The potential to improve ascertainment and intervention to reduce smoking in Primary Care: a cross sectional survey

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Well established clinical guidelines recommend that systematic ascertainment of smoking status and intervention to promote cessation in all smokers should be a fundamental component of all health care provision. This study aims to establish the completeness and accuracy of smoking status recording in patients' primary care medical records and the level of interest in receiving smoking cessation support amongst primary care patients in an inner city UK population.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Postal questionnaires were sent to all patients aged over 18 from 24 general practices in Nottingham UK who were registered as smokers or had no smoking status recorded in their medical notes.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The proportion of patients with a smoking status recorded varied between practices from 42.4% to 100% (median 90%). Of the recorded smokers who responded to our questionnaire (35.5% of the total), a median of 20.3% reported that they had not smoked cigarettes or tobacco in the last 12 months. Of respondents with no recorded smoking status, 29.8% reported themselves to be current smokers. Of the 6856 responding individuals thus identified as current smokers, 41.4% indicated that they would like to speak to a specialist smoking adviser to help them stop smoking. This proportion increased with socioeconomic disadvantage (measured by the Townsend Index) from 39.1% in the least deprived to 44.6% in the most deprived quintile.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Whilst in many practices the ascertainment of smoking status is incomplete and/or inaccurate, failure to intervene appropriately on known status still remains the biggest challenge.</p> <p>Trial registration</p> <p>Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN71514078.</p

Short report: Evaluation of wider community support for a neurodiversity teaching programme designed using participatory methods

Children with diagnoses such as autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyslexia and so on often experience bullying at school. This group can be described as neurodivergent, meaning they think and process information differently from most people. Previous research suggests that increasing people's knowledge can be an effective way to reduce stigma and bullying. Therefore, we decided to create a primary school resource to teach about neurodiversity - the concept that all humans vary in how our brains work. Working with educators, our research team - which included neurodivergent people - developed plans for a teaching programme called Learning About Neurodiversity at School (LEANS). Next, we wanted to know whether these plans, developed by our small neurodiverse team, would be endorsed by the wider community. To find out, we conducted an online feedback survey about our plans for the resource. We analysed feedback from 111 people who participated. Most of them identified as neurodivergent (70%) and reported being familiar with neurodiversity (98%), meaning they could provide an informed opinion on our plans. Over 90% of people expressed support for the planned programme content described in the survey, and 73% of them approved our intended definition of the resource's core concept, neurodiversity. From these results, we concluded that there was a high level of support for the planned LEANS programme content across those from the wider community who completed the survey. Consequently, we continued developing the LEANS programme in line with the initial plans from our neurodiverse team. The completed resource is now available as a free download

Hypoxia PET/CT and Colorectal Cancer : A Case Report

Funding: Funding for the pilot study was provided by the Colorectal Study Fund, a NHSG endowment fund number: NER 11482.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Evaluation of the Reducing Reoffending Change Fund: Research Findings

This report presents the findings of an independent evaluation of the Reducing Reoffending Change Fund (RRCF). This was undertaken by Ipsos MORI Scotland between September 2013 and November 2015. The aim of the evaluation was to provide a comprehensive assessment of the extent to which the Public Social Partnership (PSP) model delivers effective mentoring services that reduce the risk of reoffending and support reintegration. The report concludes that mentoring is an effective approach which helps mentees to learn and implement constructive, non-criminal ways of addressing problems in their lives and to reduce risk factors associated with offending behaviour, and that there is a strong case for the continuation and expansion of mentoring services

Evaluation of the Reducing Reoffending Change Fund

The independent evaluation of the Reducing Reoffending Change Fund (RRCF) assessed the extent to which the Public Social Partnership (PSP) model delivers effective mentoring services that reduce the risk of reoffending and support reintegration, and concluded that there is a strong case for the continuation and expansion of mentoring services

Schizophrenia polygenic risk score influence on white matter microstructure

Schizophrenia (SZ) and bipolar disorder (BD) are highly heritable, share symptomatology, and have a polygenic architecture. The impact of recent polygenic risk scores (PRS) for psychosis, which combine multiple genome-wide associated risk variations, should be assessed on heritable brain phenotypes also previously associated with the illnesses, for a better understanding of the pathways to disease. We have recently reported on the current SZ PRS's ability to predict 1st episode of psychosis case-control status and general cognition. Herein, we test its penetrance on white matter microstructure, which is known to be impaired in SZ, in BD and their relatives, using 141 participants (including SZ, BP, relatives of SZ or BP patients, and healthy volunteers), and two white matter integrity indexes: fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD). No significant correlation between the SZ PRS and FA or MD was found, thus it remains unclear whether white matter changes are primarily associated with SZ genetic risk profiles

Body mass index trajectories in the first 5 years and associated antenatal factors

Background: The increasing prevalence of childhood obesity is an important public health issue and the development of obesity in early life and associated risk factors need to be better understood. The aim of this study was to identify distinct body mass index trajectories in the first 5 years of life and to examine their associations with factors identified in pregnancy, including metabolic parameters. Methods: BMI measurements from 2,172 children in Ireland enrolled in the BASELINE cohort study with BMI assessments at birth, 2, 6, and 12 months, and 2 and 5 years were analyzed. Growth mixture modeling was used to identify distinct BMI trajectories, and multivariate multinomial logistic regression was used to assess the association between these trajectories and antenatal factors. Results: Three distinct BMI trajectories were identified: normal (89.6%); rapid gain in the first 6 months (7.8%); and rapid BMI after 12 months (2.6%). Male sex and higher maternal age increased the likelihood of belonging to the rapid gain in the first 6 months trajectory. Raised maternal BMI at 15 weeks of pregnancy and lower cord blood IGF-2 were associated with rapid gain after 1 year. Conclusion: Sex, maternal age and BMI, and IGF-2 levels were found to be associated with BMI trajectories in early childhood departing from normal growth. Further research and extended follow-up to examine the effects of childhood growth patterns are required to understand their relationship with health outcomes

Cheminformatics Research at the Unilever Centre for Molecular Science Informatics Cambridge.

The Centre for Molecular Informatics, formerly Unilever Centre for Molecular Science Informatics (UCMSI), at the University of Cambridge is a world-leading driving force in the field of cheminformatics. Since its opening in 2000 more than 300 scientific articles have fundamentally changed the field of molecular informatics. The Centre has been a key player in promoting open chemical data and semantic access. Though mainly focussing on basic research, close collaborations with industrial partners ensured real world feedback and access to high quality molecular data. A variety of tools and standard protocols have been developed and are ubiquitous in the daily practice of cheminformatics. Here, we present a retrospective of cheminformatics research performed at the UCMSI, thereby highlighting historical and recent trends in the field as well as indicating future directions.J. E. F thanks the Medical Research Council for funding (Grant Number MR/K020919/1). Furthermore, the UCMSI acknowledges all funding sources for continuous support over the past 15 years.This is the final published version. It first appeared at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/minf.201400166/abstract