Child Adolesc Psychiatry Ment Health. 2022 Apr 27;16(1):31. doi: 10.1186/s13034-022-00465-y.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: Children and adolescents living with HIV (C/ALHIV) are at a risk for significant neurocognitive deficits. There is limited literature that addresses the role of socioeconomic factors in neurocognitive deficits among CALHIV in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA), as it is very difficult to establish this causal relationship. Our systematic review was guided by the biodevelopmental framework that assumes that foundations of health and adversity affect later development and life outcomes. This systematic review aims to assess available evidence on the relationship between neurocognitive deficits and socioeconomic factors among HIV children and adolescents in SSA region.

METHOD: Using a pre-determined search strategy, we searched electronic databases including PubMed, web of Science and EBSCOhost (CINAHL and MEDLINE). Peer-reviewed publications that address neurocognitive deficits, psychosocial and socioeconomic risk factors among children and adolescents living with HIV in SSA were included in review.

RESULTS: Out of 640 articles, 17 studies from SSA met the inclusion criteria. Four studies reported no significant differences in the neurocognitive measures comparing children and adolescents with HIV infection to those uninfected. However, 10 studies suggest that C/ALHIV scored significantly low in general intellectual functions as compared to their uninfected peers. C/ALHIV were found to have substantial deficits in specific cognitive domains such as sequential processing, simultaneous processing, and learning. In addition, deficits in visuo-spatial processing, visual memory and semantic fluency were mentioned. Socioeconomic factors such as lower socioeconomic status (income, education and occupation), child orphanhood status and under-nutrition were linked with neurocognitive deficits.

CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that CALHIV presented with poorer neurocognitive outcomes when compared to other populations which were associated with specific socioeconomic factors.

PMID:35477577 | DOI:10.1186/s13034-022-00465-y

J Epidemiol Community Health. 2022 Jul;76(7):646-652. doi: 10.1136/jech-2021-218415. Epub 2022 Apr 25.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The UK began an ambitious COVID-19 vaccination programme on 8 December 2020. This study describes variation in vaccination uptake by sociodemographic characteristics between December 2020 and August 2021.

METHODS: Using population-level administrative records linked to the 2011 Census, we estimated monthly first dose vaccination rates by age group and sociodemographic characteristics among adults aged 18 years or over in England. We also present a tool to display the results interactively.

RESULTS: Our sample included 35 223 466 adults. A lower percentage of males than females were vaccinated in the young and middle age groups (18-59 years) but not in the older age groups. Vaccination rates were highest among individuals of White British and Indian ethnic backgrounds and lowest among Black Africans (aged ≥80 years) and Black Caribbeans (18-79 years). Differences by ethnic group emerged as soon as vaccination roll-out commenced and widened over time. Vaccination rates were also lower among individuals who identified as Muslim, lived in more deprived areas, reported having a disability, did not speak English as their main language, lived in rented housing, belonged to a lower socioeconomic group, and had fewer qualifications.

CONCLUSION: We found inequalities in COVID-19 vaccination uptake rates by sex, ethnicity, religion, area deprivation, disability status, English language proficiency, socioeconomic position and educational attainment, but some of these differences varied by age group. Research is urgently needed to understand why these inequalities exist and how they can be addressed.

PMID:35470259 | DOI:10.1136/jech-2021-218415

J Biomed Semantics. 2022 Apr 25;13(1):12. doi: 10.1186/s13326-022-00263-7.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged healthcare systems and research worldwide. Data is collected all over the world and needs to be integrated and made available to other researchers quickly. However, the various heterogeneous information systems that are used in hospitals can result in fragmentation of health data over multiple data 'silos' that are not interoperable for analysis. Consequently, clinical observations in hospitalised patients are not prepared to be reused efficiently and timely. There is a need to adapt the research data management in hospitals to make COVID-19 observational patient data machine actionable, i.e. more Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR) for humans and machines. We therefore applied the FAIR principles in the hospital to make patient data more FAIR.

