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BACKGROUND: Digital technologies, such as wearable devices and smartphone applications (apps), can enable the decentralisation of clinical trials by measuring endpoints in people's chosen locations rather than in traditional clinical settings. Digital endpoints can allow high-frequency and sensitive measurements of health outcomes compared to visit-based endpoints which provide an episodic snapshot of a person's health. However, there are underexplored challenges in this emerging space that require interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration. A multi-stakeholder Knowledge Exchange event was organised to facilitate conversations across silos within this research ecosystem. METHODS: A survey was sent to an initial list of stakeholders to identify potential discussion topics. Additional stakeholders were identified through iterative discussions on perspectives that needed representation. Co-design meetings with attendees were held to discuss the scope, format and ethos of the event. The event itself featured a cross-disciplinary selection of talks, a panel discussion, small-group discussions facilitated via a rolling seating plan and audience participation via Slido. A transcript was generated from the day, which, together with the output from Slido, provided a record of the day's discussions. Finally, meetings were held following the event to identify the key challenges for digital endpoints which emerged and reflections and recommendations for dissemination. RESULTS: Several challenges for digital endpoints were identified in the following areas: patient adherence and acceptability; algorithms and software for devices; design, analysis and conduct of clinical trials with digital endpoints; the environmental impact of digital endpoints; and the need for ongoing ethical support. Learnings taken for next generation events include the need to include additional stakeholder perspectives, such as those of funders and regulators, and the need for additional resources and facilitation to allow patient and public contributors to engage meaningfully during the event. CONCLUSIONS: The event emphasised the importance of consortium building and highlighted the critical role that collaborative, multi-disciplinary, and cross-sector efforts play in driving innovation in research design and strategic partnership building moving forward. This necessitates enhanced recognition by funders to support multi-stakeholder projects with patient involvement, standardised terminology, and the utilisation of open-source software.
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Ensaios Clínicos como Assunto , Determinação de Ponto Final , Participação dos Interessados , Humanos , Ensaios Clínicos como Assunto/métodos , Comportamento Cooperativo , Comunicação Interdisciplinar , Aplicativos Móveis , Dispositivos Eletrônicos Vestíveis , Projetos de Pesquisa , SmartphoneRESUMO
BACKGROUND: The past decade has seen an explosion of research in causal mediation analysis. However, most analytic tools developed so far rely on frequentist methods which may not be robust in the case of small sample sizes. In this paper, we propose a Bayesian approach for causal mediation analysis based on Bayesian g-formula, which will overcome the limitations of the frequentist methods. METHODS: We created BayesGmed, an R-package for fitting Bayesian mediation models in R. The application of the methodology (and software tool) is demonstrated by a secondary analysis of data collected as part of the MUSICIAN study, a randomised controlled trial of remotely delivered cognitive behavioural therapy (tCBT) for people with chronic pain. We tested the hypothesis that the effect of tCBT would be mediated by improvements in active coping, passive coping, fear of movement and sleep problems. We then demonstrate the use of informative priors to conduct probabilistic sensitivity analysis around violations of causal identification assumptions. RESULT: The analysis of MUSICIAN data shows that tCBT has better-improved patients' self-perceived change in health status compared to treatment as usual (TAU). The adjusted log-odds of tCBT compared to TAU range from 1.491 (95% CI: 0.452-2.612) when adjusted for sleep problems to 2.264 (95% CI: 1.063-3.610) when adjusted for fear of movement. Higher scores of fear of movement (log-odds, -0.141 [95% CI: -0.245, -0.048]), passive coping (log-odds, -0.217 [95% CI: -0.351, -0.104]), and sleep problem (log-odds, -0.179 [95% CI: -0.291, -0.078]) leads to lower odds of a positive self-perceived change in health status. The result of BayesGmed, however, shows that none of the mediated effects are statistically significant. We compared BayesGmed with the mediation R- package, and the results were comparable. Finally, our sensitivity analysis using the BayesGmed tool shows that the direct and total effect of tCBT persists even for a large departure in the assumption of no unmeasured confounding. CONCLUSION: This paper comprehensively overviews causal mediation analysis and provides an open-source software package to fit Bayesian causal mediation models.
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Dor Crônica , Transtornos do Sono-Vigília , Humanos , Análise de Mediação , Teorema de Bayes , Adaptação PsicológicaRESUMO
BACKGROUND: People with rheumatic diseases experience troublesome fluctuations in fatigue. Debated causes include pain, mood and inflammation. To determine the relationships between these potential causes, serial assessments are required but are methodologically challenging. This mobile health (mHealth) study explored the viability of using a smartphone app to collect patient-reported symptoms with contemporaneous Dried Blood Spot Sampling (DBSS) for inflammation. METHODS: Over 30 days, thirty-eight participants (12 RA, 13 OA, and 13 FM) used uMotif, a smartphone app, to report fatigue, pain and mood, on 5-point ordinal scales, twice daily. Daily DBSS, from which C-reactive Protein (CRP) values were extracted, were completed on days 1-7, 14 and 30. Participant engagement was determined based on frequency of data entry and ability to calculate within- and between-day symptom changes. DBSS feasibility and engagement was determined based on the proportion of samples returned and usable for extraction, and the number of days between which between-day changes in CRP which could be calculated (days 1-7). RESULTS: Fatigue was reported at least once on 1085/1140 days (95.2%). Approximately 65% of within- and between-day fatigue changes could be calculated. Rates were similar for pain and mood. A total of 287/342 (83.9%) DBSS, were returned, and all samples were viable for CRP extraction. Fatigue, pain and mood varied considerably, but clinically meaningful (≥ 5 mg/L) CRP changes were uncommon. CONCLUSIONS: Embedding DBSS in mHealth studies will enable researchers to obtain serial symptom assessments with matched biological samples. This provides exciting opportunities to address hitherto unanswerable questions, such as elucidating the mechanisms of fatigue fluctuations.
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Dados de Saúde Gerados pelo Paciente , Doenças Reumáticas , Biomarcadores , Avaliação Momentânea Ecológica , Fadiga/diagnóstico , Fadiga/etiologia , Estudos de Viabilidade , Humanos , Inflamação/complicações , Dor/etiologia , Doenças Reumáticas/complicações , Doenças Reumáticas/diagnósticoRESUMO
INTRODUCTION: Previous studies on the association between weather and pain severity among patients with chronic pain have produced mixed results. In part, this inconsistency may be due to differences in individual pain responses to the weather. METHODS: To test the hypothesis that there might be subgroups of participants with different pain responses to different weather conditions, we examined data from a longitudinal smartphone-based study, Cloudy with a Chance of Pain, conducted between January 2016 and April 2017. The study recruited more than 13,000 participants and recorded daily pain severity on a 5-point scale (range: no pain to very severe pain) along with hourly local weather data for up to 15 months. We used a Bayesian multilevel model to examine the weather-pain association. RESULTS: We found 1 in 10 patients with chronic pain were sensitive to the temperature, 1 in 25 to relative humidity, 1 in 50 to pressure, and 3 in 100 to wind speed, after adjusting for age, sex, belief in the weather-pain association, mood, and activity level. The direction of the weather-pain association differed between people. Although participants seem to be differentially sensitive to weather conditions, there is no definite indication that participants' underlying pain conditions play a role in weather sensitivity. CONCLUSION: This study demonstrated that weather sensitivity among patients with chronic pain is more apparent in some subgroups of participants. In addition, among those sensitive to the weather, the direction of the weather-pain association can differ.
