Desmopressin for patients with spontaneous intracerebral haemorrhage taking antiplatelet drugs (DASH): a UK-based, phase 2, randomised, placebo-controlled, multicentre feasibility trial

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Vasopressin and Desmopressin, published as a randomized controlled trial.

National Institute for Health Research.

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are older adults, both men and women.

Patients were recruited from ten acute stroke centres in the UK and were eligible if they had an intracerebral haemorrhage with stroke symptom onset within 24 h of randomisation, were aged 18 years or older, and were taking an antiplatelet drug.

Treatment allocation was concealed from all staff and patients involved in the trial.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and multicenter.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Vasopressin and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

As a double-blind Vasopressin study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Vasopressin could be set against what happens without it.

More than one site took part, so the participants came from several places.

DASH was a phase 2, randomised, placebo-controlled, multicentre feasibility trial.

The primary outcome was feasibility, which was measured as the number of eligible patients randomised and the proportion of eligible patients approached, and analysis was by intention to treat.

The trial was prospectively registered with ISRCTN (reference ISRCTN67038373), and it is closed to recruitment.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Platelet Aggregation Inhibitors, Deamino Arginine Vasopressin, Pandemics, Feasibility Studies, COVID-19, Cerebral Hemorrhage and Stroke.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Vasopressin and Desmopressin.

Results are reported in around 10 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2023 (The Lancet. Neurology), a journal based in England.

More context: the Vasopressin compound page and the Desmopressin compound page, all human trials.