RESULTS: In this paper, we present our FAIR approach to transform COVID-19 observational patient data collected in the hospital into machine actionable digital objects to answer medical doctors' research questions. With this objective, we conducted a coordinated FAIRification among stakeholders based on ontological models for data and metadata, and a FAIR based architecture that complements the existing data management. We applied FAIR Data Points for metadata exposure, turning investigational parameters into a FAIR dataset. We demonstrated that this dataset is machine actionable by means of three different computational activities: federated query of patient data along open existing knowledge sources across the world through the Semantic Web, implementing Web APIs for data query interoperability, and building applications on top of these FAIR patient data for FAIR data analytics in the hospital.

CONCLUSIONS: Our work demonstrates that a FAIR research data management plan based on ontological models for data and metadata, open Science, Semantic Web technologies, and FAIR Data Points is providing data infrastructure in the hospital for machine actionable FAIR Digital Objects. This FAIR data is prepared to be reused for federated analysis, linkable to other FAIR data such as Linked Open Data, and reusable to develop software applications on top of them for hypothesis generation and knowledge discovery.

PMID:35468846 | DOI:10.1186/s13326-022-00263-7

Diagnostics (Basel). 2022 Apr 2;12(4):887. doi: 10.3390/diagnostics12040887.

ABSTRACT

In this study, a web application was developed that comprises scientific literature associated with the Coronaviridae family, specifically for those viruses that are members of the Genus Betacoronavirus, responsible for emerging diseases with a great impact on human health: Middle East Respiratory Syndrome-Related Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Related Coronavirus (SARS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2). The information compiled on this webserver aims to understand the basics of these viruses' infection, and the nature of their pathogenesis, enabling the identification of molecular and cellular components that may function as potential targets on the design and development of successful treatments for the diseases associated with the Coronaviridae family. Some of the web application's primary functions are searching for keywords within the scientific literature, natural language processing for the extraction of genes and words, the generation and visualization of gene networks associated with viral diseases derived from the analysis of latent semantic space, and cosine similarity measures. Interestingly, our gene association analysis reveals drug targets in understudies, and new targets suggested in the scientific literature to treat coronavirus.

PMID:35453935 | DOI:10.3390/diagnostics12040887

JMIR Form Res. 2022 Apr 21;6(4):e34962. doi: 10.2196/34962.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Dietary habits offer crucial information on one's health and form a considerable part of the patient-generated health data. Dietary data are collected through various channels and formats; thus, interoperability is a significant challenge to reusing this type of data. The vast scope of dietary concepts and the colloquial expression style add difficulty to standardizing the data. The interoperability issues of dietary data can be addressed through Common Data Elements with metadata annotation to some extent. However, making culture-specific dietary habits and questionnaire-based dietary assessment data interoperable still requires substantial efforts.

OBJECTIVE: The main goal of this study was to address the interoperability challenge of questionnaire-based dietary data from different cultural backgrounds by combining ontological curation and metadata annotation of dietary concepts. Specifically, this study aimed to develop a Dietary Lifestyle Ontology (DILON) and demonstrate the improved interoperability of questionnaire-based dietary data by annotating its main semantics with DILON.

METHODS: By analyzing 1158 dietary assessment data elements (367 in Korean and 791 in English), 515 dietary concepts were extracted and used to construct DILON. To demonstrate the utility of DILON in addressing the interoperability challenges of questionnaire-based multicultural dietary data, we developed 10 competency questions that asked to identify data elements sharing the same dietary topics and assessment properties. We instantiated 68 data elements on dietary habits selected from Korean and English questionnaires and annotated them with DILON to answer the competency questions. We translated the competency questions into Semantic Query-Enhanced Web Rule Language and reviewed the query results for accuracy.

RESULTS: DILON was built with 262 concept classes and validated with ontology validation tools. A small overlap (72 concepts) in the concepts extracted from the questionnaires in 2 languages indicates that we need to pay closer attention to representing culture-specific dietary concepts. The Semantic Query-Enhanced Web Rule Language queries reflecting the 10 competency questions yielded correct results.

