30 research outputs found
The tailored activity program (TAP) to address behavioral disturbances in frontotemporal dementia: a feasibility and pilot study
Purpose: To explore the feasibility of implementing the Tailored Activity Program with a cohort of people with frontotemporal dementia and their carers (dyads). Methods: The Tailored Activity Program is an occupational therapy based intervention that involves working collaboratively with family carers and prescribes personalized activities for behavioral management in people with dementia. Twenty dyads randomized into the study (Tailored Activity Program: n = 9; Control: n = 11) were assessed at baseline and 4-months. Qualitative analyzes evaluated feasibility and acceptability of the program for the frontotemporal dementia cohort, and quantitative analyzes (linear mixed model analyzes, Spearmanâs rho correlations) measured the impact of the program on the dyads. Results: The Tailored Activity Program was an acceptable intervention for the frontotemporal dementia dyads. Qualitative analyses identified five themes: âcarer perceived benefitsâ, âcarer readiness to changeâ, âstrategies used by carer to engage person with dementiaâ, âbarriers to the Tailored Activity Program uptake/implementationâ, and âperson with dementia engagementâ. Quantitative outcomes showed an overall reduction of behavioral symptoms (F 18.34 = 8.073, p = 0.011) and maintenance of functional performance in the person with dementia (F 18.03 = 0.375, p = 0.548). Conclusions: This study demonstrates the potential for using an activity-based intervention such as the Tailored Activity Program in frontotemporal dementia. Service providers should recognize that while people with frontotemporal dementia present with challenging issues, tailored therapies may support their function and reduce their behavioral symptoms.Implications for rehabilitation The Tailored Activity Program is an occupational therapy based intervention that involves prescribing personalized activities for behavioral management in dementia. The Tailored Activity Program is an acceptable and feasible intervention approach to address some of the unique behavioral and functional impairments inherent in frontotemporal dementia
Enhancing caregiversâ understanding of dementia and tailoring activities in frontotemporal dementia:two case studies
PURPOSE: To describe the intervention process and results of the Tailored Activities Program (TAP) in two people diagnosed with Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD). METHOD: TAP is an occupational therapy (OT) community-based intervention program that prescribes personalised activities to reduce difficult behaviours of dementia. The OT works with carers over a 4-month period (assessment, activity prescription, and generalisation of strategies). Study measures were collected (blind researcher) pre- and post- intervention: cognition, functional disability, behavioural symptoms, and Caregiver Confidence and Vigilance. RESULTS: A 51-year-old woman with behavioural-variant FTD could consistently engage in more activities post-intervention, with scores indicating improvements to behaviour, function, and caregiver confidence. A 63-year-old man with semantic variant FTD engaged well in the prescribed activities, with scores reflecting reduced carer distress regarding challenging behaviours and improved caregiver vigilance. CONCLUSIONS: TAP is efficacious in FTD, allowing for differences in approach for FTD subtype, where behavioural symptoms are very severe and pervasive
Iron Behaving Badly: Inappropriate Iron Chelation as a Major Contributor to the Aetiology of Vascular and Other Progressive Inflammatory and Degenerative Diseases
The production of peroxide and superoxide is an inevitable consequence of
aerobic metabolism, and while these particular "reactive oxygen species" (ROSs)
can exhibit a number of biological effects, they are not of themselves
excessively reactive and thus they are not especially damaging at physiological
concentrations. However, their reactions with poorly liganded iron species can
lead to the catalytic production of the very reactive and dangerous hydroxyl
radical, which is exceptionally damaging, and a major cause of chronic
inflammation. We review the considerable and wide-ranging evidence for the
involvement of this combination of (su)peroxide and poorly liganded iron in a
large number of physiological and indeed pathological processes and
inflammatory disorders, especially those involving the progressive degradation
of cellular and organismal performance. These diseases share a great many
similarities and thus might be considered to have a common cause (i.e.
iron-catalysed free radical and especially hydroxyl radical generation). The
studies reviewed include those focused on a series of cardiovascular, metabolic
and neurological diseases, where iron can be found at the sites of plaques and
lesions, as well as studies showing the significance of iron to aging and
longevity. The effective chelation of iron by natural or synthetic ligands is
thus of major physiological (and potentially therapeutic) importance. As
systems properties, we need to recognise that physiological observables have
multiple molecular causes, and studying them in isolation leads to inconsistent
patterns of apparent causality when it is the simultaneous combination of
multiple factors that is responsible. This explains, for instance, the
decidedly mixed effects of antioxidants that have been observed, etc...Comment: 159 pages, including 9 Figs and 2184 reference
Imbalanced regression using regressor-classifier ensembles
Acknowledgements: This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) UK through the ACTION on cancer Grant (EP/R022925/1, EP/R022941/1). The computational resources were provided by the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) at the Chalmers University of Technology partially funded by the Swedish Research Council through Grant Agreement No. 2018-05973. Prof. King acknowledges the support of the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation Wallenberg Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP). N. F. Grinberg would like to acknowledge funding from the Wellcome Trust (WT107881) and the MRC (MC_UU_00002/4).AbstractWe present an extension to the federated ensemble regression using classification algorithm, an ensemble learning algorithm for regression problems which leverages the distribution of the samples in a learning set to achieve improved performance. We evaluated the extension using four classifiers and four regressors, two discretizers, and 119 responses from a wide variety of datasets in different domains. Additionally, we compared our algorithm to two resampling methods aimed at addressing imbalanced datasets. Our results show that the proposed extension is highly unlikely to perform worse than the base case, and on average outperforms the two resampling methods with significant differences in performance.</jats:p