Cochrane Db Syst Rev
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Cochrane Db Syst Rev · Mar 2019
Meta AnalysisCognitive training for people with mild to moderate dementia.
Cognitive impairment, a defining feature of dementia, plays an important role in the compromised functional independence that characterises the condition. Cognitive training (CT) is an approach that uses guided practice on structured tasks with the direct aim of improving or maintaining cognitive abilities. ⋯ Relative to a control intervention, but not to a variety of alternative treatments, CT is probably associated with small to moderate positive effects on global cognition and verbal semantic fluency at end of treatment, and these benefits appear to be maintained in the medium term. Our certainty in relation to many of these findings is low or very low. Future studies should take stronger measures to mitigate well-established risks of bias, and should provide long-term follow-up to improve our understanding of the extent to which observed gains are retained. Future trials should also focus on direct comparison of CT versus alternative treatments rather than passive or active control conditions.
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Cochrane Db Syst Rev · Mar 2019
Meta AnalysisVaccines for preventing rotavirus diarrhoea: vaccines in use.
Rotavirus results in more diarrhoea-related deaths in children under five years than any other single agent in countries with high childhood mortality. It is also a common cause of diarrhoea-related hospital admissions in countries with low childhood mortality. Rotavirus vaccines that have been prequalified by the World Health Organization (WHO) include a monovalent vaccine (RV1; Rotarix, GlaxoSmithKline), a pentavalent vaccine (RV5; RotaTeq, Merck), and, more recently, another monovalent vaccine (Rotavac, Bharat Biotech). ⋯ RV1, RV5, and Rotavac prevent episodes of rotavirus diarrhoea. Whilst the relative effect estimate is smaller in high-mortality than in low-mortality countries, there is a greater number of episodes prevented in these settings as the baseline risk is much higher. We found no increased risk of serious adverse events.
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Cochrane Db Syst Rev · Mar 2019
Laparoscopy for diagnosing resectability of disease in women with advanced ovarian cancer.
This is an update of a Cochrane Review that was originally published in 2014, Issue 2.The presence of residual disease after primary debulking surgery is a highly significant prognostic factor in women with advanced ovarian cancer. In up to 60% of women, residual tumour of > 1 cm is left behind after primary debulking surgery (defined as suboptimal debulking). These women might have benefited from neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) prior to interval debulking surgery instead of primary debulking surgery followed by chemotherapy. It is therefore important to select accurately those women who would best be treated with primary debulking surgery followed by chemotherapy from those who would benefit from NACT prior to surgery. ⋯ Laparoscopy may be a useful tool to identify those women who have unresectable disease, as no women were inappropriately unexplored. However, some women had suboptimal primary debulking surgery, despite laparoscopy predicting optimal debulking and data are at high risk of verification bias as only two studies performed the reference standard (debulking laparotomy) in test (laparoscopy)-positive women. Using a prediction model does not increase the sensitivity and will result in more unnecessarily explored women, due to a lower specificity.
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Memantine is a moderate affinity uncompetitive antagonist of glutamate NMDA receptors. It is licensed for use in moderate and severe Alzheimer's disease (AD); in the USA, it is also widely used off-label for mild AD. ⋯ We found important differences in the efficacy of memantine in mild AD compared to that in moderate-to-severe AD. There is a small clinical benefit of memantine in people with moderate-to-severe AD, which occurs irrespective of whether they are also taking a ChEI, but no benefit in people with mild AD.Clinical heterogeneity in AD makes it unlikely that any single drug will have a large effect size, and means that the optimal drug treatment may involve multiple drugs, each having an effect size that may be less than the minimum clinically important difference.A definitive long-duration trial in mild AD is needed to establish whether starting memantine earlier would be beneficial over the long term and safe: at present the evidence is against this, despite it being common practice. A long-duration trial in moderate-to-severe AD is needed to establish whether the benefit persists beyond six months.
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Linezolid was recently re-classified as a Group A drug by the World Health Organization (WHO) for treatment of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB), suggesting that it should be included in the regimen for all patients unless contraindicated. Linezolid use carries a considerable risk of toxicity, with the optimal dose and duration remaining unclear. Current guidelines are mainly based on evidence from observational non-comparative studies. ⋯ We found some evidence of efficacy of linezolid for drug-resistant pulmonary tuberculosis from RCTs in participants with XDR-TB but adverse events and discontinuation of linezolid were common. Overall, there is a lack of comparative data on efficacy and safety. Serious risk of bias and heterogeneity in conducting and reporting non-randomized studies makes the existing, mostly retrospective, data difficult to interpret. Further prospective cohort studies or RCTs in high tuberculosis burden low-income and lower-middle-income countries would be useful to inform policymakers and clinicians of the efficacy and safety of linezolid as a component of drug-resistant TB treatment regimens.