Using a psychosocial subgroup assignment to predict sickness absence in a working population with neck and back pain

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The overall objective was to evaluate the predictive validity of a subgroup classification based on the Swedish version of the MPI, the MPI-S, among gainfully employed workers with neck pain (NP) and/or low back pain (LBP) during a follow-up period of 18 and 36 months.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This is a prospective cohort study that is part of a larger longitudinal multi-centre study entitled Work and Health in the Process and Engineering Industries (AHA). The attempt was to classify individuals at risk for developing chronic disabling NP and LBP. This is the first study using the MPI-questionnaire in a working population with NP and LBP.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Dysfunctional individuals (DYS) demonstrated more statistically significant sickness absence compared to adaptive copers (AC) after 36 months. DYS also had a threefold increase in the risk ratio of long-term sickness absence at 18 months. Interpersonally distressed (ID) subgroup showed overall more sickness absence compared to the AC subgroup at the 36-month follow-up and had a twofold increase in the risk ratio of long-term sickness absence at 18 months. There was a significant difference in bodily pain, mental and physical health for ID and DYS subgroups compared to the AC group at both follow-ups.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The present study shows that this multidimensional approach to the classification of individuals based on psychological and psychosocial characteristics can distinguish different groups in gainfully employed working population with NP/LBP. The results in this study confirm the predictive validity of the MPI-S subgroup classification system.</p

Automated lexical analysis of interviews with individuals with schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a chronic mental disorder that contributes to poor function and quality of life. We are aiming to design objective assessment tools of schizophrenia. In earlier work, we investigated non-verbal quantitative cues for this purpose. In this paper, we explore linguistic cues, extracted from interviews with patients with schizophrenia and healthy control subjects, conducted by trained psychologists. Specifically, we analyzed the interviews of 47 patients and 24 healthy age-matched control subjects. We applied automated speech recognition and linguistic tools to capture the linguistic categories of emotional and psychological states. Based on those linguistic categories, we applied a binary classifier to distinguish patients from matched control subjects, leading to a classification accuracy of about 86% (by leave-one-out cross-validation); this result seems to suggest that patients with schizophrenia tend to talk about different topics and use different words. We provided an in-depth discussion of the most salient lexical features, which may provide some insights into the linguistic alterations in patients.NRF (Natl Research Foundation, S’pore)NMRC (Natl Medical Research Council, S’pore)Accepted versio

Fatigue in Patients with Chronic Hepatitis B Living in North America: Results from the Hepatitis B Research Network (HBRN)

BACKGROUND: Fatigue is a common symptom of liver disease but not well-characterized in patients with chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV). AIMS: We assessed the rate of fatigue using a validated instrument in patients with HBV and identified demographic, virologic, and clinical features associated with fatigue in a cross-sectional cohort study from the Hepatitis B Research Network (HBRN). METHODS: Participants were English and Spanish-speaking adults with chronic HBV who were not pregnant nor on treatment. Fatigue was measured using the PROMIS(®) Fatigue 7-item Short Form. RESULTS: The sample included 948 adults: median age 42; 51% female; 71% Asian; 74% college educated; 77% employed; 41% inactive HBV carriers; 36% with active chronic disease; and 2% with advanced fibrosis, defined as AST-Platelet Ratio Index (APRI) > 1.50. Patients with chronic HBV had a mean fatigue T-score of 46.8 ±SD=7.9, compared to a mean fatigue T-score of 50.0 ± 10 in the U.S. general population (p<.0001). In univariate analyses, greater fatigue was associated with demographic and clinical features such as female sex, lower income, more comorbidities, higher APRI score, and poorer mental health (p<0.05). In multivariate analysis, female sex (p<.001), poorer mental health (p <.001), APRI score (p=.005) and history of diabetes (p=.039) were the strongest independent predictors. CONCLUSIONS: The frequency of fatigue in this large cohort of North American chronic HBV patients may be equal to or lower than that reported in the U.S. general population. Patients with advanced fibrosis, more comorbidities, and poorer mental health report worse fatigue