On-ice measures of external load in relation to match outcome in elite female ice hockey

The aim of this study is to investigate the differences between select on-ice measures using inertial movement sensors based on match outcome, and to determine changes in player movements across three periods of play. Data were collected during one season of competition in elite female ice hockey players (N = 20). Two-factor mixed effects ANOVAs for each skating position were performed to investigate the differences in match outcome, as well as differences in external load measures during the course of a match. For match outcome, there was a small difference for forwards in explosive ratio (p = 0.02, ES = 0.26) and percentage high force strides (p = 0.04, ES = 0.50). When viewed across three periods of a match, moderate differences were found in skating load (p = 0.01, ES = 0.75), explosive efforts (p = 0.04, ES = 0.63), and explosive ratio (p = 0.002, ES = 0.87) for forwards, and in PlayerLoad (p = 0.01, ES = 0.70), explosive efforts (p = 0.04, ES = 0.63), and explosive ratio (p = 0.01, ES = 0.70) for defense. When examining the relevance to match outcome, external load measures associated with intensity appear to be an important factor among forwards. These results may be helpful for coaches and sport scientists when making decisions pertaining to training and competition strategies.York University Librarie

Prioritisation and Network Analysis of Crohn's Disease Susceptibility Genes

Recent Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) have revealed numerous Crohn's disease susceptibility genes and a key challenge now is in understanding how risk polymorphisms in associated genes might contribute to development of this disease. For a gene to contribute to disease phenotype, its risk variant will likely adversely communicate with a variety of other gene products to result in dysregulation of common signaling pathways. A vital challenge is to elucidate pathways of potentially greatest influence on pathological behaviour, in a manner recognizing how multiple relevant genes may yield integrative effect. In this work we apply mathematical analysis of networks involving the list of recently described Crohn's susceptibility genes, to prioritise pathways in relation to their potential development of this disease. Prioritisation was performed by applying a text mining and a diffusion based method (GRAIL, GPEC). Prospective biological significance of the resulting prioritised list of proteins is highlighted by changes in their gene expression levels in Crohn's patients intestinal tissue in comparison with healthy donors.United States. Army Research Office (Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies Contract W911NF-09-D-0001

Conversations about financial hardship should not be off limits.

Poverty is both a cause and an outcome of mental health distress. Poverty-driven household food insecurity directly affects health outcomes including obesity and diabetes, mental health, and leads to poor health condition management, increased health care use and hospital admissions, and premature death. In the UK, in the context of the current and looming cost of living crisis it is sobering to reflect on that fact that at the start of the COVID pandemic it was estimated that UK households in the highest deprivation quintile would need to spend 65% of their household income to follow the Eatwell plate, healthy eating guidelines

Using technology to promote social connectedness: Insights from the T&Scon project

Loneliness and social isolation can affect anyone, with policymakers recognising the impact of isolation on individual wellbeing and public health. In 2018 the Scottish Government set out its approach to tackling social isolation in A Connected Scotland, a national strategy to achieve a Scotland “where individuals and communities are more connected, and everyone has the opportunity to develop meaningful relationships regardless of age, stage, circumstances, or identity.” A priority of the strategy is to create opportunities for people to connect, with a specific commitment to work with older age groups to “understand how digital technology can add value to their lives in a way that is meaningful”, informing wider work to deliver the Scottish Government’s Digital Strategy for Scotland. The Technology and Social Connectedness (T&Scon) project explored the potential of technology to support social connectedness for adults living in Scotland, producing a toolkit to provide guidance for individuals and organisations on the use of digital technology in building and maintaining social connections. This briefing paper, drawing on the project’s key findings and recommendations, provides a summary of key information for policymakers and practitioners in Scotland, and further afield. Its findings will be of particular interest to those who are developing new ways of keeping in touch, as the risk of social isolation becomes more pronounced in the wake of the global coronavirus pandemic. Key findings A wide range of UK and international technology-based and technology-enabled services exist, designed to support social connectedness, targeted at different adult age user groups. Most technologies used in this way are intended for people living at home although there are technologies in use and in development for the care home sector. Data from the Healthy Ageing in Scotland (HAGIS) study revealed patterns of social connectedness among people over the age of 50 living across Scotland. Patterns of technology use across different groups suggest that those who are least socially connected may also be those least likely to utilise technology to connect with others. Careful evaluation of the target user group is an important factor in the successful adoption of technology-based solutions, breaking down assumptions about who uses technology and who doesn’t, and understanding the risks and opportunities of using technology for this purpose.Briefing based on: T&SCon: Technology and Social Connectedness, Final Report, available online at http://www.tec.sco

