Development and initial testing of the person-centred health care for older adults survey.

Background: Health services are encouraged to adopt a strong person-centered approach to the provision of care and services for older people. The aim of this project was to establish a user-friendly, psychometrically valid, and reliable measure of healthcare staff’s practice, attitudes, and beliefs regarding person-centered healthcare. Methods: Item reduction (factor analysis) of a previously developed “benchmarking person-centred care” survey, followed by psychometric evaluations of the internal consistency reliability and construct validity, was conducted. The initial survey was completed by 1,428 healthcare staff from 17 health services across Victoria, Australia. Results: After removing 17 items from the previously developed “benchmarking person-centred care” survey, the revised 31-item survey (Person-Centred Health Care for Older Adults Survey) attained eight factors that explain 62.7% of the total variance with a Cronbach’s α coefficient of 0.91, indicating excellent internal consistency. Expert consultation confirmed that the revised survey had content validity. Conclusions: The results indicated that the Person-Centred Health Care for Older Adults Survey is a user-friendly, psychometrically valid, and reliable measure of staff perceptions of person-centered healthcare for use in hospital settings

Spatio-temporal patterns in pelagic fish school abundance and size: a study of pelagic fish aggregation using acoustic surveys from Senegal to Shetland

As part of the EU funded project CLUSTER, databases were constructed of pelagic fish schools identified during a series of acoustic surveys in the NW North Sea, Bay of Biscay, western Mediterranean and Agean Seas and off Senegal. Among other descriptors, the databases usually included the height, length and energy (S,,) of each school. The number of schoo!.s per 1 nmi EDSU was also recorded. The relationship between these descriptors and a range of external variables (eg bottom depth, time of day and location) were examined using a suite of multiple regression models. The results indicate strong non-linear dependencies in some of the surveys on time of day and water depth. School count per EDSU tended to be high during the middle part of the day and lower at dawn and dusk. Furthermore, the ‘shape’ of this dependence on time of day is non-constant and changes with location and year. Possible explanations for such patterns and the differences and similarities between the survey areas will be discussed, as well as the impact of these findings on the conduct and analysis of acoustic surveys. In addition, we have examined the spatio-temporal pattern of sampling in each of the survey series and we will present an analysis of the impact of survey design on the potential for such spatio-temporal modelling studies

Development of a genotyping microarray for Usher syndrome

BACKGROUND: Usher syndrome, a combination of retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and sensorineural hearing loss with or without vestibular dysfunction, displays a high degree of clinical and genetic heterogeneity. Three clinical subtypes can be distinguished, based on the age of onset and severity of the hearing impairment, and the presence or absence of vestibular abnormalities. Thus far, eight genes have been implicated in the syndrome, together comprising 347 protein-coding exons. METHODS: To improve DNA diagnostics for patients with Usher syndrome, we developed a genotyping microarray based on the arrayed primer extension (APEX) method. Allele-specific oligonucleotides corresponding to all 298 Usher syndrome-associated sequence variants known to date, 76 of which are novel, were arrayed. RESULTS: Approximately half of these variants were validated using original patient DNAs, which yielded an accuracy of >98%. The efficiency of the Usher genotyping microarray was tested using DNAs from 370 unrelated European and American patients with Usher syndrome. Sequence variants were identified in 64/140 (46%) patients with Usher syndrome type I, 45/189 (24%) patients with Usher syndrome type II, 6/21 (29%) patients with Usher syndrome type III and 6/20 (30%) patients with atypical Usher syndrome. The chip also identified two novel sequence variants, c.400C>T (p.R134X) in PCDH15 and c.1606T>C (p.C536S) in USH2A. CONCLUSION: The Usher genotyping microarray is a versatile and affordable screening tool for Usher syndrome. Its efficiency will improve with the addition of novel sequence variants with minimal extra costs, making it a very useful first-pass screening tool

Common TNF-α, IL-1β, PAI-1, uPA, CD14 and TLR4 polymorphisms are not associated with disease severity or outcome from Gram negative sepsis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Several studies have investigated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in candidate genes associated with sepsis and septic shock with conflicting results. Only few studies have combined the analysis of multiple SNPs in the same population.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Clinical data and DNA from consecutive adult patients with culture proven Gram negative bacteremia admitted to a Danish hospital between 2000 and 2002. Analysis for commonly described SNPs of tumor necrosis-α, (TNF-α), interleukin-1β (IL-1β), plasminogen activator-1 (PAI-1), urokinase plasminogen activator (uPA), CD14 and toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) was done.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Of 319 adults, 74% had sepsis, 19% had severe sepsis and 7% were in septic shock. No correlation between severity or outcome of sepsis was observed for the analyzed SNPs of TNF-α, IL-1β, PAI-1, uPA, CD14 or TLR-4. In multivariate Cox proportional hazard regression analysis, increasing age, polymicrobial infection and haemoglobin levels were associated with in-hospital mortality.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We did not find any association between TNF-α, IL-1β, PAI-1, uPA, CD14 and TLR4 polymorphisms and outcome of Gram negative sepsis. Other host factors appear to be more important than the genotypes studied here in determining the severity and outcome of Gram negative sepsis.</p

A Novel Form of Memory for Auditory Fear Conditioning at a Low-Intensity Unconditioned Stimulus

Fear is one of the most potent emotional experiences and is an adaptive component of response to potentially threatening stimuli. On the other hand, too much or inappropriate fear accounts for many common psychiatric problems. Cumulative evidence suggests that the amygdala plays a central role in the acquisition, storage and expression of fear memory. Here, we developed an inducible striatal neuron ablation system in transgenic mice. The ablation of striatal neurons in the adult brain hardly affected the auditory fear learning under the standard condition in agreement with previous studies. When conditioned with a low-intensity unconditioned stimulus, however, the formation of long-term fear memory but not short-tem memory was impaired in striatal neuron-ablated mice. Consistently, the ablation of striatal neurons 24 h after conditioning with the low-intensity unconditioned stimulus, when the long-term fear memory was formed, diminished the retention of the long-term memory. Our results reveal a novel form of the auditory fear memory depending on striatal neurons at the low-intensity unconditioned stimulus

The Role of Host Genetics in Susceptibility to Influenza: A Systematic Review

Background: The World Health Organization has identified studies of the role of host genetics on susceptibility to severe influenza as a priority. A systematic review was conducted to summarize the current state of evidence on the role of host genetics in susceptibility to influenza (PROSPERO registration number: CRD42011001380). Methods and Findings: PubMed, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library, and OpenSIGLE were searched using a pre-defined strategy for all entries up to the date of the search. Two reviewers independently screened the title and abstract of 1,371 unique articles, and 72 full text publications were selected for inclusion. Mouse models clearly demonstrate that host genetics plays a critical role in susceptibility to a range of human and avian influenza viruses. The Mx genes encoding interferon inducible proteins are the best studied but their relevance to susceptibility in humans is unknown. Although the MxA gene should be considered a candidate gene for further study in humans, over 100 other candidate genes have been proposed. There are however no data associating any of these candidate genes to susceptibility in humans, with the only published study in humans being under-powered. One genealogy study presents moderate evidence of a heritable component to the risk of influenza-associated death, and while the marked familial aggregation of H5N1 cases is suggestive of host genetic factors, this remains unproven. Conclusion: The fundamental question ‘‘Is susceptibility to severe influenza in humans heritable?’ ’ remains unanswered. No

Ageing and Ethnicity

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The concept of health in older age: views of older people and health professionals

Échelle(s) : Échelle : 1/600Numérisé par le partenaireAppartient à l’ensemble documentaire : BbLevt0Numérisé par le partenair