CONCLUSIONS: Ensuring the interoperability of dietary lifestyle data is a demanding task due to its vast scope and variations in expression. This study demonstrated that we could improve the interoperability of dietary data generated in different cultural contexts and expressed in various styles by annotating their core semantics with DILON.

PMID:35451991 | DOI:10.2196/34962

IEEE Trans Pattern Anal Mach Intell. 2022 Apr 19;PP. doi: 10.1109/TPAMI.2022.3168530. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

This article studies the problem of learning weakly supervised semantic segmentation (WSSS) from image-level supervision only. Rather than previous efforts that primarily focus on intra-image information, we address the value of cross-image semantic relations for comprehensive object pattern mining. To achieve this, two neural co-attentions are incorporated into the classifier to complimentarily capture cross-image semantic similarities and differences. In particular, given a pair of training images, one co-attention enforces the classifier to recognize the common semantics from co-attentive objects, while the other one, called contrastive co-attention, drives the classifier to identify the unique semantics from the rest, unshared objects. This helps the classifier discover more object patterns and better ground semantics in image regions. More importantly, our algorithm provides a unified framework that handles well different WSSS settings, i.e., learning WSSS with (1) precise image-level supervision only, (2) extra simple single-label data, and (3) extra noisy web data. Without bells and whistles, it sets new state-of-the-arts on all these settings. Moreover, our approach ranked 1 st place in the WSSS Track of CVPR2020 LID Challenge. The extensive experimental results demonstrate well the efficacy and high utility of our method.

PMID:35439127 | DOI:10.1109/TPAMI.2022.3168530

Front Public Health. 2022 Mar 29;10:834172. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.834172. eCollection 2022.

ABSTRACT

Health equity is a rather complex issue. Social context and economical disparities, are known to be determining factors. Cultural and educational constrains however, are also important contributors to the establishment and development of health inequities. As an important starting point for a comprehensive discussion, a detailed analysis of the literature corpus is thus desirable: we need to recognize what has been done, under what circumstances, even what possible sources of bias exist in our current discussion on this relevant issue. By finding these trends and biases we will be better equipped to modulate them and find avenues that may lead us to a more integrated view of health inequity, potentially enhancing our capabilities to intervene to ameliorate it. In this study, we characterized at a large scale, the social and cultural determinants most frequently reported in current global research of health inequity and the interrelationships among them in different populations under diverse contexts. We used a data/literature mining approach to the current literature followed by a semantic network analysis of the interrelationships discovered. The analyzed structured corpus consisted in circa 950 articles categorized by means of the Medical Subheadings (MeSH) content-descriptor from 2014 to 2021. Further analyses involved systematic searches in the LILACS and DOAJ databases, as additional sources. The use of data analytics techniques allowed us to find a number of non-trivial connections, pointed out to existing biases and under-represented issues and let us discuss what are the most relevant concepts that are (and are not) being discussed in the context of Health Equity and Culture.

PMID:35425756 | PMC:PMC9002348 | DOI:10.3389/fpubh.2022.834172

Iran J Nurs Midwifery Res. 2022 Mar 14;27(2):83-91. doi: 10.4103/ijnmr.ijnmr_156_21. eCollection 2022 Mar-Apr.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Despite the importance and prominent role as a clinical, theoretical, and research approach in nursing practice, humanistic care nature and boundaries are not explicit and challenging for nurses to understand. This study was conducted to clarify the concept of humanistic care in nursing.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: Based on Rogers's evolutionary concept analysis, keywords such as "humanistic car *," "caring behave *," "humanistic nurs *," "humanistic model of care," were searched in PubMed, SCOPUS, Science Direct, Web of Science, WILEY, Springer, SAGE, ProQuest, SID, Iranmedex without time limit until November 2018. Sixty-five documents in nursing and ten documents in the medical discipline were finalized for thematic analysis.

RESULTS: Nine attributes of the humanistic care, including "excellence in clinical literacy," "creating a healing environment," "a comprehensive and unique viewpoint," "contribution to clients' adaptation and flourishing of their talents," "unrequited love and affection," "preservation of human dignity," "real presence," "constructive dynamic interaction," and "nurse's self-care," were recognized. Assessing the historical and evolutionary course of the concept's semantic tendency revealed three periods: The focus in first, second, and third was on the nurse-patient relationship, quantitative tendency/measurement, and metaphysics/spiritual humanism, respectively. The comparison of interdisciplinary differences indicated greater semantic comprehensiveness and depth in the nursing discipline.

