Holt RI, Hind D, Gossage-Worrall R, Bradburn MJ, Saxon D, McCrone P, Morris TA, Etherington A, Shiers D, Barnard K, Swaby L, Edwardson C, Carey ME, Davies MJ, Dickens CM, Doherty Y, French P, Greenwood KE, Kalidindi S, Khunti K, Laugharne R, Pendlebury J, Rathod S, Siddiqi N, Wright S, Waller G, Gaughran F, Barnett J, and Northern A
Background: Obesity is twice as common in people with schizophrenia as in the general population. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance recommends that people with psychosis or schizophrenia, especially those taking antipsychotics, be offered a healthy eating and physical activity programme by their mental health care provider. There is insufficient evidence to inform how these lifestyle services should be commissioned., Objectives: To develop a lifestyle intervention for people with first episode psychosis or schizophrenia and to evaluate its clinical effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, delivery and acceptability., Design: A two-arm, analyst-blind, parallel-group, randomised controlled trial, with a 1 : 1 allocation ratio, using web-based randomisation; a mixed-methods process evaluation, including qualitative case study methods and logic modelling; and a cost-utility analysis., Setting: Ten community mental health trusts in England., Participants: People with first episode psychosis, schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder., Interventions: Intervention group: (1) four 2.5-hour group-based structured lifestyle self-management education sessions, 1 week apart; (2) multimodal fortnightly support contacts; (3) three 2.5-hour group booster sessions at 3-monthly intervals, post core sessions. Control group: usual care assessed through a longitudinal survey. All participants received standard written lifestyle information., Main Outcome Measures: The primary outcome was change in weight (kg) at 12 months post randomisation. The key secondary outcomes measured at 3 and 12 months included self-reported nutrition (measured with the Dietary Instrument for Nutrition Education questionnaire), objectively measured physical activity measured by accelerometry [GENEActiv (Activinsights, Kimbolton, UK)], biomedical measures, adverse events, patient-reported outcome measures and a health economic assessment., Results: The trial recruited 414 participants (intervention arm: 208 participants; usual care: 206 participants) between 10 March 2015 and 31 March 2016. A total of 341 participants (81.6%) completed the trial. A total of 412 participants were analysed. After 12 months, weight change did not differ between the groups (mean difference 0.0 kg, 95% confidence interval -1.59 to 1.67 kg; p = 0.964); physical activity, dietary intake and biochemical measures were unchanged. Glycated haemoglobin, fasting glucose and lipid profile were unchanged by the intervention. Quality of life, psychiatric symptoms and illness perception did not change during the trial. There were three deaths, but none was related to the intervention. Most adverse events were expected and related to the psychiatric illness. The process evaluation showed that the intervention was acceptable, with participants valuing the opportunity to interact with others facing similar challenges. Session feedback indicated that 87.2% of participants agreed that the sessions had met their needs. Some indicated the desire for more ongoing support. Professionals felt that the intervention was under-resourced and questioned the long-term sustainability within current NHS settings. Professionals would have preferred greater access to participants' behaviour data to tailor the intervention better. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio from the health-care perspective is £246,921 per quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) gained and the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio from the societal perspective is £367,543 per QALY gained., Conclusions: Despite the challenges of undertaking clinical research in this population, the trial successfully recruited and retained participants, indicating a high level of interest in weight management interventions; however, the STEPWISE intervention was neither clinically effective nor cost-effective. Further research will be required to define how overweight and obesity in people with schizophrenia should be managed. The trial results suggest that lifestyle programmes for people with schizophrenia may need greater resourcing than for other populations, and interventions that have been shown to be effective in other populations, such as people with diabetes mellitus, are not necessarily effective in people with schizophrenia., Trial Registration: Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN19447796., Funding: This project was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment programme and will be published in full in Health Technology Assessment ; Vol. 22, No. 65. See the NIHR Journals Library website for further project information., Competing Interests: Richard IG Holt received fees for lecturing, consultancy work and attendance at conferences from the following companies: Boehringer Ingelheim (Ingelheim am Rhein, Germany), Eli Lilly and Company (Indianapolis, IN, USA), Janssen Pharmaceutica (Beerse, Belgium), Lundbeck (Copenhagen, Denmark), Novo Nordisk (Bagsværd, Denmark), Novartis (Basel, Switzerland), Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd (Tokyo, Japan), Sanofi-Aventis (Paris, France) and Sunovion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Marlborough, MA, USA). Paul French is a member of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment Mental, Psychological and Occupational Health funding panel. Melanie J Davies and Kamlesh Khunti are members of a NIHR Clinical Trials Unit. Melanie J Davies reports personal fees from Novo Nordisk, Sanofi-Aventis, Eli Lilly and Company, Merck Sharp & Dohme (Kenilworth, NJ, USA), Boehringer Ingelheim, AstraZeneca (Cambridge, UK), Janssen Pharmaceutica, Servier Laboratories (Neuilly-sur-Seine, France), Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation (Tokyo, Japan) and Takeda Pharmaceuticals International Inc. (Canton of Zürich, Switzerland) and grants from Novo Nordisk, Sanofi-Aventis, Eli Lilly and Company, Boehringer Ingelheim and Janssen Pharmaceutica. Kamlesh Khunti has received fees for consultancy and being a speaker for Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Sanofi-Aventis, Eli Lilly and Company, Servier Laboratories and Merck Sharp & Dohme. He has received grants in support of investigator and investigator-initiated trials from Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Sanofi-Aventis, Eli Lilly and Company, Pfizer (New York, NY, USA), Boehringer Ingelheim and Merck Sharp & Dohme. Kamlesh Khunti has also received funds for research and honoraria for speaking at meetings, and has served on advisory boards for Eli Lilly and Company, Sanofi-Aventis, Merck Sharp & Dohme and Novo Nordisk. David Shiers is an expert advisor to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) centre for guidelines, a board member of the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (NCCMH) and a clinical advisor (on a paid consultancy basis) to the National Clinical Audit of Psychosis (NCAP); any views given in this report are personal and not those of NICE, NCCMH or NCAP. David Shiers reports personal fees from the Wiley-Blackwell publication Promoting Recovery in Early Psychosis, 2010 (ISBN 978-1-4051-4894-8), as he is a joint editor in receipt of royalties. John Pendelbury received personal fees for involvement in the study from a NIHR grant; he reports personal fees from the Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS foundation trust outside the submitted work and has published papers in the area of weight management and physical health related to mental health. Marian E Carey and Yvonne Doherty report being employed by the Leicester Diabetes Centre, an organisation (employer) jointly hosted by a NHS hospital trust and the University of Leicester and which is the holder (through the University of Leicester) of the copyright of the STEPWISE programme and of the Diabetes Education and Self-Management for Ongoing and Newly Diagnosed (DESMOND) suite of programmes, training and intervention fidelity framework that were used in this study. Fiona Gaughran reports personal fees from Otsuka and Lundbeck and personal fees and non-financial support from Sunovion, outside the submitted work, and has a family member with professional links to Eli Lilly and Company and GlaxoSmithKline (Brentford, UK), including shares.