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BACKGROUND: Smartphone location data can be used for observational health studies (to determine participant exposure or behavior) or to deliver a location-based health intervention. However, missing location data are more common when using smartphones compared to when using research-grade location trackers. Missing location data can affect study validity and intervention safety. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to investigate the distribution of missing location data and its predictors to inform design, analysis, and interpretation of future smartphone (observational and interventional) studies. METHODS: We analyzed hourly smartphone location data collected from 9665 research participants on 488,400 participant days in a national smartphone study investigating the association between weather conditions and chronic pain in the United Kingdom. We used a generalized mixed-effects linear model with logistic regression to identify whether a successfully recorded geolocation was associated with the time of day, participants' time in study, operating system, time since previous survey completion, participant age, sex, and weather sensitivity. RESULTS: For most participants, the app collected a median of 2 out of a maximum of 24 locations (1760/9665, 18.2% of participants), no location data (1664/9665, 17.2%), or complete location data (1575/9665, 16.3%). The median locations per day differed by the operating system: participants with an Android phone most often had complete data (a median of 24/24 locations) whereas iPhone users most often had a median of 2 out of 24 locations. The odds of a successfully recorded location for Android phones were 22.91 times higher than those for iPhones (95% CI 19.53-26.87). The odds of a successfully recorded location were lower during weekends (odds ratio [OR] 0.94, 95% CI 0.94-0.95) and nights (OR 0.37, 95% CI 0.37-0.38), if time in study was longer (OR 0.99 per additional day in study, 95% CI 0.99-1.00), and if a participant had not used the app recently (OR 0.96 per additional day since last survey entry, 95% CI 0.96-0.96). Participant age and sex did not predict missing location data. CONCLUSIONS: The predictors of missing location data reported in our study could inform app settings and user instructions for future smartphone (observational and interventional) studies. These predictors have implications for analysis methods to deal with missing location data, such as imputation of missing values or case-only analysis. Health studies using smartphones for data collection should assess context-specific consequences of high missing data, especially among iPhone users, during the night and for disengaged participants.
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Aplicativos Móveis , Smartphone , Humanos , Modelos Logísticos , Razão de Chances , Inquéritos e QuestionáriosRESUMO
OBJECTIVES: Patients with RA are frequently treated with glucocorticoids (GCs), but evidence is conflicting about whether GCs are associated with hypertension. The aim of this study was to determine whether GCs are associated with incident hypertension in patients with RA. METHODS: A retrospective cohort of patients with incident RA and without hypertension was identified from UK primary care electronic medical records (Clinical Practice Research Datalink). GC prescriptions were used to determine time-varying GC use, dose and cumulative dose, with a 3 month attribution window. Hypertension was identified through either: blood pressure measurements >140/90 mmHg, or antihypertensive prescriptions and a Read code for hypertension. Unadjusted and adjusted Cox proportional hazards regression models were fitted to determine whether there was an association between GC use and incident hypertension. RESULTS: There were 17 760 patients in the cohort. A total of 7421 (42%) were prescribed GCs during follow-up. The incident rate of hypertension was 64.1 per 1000 person years (95% CI: 62.5, 65.7). The Cox proportional hazards model indicated that recent GC use was associated with a 17% increased hazard of hypertension (hazard ratio 1.17; 95% CI: 1.10, 1.24). When categorized by dose, only doses above 7.5 mg were significantly associated with hypertension. Cumulative dose did not indicate a clear pattern. CONCLUSION: Recent GC use was associated with incident hypertension in patients with RA, in particular doses ≥7.5 mg were associated with hypertension. Clinicians need to consider cardiovascular risk when prescribing GCs, and ensure blood pressure is regularly monitored and treated where necessary.
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Anti-Hipertensivos/uso terapêutico , Artrite Reumatoide/tratamento farmacológico , Glucocorticoides/efeitos adversos , Hipertensão/induzido quimicamente , Viés , Determinação da Pressão Arterial , Feminino , Glucocorticoides/administração & dosagem , Humanos , Hipertensão/tratamento farmacológico , Hipertensão/epidemiologia , Incidência , Masculino , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Modelos de Riscos Proporcionais , Estudos Retrospectivos , Reino Unido/epidemiologiaRESUMO
Patients with chronic pain commonly believe their pain is related to the weather. Scientific evidence to support their beliefs is inconclusive, in part due to difficulties in getting a large dataset of patients frequently recording their pain symptoms during a variety of weather conditions. Smartphones allow the opportunity to collect data to overcome these difficulties. Our study Cloudy with a Chance of Pain analysed daily data from 2658 patients collected over a 15-month period. The analysis demonstrated significant yet modest relationships between pain and relative humidity, pressure and wind speed, with correlations remaining even when accounting for mood and physical activity. This research highlights how citizen-science experiments can collect large datasets on real-world populations to address long-standing health questions. These results will act as a starting point for a future system for patients to better manage their health through pain forecasts.