Moving Focus from Weight to Health. What Are the Components Used in Interventions to Improve Cardiovascular Health in Children?

Obesity in childhood impacts on many areas of the child's current and future health, including their cardiovascular health. To date many attempts have been made to design interventions to tackle excess childhood weight but with limited success. We aimed to establish the components common to interventions in children that improve cardiovascular health parameters

Managing Fever in adults with possible or confirmed COVID-19 in Primary Care

The current evidence does not support routine antipyretic administration to treat fever in acute respiratory infections and COVID-19. Many protocols and professionals advise patients to self-medicate for Covid-19 using antipyretics (e.g. paracetamol and ibuprofen). The rapid and widespread purchase of antipyretic medication over-the-counter has led to temporary shortages

Verification bias

This article is part of the Catalogue of Bias series. We present a description of verification bias, and outline its potential impact on research studies and the preventive steps to minimise its risk. We also present teaching slides in the online supplementary file. Verification bias (sometimes referred to as 'work-up bias') concerns the test(s) used to confirm a diagnosis within a diagnostic accuracy study. Verification bias occurs when only a proportion of the study participants receive confirmation of the diagnosis by the reference standard test, or if some participants receive a different reference standard test

Shear wave elastography investigation of multifidus stiffness in individuals with low back pain

© 2019 Elsevier Ltd The purpose of this study was to investigate differences in passive muscular stiffness between the superficial multifidus (SM)and deep multifidus (DM), and to compare their passive and active stiffness in individuals with low back pain (LBP) and asymptomatic individuals. Fifteen LBP individuals and 15 asymptomatic individuals were recruited. Passive stiffness of the SM and DM was measured bilaterally using sheer wave elastography (SWE) with participants lying prone. Active stiffness was measured for the SM during trunk extension, and the contraction ratio was calculated. DM displayed higher passive muscular stiffness than SM in both the asymptomatic and LBP groups (14.41 ± 2.62 and 15.40 ± 2.77 kPa respectively; t = 7.765 and t = 3.864, p < 0.05). Individuals with LBP exhibited higher passive muscular stiffness of SM (LBP: 10.15 ± 4.21, asymptomatic: 6.84 ± 1.69 kPa; t = 3.002, p < 0.05)and a lower contraction ratio (LBP: 1.54 ± 0.47, asymptomatic: 2.65 ± 1.36 kPa; p < 0.05) compared to the asymptomatic group. The findings support a differentiation in passive muscular stiffness between SM and DM and provide evidence for an alteration in muscular stiffness at rest in individuals with LBP. The lower increase of muscular stiffness with contraction observed for those with LBP may reflect a deficit in activation of the multifidus