Measurement of Harm Outcomes in Older Adults after Hospital Discharge: Reliability and Validity

Objectives. Defining and validating a measure of safety contributes to further validation of clinical measures. The objective was to define and examine the psychometric properties of the outcome “incidents of harm.” Methods. The Incident of Harm Caregiver Questionnaire was administered to caregivers of older adults discharged from hospital by telephone. Caregivers completed daily logs for one month and medical charts were examined. Results. Test-retest reliability (n = 38) was high for the occurrence of an incident of harm (yes/no; kappa = 1.0) and the type of incident (agreement = 100%). Validation against daily logs found no disagreement regarding occurrence or types of incidents. Validation with medical charts found no disagreement regarding incident occurrence and disagreement in half regarding incident type. Discussion. The data support the Incident of Harm Caregiver Questionnaire as a reliable and valid estimation of incidents for this sample and are important to researchers as a method to measure safety when validating clinical measures

Falling treatment uptake in the hepatitis C care cascade is a growing threat to achieving elimination

Most high-income countries are not on track to achieve the World Health Organization hepatitis C elimination targets. As elimination programmes assess growing proportions of patients in community-based pathways, rates of treatment uptake may fall. We aimed to identify factors associated with DAA treatment uptake and measure changes in their prevalence over time. We performed a time-to-treatment analysis on 2728 patients approved for hepatitis C Direct-Acting Antiviral treatment in the North Central London region between January 2016 and October 2019. We investigated the association between treatment uptake and factors including assessment/treatment setting (hospital, drug service or prison), patient age, gender, injection drug use, harmful alcohol use, cirrhosis status and previous treatment. The likelihood of treatment uptake was reduced by three independent risk factors. These included assessment setting: prison-based or drug-service pathways (aHR 0.29 or 0.81 vs. hospital outpatient pathway, 95% CI 0.21-0.40 and 0.70-0.94 respectively, p<0.001); being UK-born (aHR 0.89 vs. non-UK born, 0.82-0.98, p=0.01); and history of harmful alcohol use (aHR 0.84 vs. no history, 0.72-0.99, p=0.04). The average number of these risk factors for not starting treatment per patient increased over time (R2 =0.66 p<0.001). Independent of these, there was an additional 5% reduction in rate of treatment initiation in each successive year of the programme (aHR 0.95, 0.91-0.99, p=0.02). In conclusion, d isengagement from care before treatment uptake was found to be a growing threat to elimination. Despite provision of community-based test-to-cure pathways, there are persistent barriers to treatment uptake and these are increasing over time

Mitigating the risk of Zika virus contamination of raw materials and cell lines in the manufacture of biologicals

Ensuring the virological safety of biologicals is challenging due to the risk of viral contamination of raw materials and cell banks, and exposure during in-process handling to known and/or emerging viral pathogens. Viruses may contaminate raw materials and biologicals intended for human or veterinary use and remain undetected until appropriate testing measures are employed. The outbreak and expansive spread of the mosquito-borne flavivirus Zika virus (ZIKV) poses challenges to screening human- and animal -derived products used in the manufacture of biologicals. Here, we report the results of an in vitro study where detector cell lines were challenged with African and Asian lineages of ZIKV. We demonstrate that this pathogen is robustly detectable by in vitro assay, thereby providing assurance of detection of ZIKV, and in turn underpinning the robustness of in vitro virology assays in safety testing of biologicals