Diabetes Clinical Trials in United Kingdom

Type 1 and Type 2 are the most common types of diabetes mellitus. Although the cause of Type 1 is different to Type 2, they can both lead to high blood glucose levels as the patient is unable to store and use sugar. The disease is an epidemic of the 21st century which is increasing, having a current prevalence of approximately 8%. Poor disease control is associated with a range of long-term health conditions which have a severe impact upon quality of life and are responsible for the increased morbidity and mortality associated with the disease. Healthcare professionals use HbA1c as the main marker to monitor diabetic control. Patients with diabetes have regular review appointments to monitor their overall health and discuss their HbA1c target and results. The purpose of monitoring patients with diabetes is to improve patient outcomes. It is known that poor control is associated with poor clinical outcomes and also that reduced monitoring is linked to suboptimal diabetic control. Therefore, aiming for the correct monitoring frequency helps towards achieving the best control which can lead to the most favourable clinical outcomes. The inconvenience of attending for a blood test and follow-up appointment is a major factor affecting patient adherence to monitoring, locally approximately 50% of patients with diabetes have their HbA1c level measured either too soon or too late. To address this issue and improve access to monitoring at the correct time interval we aim to produce a HbA1c home testing kit which can be posted back to the laboratory at the convenience of the patient. The kit will be developed based on feedback from patients with diabetes and will use a dried blood spot sample to produce HbA1c results comparable to the whole blood standard method. Read Less

The PREDICT 3 study will build on previous research in over 2,000 individuals to further refine machine learning models that predict individual responses to foods, with the aim of advancing precision nutrition science and individualized dietary advice. The study incorporates both standardized and controlled dietary intervention, for the purpose of testing postprandial responses to specific mixed meals, in addition to a free-living period with a dietary record for measuring responses to a large variety of meals consumed in a realistic context, where the role of external factors (e.g. exercise, sleep, time of day) on postprandial responses may be determined. For the first time this PREDICT study is built on top of a commercial product which will allow access to a much larger group of participants who are already collecting large amounts of data through digital and biochemical devices that can contribute to science. Read Less

To evaluate the therapeutic efficacy and metabolic impact of a low energy diet (LED) in people with familial partial lipodystrophy and diabetes. Participants will be provided with a LED (total diet replacement) for 12 weeks, before the introduction of a stepped food transition. Metabolic effects will continue to be assessed for 1 year. In order to better understand why this intervention changes insulin sensitivity, we will also collect adipose and muscle tissue samples at baseline and 12 weeks into the intervention in participants willing to have these procedures performed. These samples will be used for histological, metabolite, gene expression and protein expression analyses. Read Less

