PoPSTER study

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    PoPSTER: Patient preferences and current Practice for adults with STERoid resistant ulcerative colitis - A mixed methods study

  • IRAS ID

    255616

  • Contact name

    Lizzie Coates

  • Contact email

    e.coates@sheffield.ac.uk

  • Sponsor organisation

    Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

  • Duration of Study in the UK

    1 years, 11 months, 31 days

  • Research summary

    Ulcerative Colitis (UC) is a lifelong Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) where people develop ulcers in the lining of the colon (also known as the large bowel). UC has many painful symptoms and has a big impact on quality of life. People with this disease may have long periods of remission (good health) but many will have relapses where their symptoms get worse. Steroids are one of the potential treatments for UC, but this is only effective for about half of people with this condition, the other half can be described as ‘steroid resistant’.

    A number of other treatments are recommended for use in this country, but the supporting research evidence is limited. For example, there are no direct ‘head-to-head’ comparisons and it is often not clear whether the people who took part in these studies were resistant to, or dependent on steroids. To confuse matters, there is no agreed definition of steroid resistance in this patient group.

    The aim of the research is to investigate how adults with steroid resistant UC are being managed in secondary care, and how current practice compares with patient and clinician preferences.

    We plan to do this by:
    1. Conducting a questionnaire study of IBD healthcare professionals from across the UK.
    2. Interviewing healthcare professionals to find out about their clinical practice.
    3. Interviewing patients about their views on different treatment options and how they make decisions about those.
    4. Carrying out a questionnaire study of patients and healthcare professionals to work out their preferences for treatment options.
    5. Bringing together healthcare professionals and patients to review the findings from our study, to help develop ideas for future research and treatments.

    The outputs of our study can be used to design a large scale randomised controlled trial for steroid resistant UC in the future.

  • REC name

    East Midlands - Derby Research Ethics Committee

  • REC reference

    19/EM/0011

  • Date of REC Opinion

    10 Jan 2019

  • REC opinion

    Further Information Favourable Opinion