Symptoms, impairment and illness intrusiveness – their relationship with depression in women with CFS/ME

Chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) is an illness in which physiological and psychological factors are believed to interact to cause and maintain CFS/ME in an individual predisposed to it. The various symptoms and impairments associated with CFS/ME have a large impact on quality of life. The purpose of the present study was to identify the extent to which the core symptoms and impairments associated with CFS/ME relate to depression in women with CFS/ME, and to discover whether these relationships were mediated by illness intrusiveness. CFS/ME was found to be a highly intrusive illness, intruding into more life domains and to a greater degree than other illnesses. The effects of both symptoms and impairment on depression were, in part, mediated by illness intrusiveness. Although symptoms severity and impairment had both direct and indirect effects on depression, illness intrusiveness was the strongest predictor of depression

On the impulse criterion for entrainment of coarse grains in air

River hydrodynamicsTurbulent open channel flow and transport phenomen

Instantaneous pressure measurements on a spherical grain under threshold flow conditions

River morphodynamics and sediment transportMechanics of sediment transpor

Incipient rolling of coarse particles in water flows: a dynamical perspective

River morphodynamics and sediment transportMechanics of sediment transpor

Nucleotide supplementation: a randomised double-blind placebo controlled trial of IntestAidIB in people with Irritable Bowel Syndrome [ISRCTN67764449]

Work with infants has shown that the incidence and duration of diarrhoea is lower when nucleotide supplementation is given, and animal work shows that villi height and crypt depth in the intestine is increased as a result of dietary nucleotides. Dietary nucleotides may be semi-essential under conditions of ill-health, poor diet or stress. Since people with Irritable Bowel Syndrome tend to fulfil these conditions, we tested the hypothesis that symptoms would be improved with dietary nucleotide supplementation on thirty-seven people with a diagnosis of Irritable Bowel. The study found that dietary nucleotide supplementation improved some of the symptoms of irritable bowel above baseline and placebo level

An assessment of prospective memory retrieval in women with chronic fatigue syndrome using a virtual-reality environment: an initial study

People with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) have increased rates of depression, anxiety, and illness intrusiveness; they may also suffer from cognitive problems such as retrospective memory (RM) deficits and concentration difficulties that can stem from diminished information-processing capability. We predicted that this diminished capacity may also lead to deficits in other cognitive functions, such as prospective memory (ProM). Event-, time-, and activity-based ProM was assessed in 11 women with CFS and 12 healthy women using a computer-generated virtual environment (VE). RM was assessed using a free-recall test, and subjective assessment of both ProM and RM was assessed by questionnaire. Groups were equivalent in age and measures of IQ. People with CFS performed slightly worse than healthy controls on both the event- and time-based ProM measures, although these were not statistically significant. However, the CFS group performed significantly worse than the healthy controls on both the free recall-task and on subjective assessment of both RM and ProM. Women with CFS do have some subtle decrements in memory, particularly RM. However, it is possible that the decrements found in the present sample would be greater in real life. Further studies utilizing both healthy controls and illness controls are now needed to ascertain how sensitive the VE measure is and to inform the development of tasks in the VE that place progressively increasing demands on working memory capacity

Summarizing and measuring development activity

Software developers pursue a wide range of activities as part of their work, and making sense of what they did in a given time frame is far from trivial as evidenced by the large number of awareness and coordination tools that have been developed in recent years. To inform tool design for making sense of the information available about a developer's activity, we conducted an empirical study with 156 GitHub users to investigate what information they would expect in a summary of development activity, how they would measure development activity, and what factors in uence how such activity can be condensed into textual summaries or numbers. We found that unexpected events are as important as expected events in summaries of what a developer did, and that many developers do not believe in measuring development activity. Among the factors that in uence summarization and measurement of development activity, we identified development experience and programming languages.Christoph Treude, Fernando Figueira Filho, Uirá Kulesz

Words fail me: the verbal IQ deficit in inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome

Background: Many chronic illnesses are accompanied by impaired cognitive functioning. In people with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), there is some research to suggest a decrement in verbal IQ (VIQ), when compared to people with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and healthy controls. Although this is an important finding, it is necessary to ensure that such deficits are not due to methodological problems such as the failure to take into account pre-morbid functioning. Methods: A total of 88 people (IBD, N 29; IBS, N 29; Controls, N 30) completed the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI), the Wechsler Test of Adult Reading (WATR), the Trait Rumination Questionnaire (TRQ), the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), and the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12). Results: We found evidence of a VIQ decrement in both IBD and IBS groups when measured against both healthy controls and against their own pre-morbid IQ scores (WTAR-Predicted WAIS-III IQ measures). However, the decrement was larger (and of clinical significance) in the IBD group but not in the IBS group. Conclusion: Some tentative evidence is presented which suggests that poor VIQ performance may be due in part to interference from excessive rumination

Psychosocial factors involved in memory and cognitive failures in people with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome

Background: Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) is characterized by persistent emotional, mental, and physical fatigue accompanied by a range of neurological, autonomic, neuroendocrine, immune, and sleep problems. Research has shown that psychosocial factors such as anxiety and depression as well as the symptoms of the illness, have a significant impact on the quality of life of people with ME/CFS. In addition, individuals may suffer from deficits in memory and concentration. This study set out to explore the relationships between variables which have been found to contribute to cognitive performance, as measured by prospective and retrospective memory, and cognitive failures. Methods: Eighty-seven people with ME/CFS answered questionnaires measuring fatigue, depression, anxiety, social support, and general self-efficacy. These were used in a correlational design (multiple regression) to predict cognitive function (self-ratings on prospective and retrospective memory), and cognitive failures. Results: Our study found that fatigue, depression, and general self-efficacy were directly associated with cognitive failures and retrospective (but not prospective) memory. Conclusion: Although it was not possible in this study to determine the cause of the deficits, the literature in this area leads us to suggest that although the pathophysiological mechanisms of ME/CFS are unclear, abnormalities in the immune system, including proinflammatory cytokines, can lead to significant impairments in cognition. We suggest that fatigue and depression may be a result of the neurobiological effects of ME/CFS and in addition, that the neurobiological effects of the illness may give rise to both fatigue and cognitive deficits independently