Standalone, citable summaries published in the Future Science Group journals written to be understood by a lay audience
Two recent studies have been carried out looking at vosoritide as a treatment for children with achondroplasia. A free-to-read plain language summary, written in easy-to-understand language, has recently been published in the peer-reviewed journal Future Rare Diseases to help a lay audiences, including caregivers and parents of children with achondroplasia, understand the results of these two studies. This video provides a summary of this article.
Watch the video below or read the article here.
A new plain language summary has been published in Pain Management called ‘Understanding whether chronic lower back pain patients with lumbar spinal stenosis benefit from multiple epidural steroid injections prior to the mild® Procedure’. The article by Peter Pryzbylkowski and co-authors is a summary of a study performed to look at the benefit, if any, of more than one epidural steroid injection in the spine before the mild® Procedure.
Read the full article here.
The original article, called ‘Minimally invasive direct decompression for lumbar spinal stenosis: impact of multiple prior epidural steroid injections’ was also published in Pain Management and can be read here.
An article published in Current Medical Research and Opinion has provided new guidance and opinion on plain language summaries (PLS) of company-sponsored medical research. Developed by the ISMPP PLS Perspectives Working Group, the article presents perspectives of 29 stakeholders from diverse professional sectors involved in developing, publishing, reading or funding PLS.
The article identifies 10 key issues that need to be addressed to improve PLS so that more publications have these valuable summaries.
We hope that the key insights from this study will inform industry-wide guidelines on PLS and accelerate the generation of these important publications to facilitate sharing of medical research to broad audiences.
Dawn Lobban, Jason Gardner & Robert Matheison behalf of the ISMPP PLS
Perspectives Working Group
November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month. By understanding more about the options available, people with lung cancer can feel empowered to make informed decisions about their treatment and care. Many patients organization provide a wealth of educational resources and tools for patients and their caregivers. Plain language summaries of published articles in lung cancer can also help towards understanding more about the treatment options available.
Here we summarise the plain language summaries in lung cancer published in the Future Science Group journals.
A plain language summary of results from the ADAURA study: osimertinib after surgery for patients who have early-stage EGFR-mutated non-small cell lung cancer
Osimertinib (also known as TAGRISSO) is a medication used to treat a type of non-small cell lung cancer (also called NSCLC) with a change (mutation) in the EGFR gene, known as EGFR-mutated NSCLC. This summary discusses the initial results of the ADAURA clinical study, which was carried out to see how well osimertinib worked in people with EGFR-mutated NSCLC. The ADAURA study is still ongoing and more results are expected to be released in the future.
Read the article in full here
Neoadjuvant osimertinib with/without chemotherapy versus chemotherapy alone for EGFR-mutated resectable non-small-cell lung cancer: NeoADAURA
In this summary, the design of the ongoing NeoADAURA study is discussed. NeoADAURA is testing osimertinib treatment in people with EGFR-mutated NSCLC before they have surgery, either with or without chemotherapy compared to chemotherapy on its own.
Read the article in full here
Plain language summary of the final results from the GioTag study
The GioTag study looked at the medications afatinib and osimertinib in people with NSCLC who had mutations in the EGFR gene. This was a retrospective, observational study meaning the data in the study was collected from patients who had previously been treated in the ‘real-world’ (that is, not in a clinical study). This summary explains the results of this study.
Read the article in full here
Plain language summary of the CROWN study comparing lorlatinib with crizotinib for people with untreated non-small cell lung cancer
Lorlatinib (also called Lorbrena) is a treatment approved to treat a type of lung cancer called ALK+ NSCLC, where the cancer is caused by a change in the ALK gene. The CROWN study tested lorlatinib and another medicine called crizotinib in participants with untreated NSCLC that had spread to other parts of their body. This article describes the results of this study.
Read the article in full here
The ADAURA study looked at the role of osimertinib as a treatment for resectable EGFR-mutated NSCLC after tumor removal. The results of this study have been explained in a new plain language summary published in Future Oncology.
Read the article for free here.
The original article, called “Osimertinib in Resected EGFR-Mutated Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer,” was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. This article is free to read here.