Parkinson’s disease is a neurological disease with a rising incidence and prevalence. Patients with Parkinson’s disease may receive antipsychotics, for example, due to Parkinson’s disease psychosis. Parkinson’s disease psychosis is characterised by visual hallucinations and other psychotic symptoms. To date, no systematic review has evaluated the effects of antipsychotics in patients with Parkinson’s disease. Therefore, this review aims to assess the beneficial and harmful effects of antipsychotics for Parkinson’s disease.
This is a protocol for a systematic review. A search specialist will perform a search in major medical databases (eg, MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online), EMBASE (Excerpta Medica database), CENTRAL (Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials)) and clinical trial registries. Published and unpublished randomised clinical trials comparing antipsychotics to any control (placebo, standard care or other antipsychotics) in patients with Parkinson’s disease will be included. Two review authors will independently extract data and conduct risk of bias assessments with the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool—V.2. Primary outcomes will be all-cause mortality, serious adverse events and significant falls. Secondary outcomes will be hospitalisations, non-serious adverse events, Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale total score and psychotic symptoms using any valid symptom scale. Data will be synthesised by aggregate meta-analysis, trial sequential analysis and network meta-analysis. Several subgroup analyses are planned. An eight-step procedure will be used to assess if the thresholds for clinical significance are crossed, and the certainty of the evidence will be assessed by GRADE (Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluations) and CiNeMA (Confidence in Network Meta-Analysis) approach.
This protocol does not include results, and ethics approval is not required for the project. The findings from the systematic review will be published in international peer-reviewed scientific journals.
PROSPERO ID: CRD42025633985. Available from https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/view/CRD42025633985.
Hospitalisation is one of the most stressful life events for older adults, particularly for those who are pre-frail or frail. Multi-component community-based interventions have the potential to address the complex needs of older adults post-acute care admission. While some available interventions have been developed with end-user engagement, fully involving older people who are pre-frail or frail in the design of interventions has been less common. Multi-component community-based interventions that address the needs of older adults and their care partners with potential implementation barriers informed by healthcare providers, community partners and health system decision makers are needed. This protocol paper describes the planned process of co-designing for older patients discharged into the community, a Post-Acute Care Intervention for Frailty using Information and Communication technology.
The development of a complex multi-component frailty intervention which meets older people’s needs involves several concurrent tasks and methodologies, each informed by co-design and conducted with consideration to eventual implementation. These tasks include: (1) establishing a Research Advisory Board, (2) assessing the feasibility and validity of using hospital administrative data to identify frail or pre-frail older adults and their needs, (3) conducting a needs assessment of patients returning to the community, (4) mapping community assets to identify existing programmes and services to help tailor the intervention, (5) co-designing a multicomponent frailty intervention, (6) selecting study outcome measures and (7) selecting and tailoring a digital health patient portal to support intervention delivery, data capture and communication.
Each task requiring ethics approval will be submitted to the Hamilton Integrated Research Ethics Board at McMaster University. Results will be disseminated through peer-reviewed journal articles, conferences and networks of relevant knowledge users who have the capacity to promote dissemination of the results. A toolkit will be developed to help researchers and healthcare providers replicate the methodology for other populations.
Understanding patient perspectives on asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is limited, with no prior studies employing such a large-scale, proactive survey to systematically target individuals with a confirmed prescription for inhalation medication. This study aims to explore how patients with asthma or COPD manage their lives, including treatment experiences, symptoms and impacts on daily life.
A nationwide survey will be launched in January 2025, targeting adults (≥18 years) in Denmark diagnosed with asthma or COPD and prescribed or dispensed inhalation medication between 1 October 2023 and 30 September 2024. Data from the Danish Health Data Authority’s Register of Medicinal Product Statistics will identify eligible individuals. The electronic survey will be distributed via e-Boks to approximately 450 000 individuals.
The questionnaire integrates validated tools—COPD Assessment Test, Modified Medical Research Council scale, EuroQol 5-Dimension 5-Level and Asthma Control Test—alongside expert-developed questions on symptoms, diagnosis, disease control, treatment and patient experiences. Questionnaire development included 10 cognitive interviews with patients from the Outpatient Clinic at Vejle Hospital.
Descriptive statistics will be used to analyse both continuous and categorical data, with sensitivity analyses conducted as well. Data management will be handled in Research Electronic Data Capture, and statistical analyses will be performed using Stata V.18.0.
The study is registered with the Danish Data Protection Agency (24/5229) and Open Patient Data Explorative Network (OP_2094) and follows the Declaration of Helsinki. Results will be published in peer-reviewed journals, presented at national and international conferences and shared through patient associations.