qPRIME
Research type
Research Study
Full title
qPRIME – A Qualitative study to Understand Perceptions and Attitudes towards Risperidone Use in People with Memory Problems
IRAS ID
327161
Contact name
Byron Creese
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Brunel University London
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 9 months, 21 days
Research summary
One of the main symptoms of dementia is memory loss. Others include agitation/aggression, seeing things that aren’t there and falsely believing others are trying to harm you. These symptoms make living with dementia much more difficult.
Drugs should only be used as a last resort for people with the most severe symptoms. A commonly used drug is called risperidone. There is evidence that it helps some people, but it has severe side effects. One of the most serious of these is stroke. Stroke is caused when clots in blood vessels cut of the supply of blood to the brain. It is likely that risperidone causes hundreds of strokes per year in people with dementia.
A big problem is that we don’t know whether a person will have a stroke if they take risperidone. We think we can use data about a person’s medical history to predict how likely they are to have a stroke if they take risperidone. Before we undertake that analysis, we want to conduct a qualitiative study to:
1. Investigate perceptions of risk and benefit and attitudes towards the use of risperidone in dementia.
2. Investigate people’s attitudes towards stroke risk prediction associated with risperidone use using their medical history.
3. Investigate people’s preferences for how risk is communicated to them.We will do interviews and focus groups with people with dementia, relatives/friends, care home staff and doctors. Understanding people's views will mean that we can incorporate them into later studies where we will seek to use people's medical history to better understand stroke risk associated with risperidone.
REC name
London - Camberwell St Giles Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
23/HRA/4826
Date of REC Opinion
9 Feb 2024
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion