Endoscopy-based research can effect quality of life in healthy volunteers?

The involvement of healthy volunteers (HV) in clinical and preclinical research, especially in the gastroenterology, has grown dramatically over the past few years. However, many issues of ethical, methodological or even legal concerns have not been systematically studied.

A research article to be published on January 28, 2010 in the World Journal of Gastroenterology addresses this question. A research team lead by Professor Peter Malfertheiner, evaluated prospectively the changes in quality of life (QOL) in ten HV during a long-term endoscopy-based study.

The study was conducted strictly according to existing ethical recommendations and guidelines. Using the validated SF-36 survey and visual analog scale-based questionnaires, they showed that the research study with multiple endoscopic examinations and a long-term protocol did not or only minimally affected the QOL of HV.

This study provided valuable and important information regarding the QOL of HV who participate in endoscopy-based studies, and supported the existing recommendation and guidelines on this topic in Gastroenterology.

Reference: Link A, Treiber G, Peters B, Wex T, Malfertheiner P. Impact of endoscopy-based research on quality of life in healthy volunteers. World J Gastroenterol 2010; 16(4): 467-473

http://www.wjgnet.com/1007-9327/16/467.asp

Correspondence to: Dr. Peter Malfertheiner, Professor, Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Infectious Diseases, Otto-von-Guericke University, Leipziger St. 44, 39120 Magdeburg, Germany. peter. malfertheiner@med.ovgu.de

Telephone: +49-391-6713100 Fax: +49-391-6713105

World Journal of Gastroenterology (WJG), a leading international journal in gastroenterology and hepatology, has established a reputation for publishing first class research on esophageal cancer, gastric cancer, liver cancer, viral hepatitis, colorectal cancer, and H. pylori infection and provides a forum for both clinicians and scientists. WJG has been indexed and abstracted in Current Contents/Clinical Medicine, Science Citation Index Expanded (also known as SciSearch) and Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition, Index Medicus, MEDLINE and PubMed, Chemical Abstracts, EMBASE/Excerpta Medica, Abstracts Journals, Nature Clinical Practice Gastroenterology and Hepatology, CAB Abstracts and Global Health. ISI JCR 2008 IF: 2.081. WJG is a weekly journal published by WJG Press. The publication dates are the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th day of every month. WJG is supported by The National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 30224801 and No. 30424812, and was founded with the name of China National Journal of New Gastroenterology on October 1, 1995, and renamed WJG on January 25, 1998.