Clinical Trials
Leading Stroke Clinical Trials
From protocol to patient benefit — Professor Majid leads major multicentre trials testing new approaches to stroke recovery.
TRICEPS — Chief Investigator
TRanscutaneous vagus nerve stimulation to enhance limb rECovery PoSt-Stroke.
TRICEPS is a £2 million double-blind, randomised, multicentre trial evaluating whether pairing task-specific upper-limb rehabilitation with movement-activated transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS) improves arm function after stroke.
- Recruitment: COMPLETE — exceeded the 270-participant target (August 2026); 20 UK centres, the largest neuromodulation trial in stroke; results expected March 2027
- Intervention: a wearable tVNS device with a wired earpiece, worn for one hour, five times per week at home for 12 weeks; stimulation is automatically triggered by arm movement during rehabilitation exercises
- Funders: NIHR, MRC and an ABN Fellowship
- Protocol: Baig et al., BMJ Open 2025 — a randomised, controlled, multi-arm, multi-stage adaptive design
“If our new TRICEPS trial is successful, it will be the first large-scale, properly controlled evidence that vagus nerve stimulation makes a real difference in stroke recovery.” — Professor Arshad Majid
TRICEPS builds on the landmark VNS-REHAB trial (The Lancet, 2021), which Professor Majid co-authored and which showed that implanted vagus nerve stimulation paired with rehabilitation improves upper-limb recovery after ischaemic stroke.
“we hope to provide definitive answers as to whether this is an effective approach in improving recovery after stroke that can be rolled out at scale to large numbers of patients on the NHS.” — Professor Arshad Majid
“We want the trial to positively impact patients’ lives… If the results of the TRICEPS trial are positive then there’ll be a lot of interest in looking at how neuromodulation could help with other disabilities after stroke.” — Professor Arshad Majid
RICFAST — Co-Chief Investigator
Remote Ischaemic Conditioning For fATigue after STroke.
RICFAST investigates whether repeated brief episodes of limb ischaemia and reperfusion — remote ischaemic conditioning, a simple home-based intervention — can reduce the debilitating fatigue that affects many stroke survivors.
- Pilot: a 24-patient pilot randomised controlled trial, published in the Journal of Stroke and Cerebrovascular Diseases (2023)
- Funder: the Stroke Association
Trial Participation
Stroke survivors interested in research participation should speak to their clinical team or contact the research unit via the details on the Contact page.