Cochrane Library Podcasts

Cochrane Reviews cover a wide range of treatments across health and social care, and also look at ways to prevent health problems, sometimes with interventions that we might not think of as medicines or medical. In March 2015, the Cochrane Oral Health Group published one such review, looking at whether the use of the sweetener, xylitol, might prevent tooth decay. Philip Riley and Deborah Moore, from the Group based in Manchester in the UK, tell us more.

Anaemia is very common among patients with moderate or severe chronic kidney disease; and several treatments are available including iron supplementation, blood transfusions and synthetic derivatives of erythropoietin. In a Cochrane Review published in December 2014, Suetonia Palmer from Christchurch in New Zealand together with her colleagues, brought together the studies that have tested a range of erythropoietin drugs and she tells us what they found in this Evidence Pod.

The Cochrane Menstrual Disorders and Subfertlity Group has produced many reviews of the effects of assisted reproductive techniques, including a December 2014 overview of reviews. In this Evidence Pod, Carolina Nastri from the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil describes the findings of an updated review, from March 2015, exploring the effects of a technique known as endometrial injury.

Smoking remains one of the world’s major public health challenges and the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group continues to provide new and updated evidence on interventions that might help smokers to quit. Kate Cahill, from the University of Oxford in the UK, tells us about the May 2015 update of their review on the effects of incentives.

Cochrane Reviews examine the evidence for a wide variety of interventions, with the aim of helping people to make well-informed choices about therapies. In a new review from February 2015, Bonnie Meekums from the University of Leeds in the UK, and colleagues have looked at dance movement therapy for depression. Bonnie tells us more about the need for the review and what they found.

Strange as it might seem at first, trials can help people who volunteer to take part but then don’t actually join the study. Helen McNaught from Cambridge in England tells us her story, and how it changed her life.

Successful trials require input from a wide range of people, beyond those who designed and are running the research. Patients and their practitioners are key and, in some cases, the parents or the carers of the patient might also be vital to helping the trial to change lives. Heather Bagley from Manchester, whose son has autism tells us their story.

One of the major challenges facing researchers doing trials is maintaining the momentum for recruitment. Valerie Smith a research midwife from the Health Research Board’s Trial Methodology Research Network in Ireland, tells us about one of her strategies, based on the power of tea.

The organisation of clinical trials is a challenge in its own right and a variety of types of research can help find the most appropriate ways to ensure that trials succeed. In this Evidence Pod, Helen McAneney, a Lecturer in Research Methodology in the Northern Ireland Network for Trials Methodology Research, in Queen’s University Belfast describes how network analysis might help.

If trials are to change lives, their findings need to focus on the outcomes that really matter to people making decisions about health and social care. One of the ways to do this is through the use of core outcome sets that should be used across all trials in a particular area of health. The COMET Initiative is helping to support this, and Liz Gargon from the University of Liverpool in the UK updates us on their work.