CONCLUSIONS: Clear and practical definition and identification of humanistic care in nursing can be helpful in the further development of existing knowledge, instrumentation, designing guidelines, clinical interventions, knowledge translation, and correction of concept misuse. The identified antecedents and consequences can be in various aspects of clinical management.

PMID:35419263 | PMC:PMC8997180 | DOI:10.4103/ijnmr.ijnmr_156_21

Comput Biol Med. 2022 Mar 1;145:105313. doi: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2022.105313. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Rare disease data is often fragmented within multiple heterogeneous siloed regional disease registries, each containing a small number of cases. These data are particularly sensitive, as low subject counts make the identification of patients more likely, meaning registries are not inclined to share subject level data outside their registries. At the same time access to multiple rare disease datasets is important as it will lead to new research opportunities and analysis over larger cohorts. To enable this, two major challenges must therefore be overcome. The first is to integrate data at a semantic level, so that it is possible to query over registries and return results which are comparable. The second is to enable queries which do not take subject level data from the registries. To meet the first challenge, this paper presents the FAIRVASC ontology to manage data related to the rare disease anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA) associated vasculitis (AAV), which is based on the harmonisation of terms in seven European data registries. It has been built upon a set of key clinical questions developed by a team of experts in vasculitis selected from the registry sites and makes use of several standard classifications, such as Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine - Clinical Terms (SNOMED-CT) and Orphacode. It also presents the method for adding semantic meaning to AAV data across the registries using the declarative Relational to Resource Description Framework Mapping Language (R2RML). To meet the second challenge a federated querying approach is presented for accessing aggregated and pseudonymized data, and which supports analysis of AAV data in a manner which protects patient privacy. For additional security the federated querying approach is augmented with a method for auditing queries (and the uplift process) using the provenance ontology (PROV-O) to track when queries and changes occur and by whom. The main contribution of this work is the successful application of semantic web technologies and federated queries to provide a novel infrastructure that can readily incorporate additional registries, thus providing access to harmonised data relating to unprecedented numbers of patients with rare disease, while also meeting data privacy and security concerns.

PMID:35405400 | DOI:10.1016/j.compbiomed.2022.105313

Appl In Vitro Toxicol. 2022 Mar 1;8(1):2-13. doi: 10.1089/aivt.2021.0010. Epub 2022 Mar 17.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: The AOP-Wiki is the main platform for the development and storage of adverse outcome pathways (AOPs). These AOPs describe mechanistic information about toxicodynamic processes and can be used to develop effective risk assessment strategies. However, it is challenging to automatically and systematically parse, filter, and use its contents. We explored solutions to better structure the AOP-Wiki content, and to link it with chemical and biological resources. Together, this allows more detailed exploration, which can be automated.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: We converted the complete AOP-Wiki content into resource description framework (RDF) triples. We used >20 ontologies for the semantic annotation of property-object relations, including the Chemical Information Ontology, Dublin Core, and the AOP Ontology.

RESULTS: The resulting RDF contains >122,000 triples describing 158 unique properties of >15,000 unique subjects. Furthermore, >3500 link-outs were added to 12 chemical databases, and >7500 link-outs to 4 gene and protein databases. The AOP-Wiki RDF has been made available at https://aopwiki.rdf.bigcat-bioinformatics.org.

DISCUSSION: SPARQL queries can be used to answer biological and toxicological questions, such as listing measurement methods for all Key Events leading to an Adverse Outcome of interest. The full power that the use of this new resource provides becomes apparent when combining the content with external databases using federated queries.

CONCLUSION: Overall, the AOP-Wiki RDF allows new ways to explore the rapidly growing AOP knowledge and makes the integration of this database in automated workflows possible, making the AOP-Wiki more FAIR.

