Interactive Journal of Medical Research

The generalizability of clinical research hinges on good study designs, which includes the recruitment and maintenance of a representative study population. This study delves into the evolution of the population characteristics of the 329,038 participants who enrolled and participated in The All of Us Research Program (AoURP), a decentralized study with an aim to represent the diversity of the United States.

Internet-based research has exploded in popularity in recent years, enabling researchers to offer both investigations and interventions to broader participant populations than ever before. However, challenges associated with internet-based research have also increased—notably, difficulties verifying participant data and deliberate data manipulation by bot and spam responses. This study presents a viewpoint based on 2 case studies where internet-based research was affected by bot and spam attacks. We aim to share the learnings from these experiences with recommendations for future research practice that may reduce the likelihood or impact of future attacks. The screening and verification processes used are presented and discussed, including the limitations of these. Based on our experience, security and screening within internet-based research platforms are partly effective, but no solution is available to protect researchers completely against bot attacks. Implications for future research and advice for health researchers are discussed.

Loneliness is a global public health issue contributing to a variety of mental and physical health issues. It increases the risk of life-threatening conditions and contributes to the burden on the economy in terms of the number of productive days lost. Loneliness is a highly varied concept, which is associated with multiple factors.

Adult spinal deformity (ASD) is a prevalent condition often treated with circumferential spinal fusion (CF), which can be performed as staged or same-day procedures. However, evidence guiding the choice between these approaches is lacking.

Major depressive disorder contributes to the global burden of mental illness. Therapeutic guidelines promote treatment self-management and support caregivers and family members in this process.

China has the largest elderly population globally, the growth rate of the aged tendency of the population was higher than that of Western countries. Given the distinctions in historical ethnic economic status and social-cultural background, the Chinese adults had different sleep patterns contrasted with other countries. Given the heavy disease burden caused by ADL disability, we conducted a cross-sectional analysis using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) to test the hypothesis that individuals with short and longer sleep duration are more likely to have ADL disability.

Sepsis is a recognized global health issue that continues to contribute significantly to mortality and morbidity in intensive care units (ICUs). The association between mean arterial pressure (MAP) and prognosis among sepsis patients has yet to be demonstrated.

Case report forms (CRFs) are the instrument used by research organizations worldwide to collect information about patients and study participants with the purpose to answer specific questions, assess efficacy and safety of medical products and in general to improve prevention and treatment in healthcare. To obtain significant research results out of the collected data, CRFs should be designed following the recommendations issued by regulatory authorities. However, we believe that semantic interoperability in CRFs has not yet been properly addressed. Within an international consortium comprising several COVID-19 cohorts, we scrutinized the questions included in the different CRFs with the purpose to establish semantic interoperability across the different study data elements so that data could be merged and jointly analysed. We realized that similar concepts were structured very differently across the different CRFs making it hard to find and match the information. Based on the experience acquired we developed five guiding principles on how to design CRFs to support semantic interoperability and increase data quality while also facilitating the sharing of data. Our aim in this viewpoint is to provide general suggestions that, in our opinion, should support researchers in designing CRFs. We conclude by urging authorities to establish an international coordination board for standards and interoperable clinical study data with competence in clinical data, interoperability standards and data protection as part of a preparedness plan for future pandemics or other health threats.

The rapid implementation of telemedicine during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic raises questions about the sustainability of this intervention at the global level.

Ferroptosis, as a novel modality of cell death, holds significant potential in elucidating the pathogenesis and advancing therapeutic strategies for breast cancer.

Excessive use of smartphones is recognized as a major problem in our modern society and can have dramatic consequences on the health of adolescents and young adults. Measuring problematic smartphone use in research and clinical practice is generally operationalized with self-reported questionnaires. In order to comprehensively assess the issue of problematic smartphone usage within the French population, it is imperative to employ validated French-language questionnaires. However, at this point, existing questionnaires are primarily available in English. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, these English questionnaires have yet to undergo validation processes for French-speaking cohorts.

Participation and completion rates in questionnaire-based surveys are often low.