Contemporary clinical trials
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Contemp Clin Trials · Mar 2013
Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter StudyStepped Care to Optimize Pain care Effectiveness (SCOPE) trial study design and sample characteristics.
Pain is the most common physical symptom in primary care, accounting for an enormous burden in terms of patient suffering, quality of life, work and social disability, and health care and societal costs. Although collaborative care interventions are well-established for conditions such as depression, fewer systems-based interventions have been tested for chronic pain. This paper describes the study design and baseline characteristics of the enrolled sample for the Stepped Care to Optimize Pain care Effectiveness (SCOPE) study, a randomized clinical effectiveness trial conducted in five primary care clinics. ⋯ All subjects undergo comprehensive outcome assessments at baseline, 1, 3, 6 and 12 months by interviewers blinded to treatment group. The primary outcome is pain severity/disability, and secondary outcomes include pain beliefs and behaviors, psychological functioning, health-related quality of life and treatment satisfaction. Innovations of SCOPE include optimized analgesic management (including a stepped care approach, opioid risk stratification, and criteria-based medication adjustment), automated monitoring, and centralized care management that can cover multiple primary care practices.
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Contemp Clin Trials · Mar 2013
Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter StudyCocaine use reduction with buprenorphine (CURB): rationale, design, and methodology.
Effective medications to treat cocaine dependence have not been identified. Recent pharmacotherapy trials demonstrate the potential efficacy of buprenorphine (BUP) (alone or with naltrexone) for reducing cocaine use. The National Institute on Drug Abuse Clinical Trials Network (CTN) launched the Cocaine Use Reduction with Buprenorphine (CURB) investigation to examine the safety and efficacy of sublingual BUP (as Suboxone®) in the presence of extended-release injectable naltrexone (XR-NTX, as Vivitrol®) for the treatment of cocaine dependence. This paper describes the design and rationale for this study. ⋯ This research using 2 medications will demonstrate whether BUP, administered in the presence of XR-NTX, reduces cocaine use in adults with cocaine dependence and opioid use disorders and will demonstrate if XR-NTX prevents development of physiologic dependence on BUP.
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Contemp Clin Trials · Mar 2013
Sponsorship and design characteristics of trials registered in ClinicalTrials.gov.
We examine the extent to which ClinicalTrials.gov is meeting its goal of providing oversight and transparency of clinical trials with human subjects. We analyzed the ClinicalTrials.gov database contents as of June 2011, comparing interventions, medical conditions, and trial characteristics by sponsor type. We also conducted a detailed analysis of incomplete data. ⋯ Industry-sponsored studies differ systematically from government-sponsored studies in study type, choice of interventions, conditions studied, and completeness of submitted information. Imprecise study design information, incomplete coding of conditions, out-of-date or unspecified enrollment numbers, and other missing data continue to hinder robust analyses of trials registered in ClinicalTrials.gov.