PMID:35388368 | PMC:PMC8978481 | DOI:10.1089/aivt.2021.0010

Behav Res Methods. 2022 Apr 4. doi: 10.3758/s13428-021-01768-2. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

For experimental research on language production, temporal precision and high quality of the recorded audio files are imperative. These requirements are a considerable challenge if language production is to be investigated online. However, online research has huge potential in terms of efficiency, ecological validity and diversity of study populations in psycholinguistic and related research, also beyond the current situation. Here, we supply confirmatory evidence that language production can be investigated online and that reaction time (RT) distributions and error rates are similar in written naming responses (using the keyboard) and typical overt spoken responses. To assess semantic interference effects in both modalities, we performed two pre-registered experiments (n = 30 each) in online settings using the participants' web browsers. A cumulative semantic interference (CSI) paradigm was employed that required naming several exemplars of semantic categories within a seemingly unrelated sequence of objects. RT is expected to increase linearly for each additional exemplar of a category. In Experiment 1, CSI effects in naming times described in lab-based studies were replicated. In Experiment 2, the responses were typed on participants' computer keyboards, and the first correct key press was used for RT analysis. This novel response assessment yielded a qualitatively similar, very robust CSI effect. Besides technical ease of application, collecting typewritten responses and automatic data preprocessing substantially reduce the work load for language production research. Results of both experiments open new perspectives for research on RT effects in language experiments across a wide range of contexts. JavaScript- and R-based implementations for data collection and processing are available for download.

PMID:35378676 | DOI:10.3758/s13428-021-01768-2

Proceedings (IEEE Int Conf Bioinformatics Biomed). 2021 Dec;2021:1818-1825. doi: 10.1109/bibm52615.2021.9669748.

ABSTRACT

The quality of patient-provider communication can predict the healthcare outcomes in patients, and therefore, training dental providers to handle the communication effort with patients is crucial. In our previous work, we developed an ontology model that can standardize and represent patient-provider communication, which can later be integrated in conversational agents as tools for dental communication training. In this study, we embark on enriching our previous model with an ontology of patient personas to portray and express types of dental patient archetypes. The Ontology of Patient Personas that we developed was rooted in terminologies from an OBO Foundry ontology and dental electronic health record data elements. We discuss how this ontology aims to enhance the aforementioned dialogue ontology and future direction in executing our model in software agents to train dental students.

PMID:35371617 | PMC:PMC8972912 | DOI:10.1109/bibm52615.2021.9669748

BMJ Open. 2022 Mar 29;12(3):e053123. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2021-053123.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: UK ambulance services have identified a concern with high users of the 999 service and have set up 'frequent callers' services, ranging from within-service management to cross-sectoral multidisciplinary case management approaches. There is little evidence about how to address the needs of this patient group.

AIM: To evaluate effectiveness, safety and efficiency of case management approaches to the care of people who frequently call the emergency ambulance service, and gain an understanding of barriers and facilitators to implementation.

OBJECTIVES: (1) Develop an understanding of predicted mechanisms of change to underpin evaluation. (2) Describe epidemiology of sustained high users of 999 services. (3) Evaluate case management approaches to the care of people who call the 999 ambulance service frequently in terms of: (i) Further emergency contacts (999, emergency department, emergency admissions to hospital) (ii) Effects on other services (iii) Adverse events (deaths, injuries, serious medical emergencies and police arrests) (iv) Costs of intervention and care (v) Patient experience of care. (4) Identify challenges and opportunities associated with using case management models, including features associated with success, and develop theories about how case management works in this population.

METHODS AND ANALYSIS: We will conduct a multisite mixed-methods evaluation of case management for people who use ambulance services frequently by using anonymised linked routine data outcomes in a 'natural experiment' cohort design, in four regional ambulance services. We will conduct interviews and focus groups with service users, commissioners and emergency and non-acute care providers. The planned start and end dates of the study are 1 April 2019 and 1 September 2022, respectively ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The study received approval from the UK Health Research Authority (Confidentiality Advisory Group reference number: 19/CAG/0195; research ethics committee reference number: 19/WA/0216).We will collate feedback from our Lived Experience Advisory Panel, the Frequent Caller National Network and Research Management Group for targeted dissemination activities.

