Lifestyles of patients with functional psychosis compared to those of a sample of the regional general population: findings from a study in a community mental health service of the Veneto Region, Italy

Unhealthy lifestyles contribute, with other risk factors, to the high prevalence of mortality and physical comorbidity among mental patients compared to the general population. We collected data on the lifestyles of 193 subjects with psychosis in contact with a Community Mental Health Service in north-eastern Italy and compared them with a representative sample (total: 3219 subjects) of the general population of the same region. Diet, exercise, smoking and alcohol consumption were worse in mental patients. A higher percentage of patients was overweight or obese. The associations between socio-demographic and lifestyles variables showed that older patients exercise less, female patients tend to smoke and use alcohol less, while more educated patients tend to have higher alcohol consumption levels. Mental patients have unhealthier lifestyles and they appear to be more refractory to recommendations than the general population, indicating the necessity of specific health promotion programmes in this population

Supervised walking groups to increase physical activity in elderly women with and without hypertension: effect on pulse wave velocity.

To date, only a few studies have evaluated the effect of physical activity on PWVcf in the elderly. In the current study, 21 community-dwelling women, with a mean age of 68.19\ub15.72 years and a mean BMI of 28.63\ub14.69\u2009kg\u2009m(-2), participated in moderate physical activity sessions for 1\u2009h per day and 2 days each week under the supervision of a qualified physical education instructor for a total of 24 weeks. At the beginning of the study, at 3 months and at 6 months, the study participants' body weight, waist circumference, sagittal abdominal diameter (SAD) and body composition by dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) were recorded along with the participants' Physical Activity Scale for the Elderly questionnaire. Total low-density-lipoprotein and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol; triglycerides (TGs) and HbA1c; blood pressure (BP); and arterial stiffness, as determined by carotid-femoral and carotid-radial pulse wave velocity (PWVcf, PWVcr), were also assessed. During the follow-up period, the waist and SAD significantly decreased, whereas fat-free mass, BMI and weight did not decrease. A significant decline in TGs was observed. A significant decline in PWVcf, even after adjusting for mean arterial pressure, heart rate triglycerides and waist diameter changes, was observed. In a sub-analysis that examined the effect of physical activity separately in the hypertensive and normotensive subjects, we observed a significant decline in PWVcf in the hypertensive subjects and a nonsignificant tendency in the normotensive subjects. The data showed an association between light aerobic physical activity in the elderly and decreased PWVcf, even after adjusting for changes in systolic BP (SBP), TGs and central adiposity. These results suggest a beneficial effect of moderate physical activity on subclinical vascular damage, particularly in hypertensive subjects

In-flight polarization angle calibration for LiteBIRD: blind challenge and cosmological implications

International audienceWe present a demonstration of the in-flight polarization angle calibration for the JAXA/ISAS second strategic large class mission, LiteBIRD, and estimate its impact on the measurement of the tensor-to-scalar ratio parameter, r, using simulated data. We generate a set of simulated sky maps with CMB and polarized foreground emission, and inject instrumental noise and polarization angle offsets to the 22 (partially overlapping) LiteBIRD frequency channels. Our in-flight angle calibration relies on nulling the EB cross correlation of the polarized signal in each channel. This calibration step has been carried out by two independent groups with a blind analysis, allowing an accuracy of the order of a few arc-minutes to be reached on the estimate of the angle offsets. Both the corrected and uncorrected multi-frequency maps are propagated through the foreground cleaning step, with the goal of computing clean CMB maps. We employ two component separation algorithms, the Bayesian-Separation of Components and Residuals Estimate Tool (B-SeCRET), and the Needlet Internal Linear Combination (NILC). We find that the recovered CMB maps obtained with algorithms that do not make any assumptions about the foreground properties, such as NILC, are only mildly affected by the angle miscalibration. However, polarization angle offsets strongly bias results obtained with the parametric fitting method. Once the miscalibration angles are corrected by EB nulling prior to the component separation, both component separation algorithms result in an unbiased estimation of the r parameter. While this work is motivated by the conceptual design study for LiteBIRD, its framework can be broadly applied to any CMB polarization experiment. In particular, the combination of simulation plus blind analysis provides a robust forecast by taking into account not only detector sensitivity but also systematic effects