Monday, May 21, 2018

Protection of Gut Microbiome from Antibiotics

While antibiotics are essential for treatment of bacterial infection, an increasingly recognized adverse effect of antibiotic use is alteration in gut microbiome. The altered gut microbiome can result in several acute and long-term unhealthy effects. This small clinical trial tests the use of an adsorbent to to mitigate the effects of antibiotics on gut microbiome. Investigators found, using the shotgun quantitative metagenomics, that the richness and composition of the intestinal microbiota were largely preserved in subjects using antibiotics when co-treated with DAV132 (the adsorbent used in this study). This is an important study, and if the adsorbent is effective without compromising the antibiotic availability in blood, may be extremely useful in clinical medicine. 

Sunday, May 20, 2018

Geographic Latitude, Blood Pressure, and Serum Cholesterol

This is a provocative study pointing out the association of geographic latitude with serum cholesterol levels. Obviously such studies, at country level, are fraught with biases including ecological fallacy. However, the underlying etiology of the observed differences need to be explored further.

Saturday, May 19, 2018

Designing a RCT and Network Meta-analysis

A review of literature with possible meta-analysis of available data is often recommended before a randomized clinical trial (RCT) can be proposed. This article goes a step further and suggests using network meta-analysis for planning and designing a RCT. Authors emphasize that a trial design based on updating the evidence from a network meta-analysis of relevant previous trials may require a considerably smaller sample size to reach the same conclusion compared with a trial designed and analyzed in isolation.