PMID:35351702 | PMC:PMC8966558 | DOI:10.1136/bmjopen-2021-053123

J Biomed Semantics. 2022 Mar 28;13(1):11. doi: 10.1186/s13326-022-00266-4.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: In life sciences, there has been a long-standing effort of standardization and integration of reference datasets and databases. Despite these efforts, many studies data are provided using specific and non-standard formats. This hampers the capacity to reuse the studies data in other pipelines, the capacity to reuse the pipelines results in other studies, and the capacity to enrich the data with additional information. The Regulatory Circuits project is one of the largest efforts for integrating human cell genomics data to predict tissue-specific transcription factor-genes interaction networks. In spite of its success, it exhibits the usual shortcomings limiting its update, its reuse (as a whole or partially), and its extension with new data samples. To address these limitations, the resource has previously been integrated in an RDF triplestore so that TF-gene interaction networks could be generated with two SPARQL queries. However, this triplestore did not store the computed networks and did not integrate metadata about tissues and samples, therefore limiting the reuse of this dataset. In particular, it does not enable to reuse only a portion of Regulatory Circuits if a study focuses on a subset of the tissues, nor to combine the samples described in the datasets with samples from other studies. Overall, these limitations advocate for the design of a complete, flexible and reusable representation of the Regulatory Circuits dataset based on Semantic Web technologies.

RESULTS: We provide a modular RDF representation of the Regulatory Circuits, called Linked Extended Regulatory Circuits (LERC). It consists in (i) descriptions of biological and experimental context mapped to the references databases, (ii) annotations about TF-gene interactions at the sample level for 808 samples, (iii) annotations about TF-gene interactions at the tissue level for 394 tissues, (iv) metadata connecting the knowledge graphs cited above. LERC is based on a modular organisation into 1,205 RDF named graphs for representing the biological data, the sample-specific and the tissue-specific networks, and the corresponding metadata. In total it contains 3,910,794,050 triples and is available as a SPARQL endpoint.

CONCLUSION: The flexible and modular architecture of LERC supports biologically-relevant SPARQL queries. It allows an easy and fast querying of the resources related to the initial Regulatory Circuits datasets and facilitates its reuse in other studies. ASSOCIATED WEBSITE: https://regulatorycircuits-lod.genouest.org.

PMID:35346379 | DOI:10.1186/s13326-022-00266-4

Cortex. 2022 May;150:48-60. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2022.01.019. Epub 2022 Feb 26.

ABSTRACT

Semantic cognition allows us to make sense of our varied experiences, including the words we hear and the objects we see. Contemporary accounts identify multiple interacting components that underpin semantic cognition, including diverse unimodal "spoke" systems that are integrated by a heteromodal "hub", and control processes that allow us to access weakly-encoded as well as dominant aspects of knowledge to suit the circumstances. The current study examined how these dimensions of semantic cognition might be related to whole-brain-derived components (or gradients) of connectivity. A nonlinear dimensionality reduction technique was applied to resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging from 176 participants to characterise the strength of two key connectivity gradients in each individual: the principal gradient captured the separation between unimodal and heteromodal cortex, while the second gradient corresponded to the distinction between motor and visual cortex. We then examined whether the magnitude of these gradients within the semantic network was related to specific aspects of semantic cognition by examining individual differences in semantic and non-semantic tasks. Participants whose intrinsic connectivity showed a better fit with Gradient 1 had faster identification of weak semantic associations. Furthermore, a better fit with Gradient 2 was linked to faster performance on picture semantic judgements. These findings show that individual differences in aspects of semantic cognition can be related to components of connectivity within the semantic network.

PMID:35339787 | DOI:10.1016/j.cortex.2022.01.019

BMJ Open. 2022 Mar 24;12(3):e056974. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2021-056974.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To improve our understanding of cancer in adults with intellectual disabilities.

