to the iSupport intervention group and 177 to the usual care control group. The mean age of participants in the intervention and control groups was 63 and 62, respectively.

The CCA presented the disaggregated costs and health-related quality of life measured using the EuroQol five-dimension.

There was no significant difference in generic health-related quality of life measured using the EQ-5D-5L (p=0.67). Both groups reported higher mean costs between baseline and 6 months, but the change in costs was significantly lower in the intervention group. Between baseline and 6 months, the mean change in total resource use costs from the public sector perspective was significantly different between groups (p=0.003, r=–0.161) reporting a mean change per participant of £146 (95% CI: –33 to 342) between the intervention and control groups. From the wider societal perspective, there was no significant difference (p=0.23) in the mean change in total resource use and informal care costs between the two groups from baseline to 6 months.

Use of iSupport was associated with reduced health and social care resource use costs for carers compared with care-as-usual. Self-guided e-health interventions for dementia carers may have the potential to reduce health and social care resource use and wider societal costs, but evidence relating to their effectiveness and cost-effectiveness is lacking.

ISRCTN17420703.

Sustaining declines in global infectious disease burden will increasingly require efforts targeted to specific aetiological agents and common transmission pathways, particularly in this era of global change and human interconnectivity accelerating transmission and emergence of infectious pathogens. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses can be an effective and resource-efficient method for synthesising evidence regarding disease epidemiology for a wide range of pathogens and are the evidence source used by initiatives like the Planetary Child Health and Enterics Observatory (Plan-EO) and the WHO to determine the aetiology-specific epidemiology of diarrhoeal disease. Therefore, we developed this integrated systematic review methodology and protocol that aims to compile a database of published prevalence estimates for 17 diarrhoea-causing pathogens as inputs for disease burden estimation.

We will seek estimates of the prevalence of each endemic enteric pathogen estimated from published population-based studies that diagnosed their presence in stool samples from both asymptomatic subjects and those experiencing diarrhoea. The pathogens include the enteric viruses adenovirus, astrovirus, norovirus, rotavirus and sapovirus, the bacteria Campylobacter, Shigella, Salmonella enterica, Vibrio cholerae and the Escherichia coli (E. coli) pathotypes enteroaggregative E. coli, enteropathogenic E. coli, enterotoxigenic E. coli and Shiga-toxin-producing E. coli and the intestinal protozoa Cryptosporidium, Cyclospora, Entamoeba histolytica and Giardia. Meta-analytical methods for analyses of the resulting database (including risk of bias analysis) will be published alongside their findings.

This systematic review is exempt from ethics approval because the work is carried out on published documents. The database that results from this review will be made available as a supplementary file of the resulting published manuscript. It will also be made available for download from the Plan-EO website, where updated versions will be posted on a quarterly basis.

CRD42023427998.