National Health Service (NHS) England has commissioned The Royal Marsden Hospital NHS Foundation Trust to run a novel mobile clinical outreach service called 'Man Van' with the aim of enabling male patients' easy access to care at the site of their work and in their communities. The initial focus of this new standard of care clinic is to access workplaces with large manual workforces where large scale working from home is not possible. These will include logistics firms and bus companies. These companies employ large numbers of black and minority ethnic men who also have poorer outcomes with a range of other diseases, including Coronavirus disease (COVID)-19. The novel clinical service will collaborate with Unite (and other unions) as well as employers in order to reach our target groups effectively. There is also the opportunity to target higher risk groups e.g. Afro Caribbean communities whose rates of prostate cancer are 1 in 41 as well as occupational higher risk categories. The Man Van has the potential to swing the balance of evidence in favour of Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) screening, with a targeted screening program directed at high-risk groups including ethnic minorities and manual workers. Reasons for poorer outcomes amongst these groups are multi-factorial and complex. Levels of education are often a factor which can impact the understanding of the disease and how to seek assistance. Distrust of medical organisations has also been cited as a factor. The aim of the Man Van mobile outreach service is to enable men access to a specific men's health service - focusing on general health and wellbeing (including BMI assessment, blood pressure, blood sugar/diabetes checks etc) and a prostate check for those who raise concerns. This will include a PSA test where relevant. This will be the core data gathered from the project. Patients will receive PSA results in the 'Man Van' by a clinical nurse specialist with patients with raised PSA levels being referred into the standard rapid referral cancer pathways. Similar considerations will apply to men with haematuria detected on dip stick testing or who present with a testicular mass or penile lesion (both rare but important). The clinical data generated from each routine health screening appointment will be analysed to determine the effectiveness of the Man Van mobile outreach model in identifying prostate and other male cancers and other co-morbidities much earlier than if patients had waited to present to their General Practitioner (GP) or other healthcare provider. Patients who receive an early diagnosis of clinically significant prostate cancer will have access to early curative treatments, which are typically less invasive and shorter in timescales. Similar interventions have shown large scale success in particular with breast and cervical cancer. The NHS sees many patients accessing cancer care at a late stage. Reducing this trend is a key objective of the NHS Long Term Plan. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated health inequalities and mobile clinics can potentially be a model for alleviating this. To enable patients access to medical treatment earlier there is a need to make the 'seeking advice on men's health and prostate issues' less daunting, more normal and easily accessible. The 'Man Van' has the ability to do just that and it is anticipated that the findings of this research, using the data generated from each patient's routine health screening, will demonstrate that a mobile outreach model is more effective in identifying cancers at an earlier stage than 'traditional' diagnostic pathways. We also hope to evaluate the Man Van with a qualitative study looking at the patient perspectives from those who utilise the Man Van. The reasons for high risk in prostate cancer are heavily linked to genetics. This is an issue as there is less recruitment of high risk groups to studies. We hope to gather genetic data from a higher proportion of genetically susceptible men via the Man Van, which can be used in future to further genetic knowledge of prostate cancer. Read Less

Women who experience placental complications (syndromes) during pregnancy, such as pre-eclampsia (high blood pressure and kidney problems), gestational hypertension (high blood pressure during pregnancy) and fetal growth restriction (baby being small) have twice the risk of developing heart disease and diabetes later in life, compared to women who have a healthy pregnancy. This study aims to assess risk factors for heart disease and diabetes in women who are actively trying to conceive, before and during their pregnancy, and 9-12 months after delivery of their baby, to see whether placental syndromes make a difference to their heart health. This will allow us to understand, if, and how, placental syndromes increase the risk of heart disease and diabetes, and, therefore, how best to reduce this risk and potentially prevent placental syndromes in the future. The investigators will also recruit women who are NOT planning pregnancy, as a control group. Read Less

There is an epidemic of type 2 diabetes in younger adults. These patients are at very high lifetime risk of heart-related complications. Subtle heart abnormalities can be present even at a young age in these patients and may predispose them to heart failure and ultimately premature death. There is emerging evidence that type 2 diabetes can be reversed with weight loss. We propose that weight loss can also reverse the fatty changes seen in the liver and heart in these patients, and in turn lead to improved heart function. This project aims to identify how type 2 diabetes causes changes in the heart in young people with type 2 diabetes by performing detailed scans and other tests of the heart's structure and function. In addition we will attempt to see if the heart's pumping function can be improved, either by a weight loss program with a special low calorie diet, or by a structured program of exercise. This will be compared with the usual standard diabetes care. As well as looking to see if the heart's function can be improved with the intervention, we also aim to identify what the mechanism of any improvement would be. We suspect that changes in the amount of fat within the liver and the heart may be responsible, and will measure these at the beginning, end and in some patients halfway through the study to explore possible mechanisms amongst other clinical variables (e.g. HbA1c) Read Less

Psychological distress (anxiety and depression) is common in and experienced differently by people living with long-term health conditions (LTCs). Being able to measure whether psychological distress is related to living with a LTC would allow researchers and clinicians to provide interventions specifically tailored to the challenges of living with a LTC and therefore provide the most appropriate support for these patients. Such a measure would also be useful in research to identify the presence of illness-related distress in different patient groups. This project will therefore create a new measure of illness-related distress that has applications for both research and clinical practice. This will involve the psychometric validation of the new illness-related distress measure to test how valid and reliable the measure is. The aim of the project is to provide initial validation of the Illness Related Distress Scale in a community sample, recruited through online platforms. The objective of the study is to gather initial validity and reliability data for the scale. Read Less