DESIGN: Population-based study using linked data about deceased adults from the Learning (Intellectual) Disabilities Mortality Review (LeDeR) programme, the national cancer registry and NHS Digital.

SETTING: England.

PARTICIPANTS: 1096 adults with intellectual disabilities identified by the LeDeR programme who died between 1 January 2017 and 31 December 2019.

OUTCOME MEASURE: Any form of cancer listed as a long-term health condition by a LeDeR reviewer or 10th edition of the International Classification of Diseases codes C00-D49 included on Parts I or II of the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death.

RESULTS: In decedents with intellectual disabilities and cancer, more than a third (35%; n=162) had cancer diagnosed via emergency presentations. Almost half (45%; n=228) of cancers were at stage IV when diagnosed. More than a third (36%; n=309) of underlying causes of deaths were of cancers of the digestive system; almost half of these (48%; n=147) were cancer of the colon, rectum or anus. Of those who died with colorectal cancer, 43% were below the age threshold for colorectal screening.

CONCLUSIONS: In decedents with intellectual disabilities, symptoms suggestive of cancer had tended to be identified most frequently as an emergency and at a late stage. There is a need for greater awareness of symptoms of cancer in this population, a lower threshold for referral by General Practitioners (GPs), accelerated access to diagnosis and treatment and consideration paid to lowering the age for colorectal screening.

PMID:35332044 | PMC:PMC8948391 | DOI:10.1136/bmjopen-2021-056974

J Pers Med. 2022 Feb 25;12(3):354. doi: 10.3390/jpm12030354.

ABSTRACT

Ageism refers to stereotyping (how we think), prejudice (how we feel), and discrimination (how we act) against people based on their age. It is a serious public health issue that can negatively impact older people's health and quality of life. The present protocol has several goals: (1) adapt the Ambivalent Ageism Scale for the general Portuguese population and healthcare professionals; (2) assess the factorial invariance of the questionnaire between general population vs. healthcare professionals; (3) evaluate the level of ageism and its predictors in the general population and evaluate the level of ageism and its predictors in healthcare professionals; (4) compare the levels of ageism between groups and the invariance between groups regarding the explanatory model of predictors of ageism. This quantitative, cross-sectional, descriptive, observational study will be developed in partnership with several Healthcare Professional Boards/Associations, National Geriatrics and Gerontology Associations, and the Universities of the Third Age Network Association. The web-based survey will be conducted on a convenience sample recruited via various social media and institutional channels. The survey consists of three questionnaires: (1) Demographic data; (2) Ambivalent Ageism Scale; (3) Palmore-Neri and Cachioni questionnaire. The methodology of this study will include translation, pilot testing, semantic adjustment, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, and multigroup analysis of the Ambivalent Ageism Scale. Data will be treated using International Business Machines Corporation (IBM®) Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software and Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS). Descriptive analysis will be conducted to assess the level of ageism in the study sample. The ageism levels between the two groups will be compared using the t-student test, and two Structural Equation Modeling will be developed to evaluate the predictors of ageism. Assessing ageism is necessary to allow healthcare professionals and policymakers to design and implement strategies to solve or reduce this issue. Findings from this study will generate knowledge relevant to healthcare and medical courses along with anti-ageism education for the Portuguese population.

PMID:35330354 | DOI:10.3390/jpm12030354

BMC Musculoskelet Disord. 2022 Mar 23;23(1):275. doi: 10.1186/s12891-022-05209-9.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: In Sweden, the incidence of a prosthetic joint infection (PJI) after a planned Total Hip Arthroplasty (THA) is 1.3%, but the worldwide incidence of PJI after THA is unknown. This study explores associations between reoperation due to PJI and potential risk factors.

METHODS: Primary elective THA surgery registered in both the Swedish Hip Arthroplasty Registry (SHAR) and the Swedish Perioperative Registry (SPOR) between 1 January 2015 and 31 December 2019 were included in this registry study, resulting in a total study population of 35,056 cases. The outcome variable was reoperation as the result of PJI within a year after surgery. Data were analysed using a multivariable Cox regression model.

