Researchers have recommended changes to international guidelines used in the development of clinical trials in an effort to gain information about the impact of the treatment on participating patients and their quality of life. Protocols describe how a clinical trial will be conducted, including its objectives, design, methodology, statistical considerations and organisation, and ensures the safety of participating patients as well as the integrity of the data collected.

After years of investigation, researchers at Johns Hopkins, the University of California, Davis, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases have discovered how the immune system might protect a person from recurrent bacterial skin infections caused by Staphylococcus aureus (staph). The findings, publishing online in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, open new doors to someday developing vaccines to prevent staph skin infections, which account for 14 million outpatient visits, nearly 500,000 hospital admissions and $3 billion to $4 billion in inpatient health care costs in the U.S. per year.

While a couple of glasses of wine can help clear the mind after a busy day, new research shows that it may actually help clean the mind as well. The new study, which appears in the journal Scientific Reports, shows that low levels of alcohol consumption tamp down inflammation and helps the brain clear away toxins, including those associated with Alzheimer's disease.

Early results from randomized trials are sometimes published before the trial is completed. The results of such interim publications may generate a great deal of interest in the medical community because the findings often hold a great deal of promise for new and effective therapies. However, in an article recently published in JAMA, Dartmouth researchers compared the consistency and prominence of interim publications with the final publications.

Researchers at the Institute of Industrial Science (IIS), the University of Tokyo, CNRS and INSERM, report a new organ-on-a-chip technology for the study of blood vessel formation and drugs targeting this event. The technology recreates a human blood vessel and shows how new capillaries grow from a single vessel (parent vessel) in response to proper biochemical signaling cues.

New research published by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine exposes the extent of redactions in protocols for industry-sponsored randomised drug trials. Trial protocols are needed for a proper assessment of the veracity of drug trial reports. The researchers, from the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen, found widespread redactions in the protocols for commercially sponsored trials they received from research ethics committees in Denmark.

In both cell cultures and mouse models, a drug used to treat Hepatitis C effectively protected and rescued neural cells infected by the Zika virus - and blocked transmission of the virus to mouse fetuses. Writing in the current online issue of the journal Scientific Reports, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, with colleagues in Brazil and elsewhere, say their findings support further investigation of using the repurposed drug as a potential treatment for Zika-infected adults, including pregnant women.