Comparative effectiveness research (CER), or research design to meet the needs of post-regulatory decision makers, has been brought into the spotlight with the introduction of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which provided $US1.1 billion over 2 years to support CER. In the short run,...

As healthcare reform evolves and takes shape, comparative effectiveness research (CER) appears to be one of the central topics on the national healthcare agenda. Over the past couple of years, comparative effectiveness has been explicitly incorporated in more than ten bills. For example, the...

Background: Chronic osteoarthritis (OA) pain impacts health-related quality of life (HR-QOL). Objective: The primary aim of this study was to evaluate and compare HR-QOL outcomes following treatment with once-daily push-pull Osmotic controlled-Release Oral delivery System (OROS) hydromorphone...

This article examines the history of social work research within the UK from a perspective of evidence‐based practice, as originally advocated in the 1990s. It reviews the progress made to date in relation to the use of experimental studies in the field of children and families, and the...

Background: Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and serotonin-noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) are approved for the treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD). The allosteric SSRI escitalopram has been shown to be at least as clinically effective as the SNRIs venlafaxine...

Random allocation is an important feature of experiments designed to assess the effects of interventions: it ensures that, in respect of measured and unmeasured factors of prognostic importance, the comparison groups generated will differ only by chance. It has been asserted that random...

Background: A validated productivity questionnaire, the Work Productivity and Activity Impairment questionnaire for Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (WPAI-GERD), exists for Swedish patients with GERD. Objective: To assess responsiveness to change of the WPAI-GERD and construct validity of the...

Background: Coronary heart disease (CHD) is the most common cause of death in the UK. CHD cost the UK National Health Service (NHS) Lstg 3.5 billion in 2003. The economic impact of community pharmacists providing a medicines management service for patients with CHD has not been rigorously...

Rationale: Roflumilast is an oral, once-daily phosphodiesterase IV (PDE4) inhibitor under investigation for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This study investigated the cost effectiveness of roflumilast in patients with severe to very severe COPD from the perspective of the UK...