RESULTS: Reoperation due to PJI occurred in 460 cases (i.e., 1.3% of the study population). Each year of age increased the risk with 2% (HR 1.02 Cl 1.01, 1.03 P = < 0.001). Compared to men, women had significantly less risk for reoperation (HR 2.17 Cl 1.79, 2.53 P = < 0.001). For patients with obesity (BMI > 30), the risk increased considerably compared to underweight, normal weight, or overweight patients (HR 1.89 Cl 1.43, 2.51 P = < 0.001). The risk also increased by 6% for every 10 min of operative time (HR 1.06 Cl 1.02, 1.09 P = < 0.001). Patients having general anaesthesia had greater risk compared to those with spinal anaesthesia (HR 1.34 Cl 1.04, 1.73 P = 0.024). Finally, a lateral approach showed higher risk of reoperation than a posterior approach (HR 1.43 Cl 1.18, 1.73 P = < 0.001).

CONCLUSION: Recognition of the several risk factors identified in this study will be important for the perioperative management of patients undergoing THA.

PMID:35321672 | DOI:10.1186/s12891-022-05209-9

Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2022 Mar 22. doi: 10.1007/s11356-022-19733-7. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Hyperlipidemia, the most common form of dyslipidemia, is the main source of cardiovascular disorders, characterized by elevated level of total cholesterol (TC), triglycerides (TG) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) with high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) in peripheral blood. It is caused by a defect in lipid metabolism in the surface of Apoprotein C-II or a defect in lipoprotein lipase activity as well as reported in genetic, dietary and environmental factors. Several electronic databases were investigated as information sources, including Google Scholar, PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, Semantic Scholar, MEDLINE and CNKI Scholar. The current review focused on the risk factors of dyslipidemia, synthetic medication with their side effects and different types of medicinal plants having significant potential for the management of hyperlipidemia. The management of hyperlipidemia mostly involves a constant decrease in lipid level using different remedial drugs like statin, fibrate, bile acid sequestrates and niacin. However, this extensive review suggested that the consequences of these drugs are arguable, due to their numerous adverse effects. The selected parts of herb plants are used intact or their extracts containing active phytoconstituents to regulate the lipids in blood level. It was also noted that the Chinese herbal medicine and combination therapy is promising for the lowering of hyperlipidemia. This review intends to provide a scientific base for future endeavors, such as in-depth biological and chemical investigations into previously researched topics.

PMID:35320475 | DOI:10.1007/s11356-022-19733-7

Neuropsychol Rev. 2022 Mar 23. doi: 10.1007/s11065-022-09540-9. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) or globus pallidum internus (GPi) improves motor functions in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) but may cause a decline in specific cognitive domains. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to assess the long-term (1-3 years) effects of STN or GPi DBS on four cognitive functions: (i) memory (delayed recall, working memory, immediate recall), (ii) executive functions including inhibition control (Color-Word Stroop test) and flexibility (phonemic verbal fluency), (iii) language (semantic verbal fluency), and (iv) mood (anxiety and depression). Medline and Web of Science were searched, and studies published before July 2021 investigating long-term changes in PD patients following DBS were included. Random-effects model meta-analyses were performed using the R software to estimate the standardized mean difference (SMD) computed as Hedges' g with 95% CI. 2522 publications were identified, 48 of which satisfied the inclusion criteria. Fourteen meta-analyses were performed including 2039 adults with a clinical diagnosis of PD undergoing DBS surgery and 271 PD controls. Our findings add new information to the existing literature by demonstrating that, at a long follow-up interval (1-3 years), both positive effects, such as a mild improvement in anxiety and depression (STN, Hedges' g = 0,34, p = 0,02), and negative effects, such as a decrease of long-term memory (Hedges' g = -0,40, p = 0,02), verbal fluency such as phonemic fluency (Hedges' g = -0,56, p < 0,0001), and specific subdomains of executive functions such as Color-Word Stroop test (Hedges' g = -0,45, p = 0,003) were observed. The level of evidence as qualified with GRADE varied from low for the pre- verses post-analysis to medium when compared to a control group.

PMID:35318587 | DOI:10.1007/s11065-022-09540-9