Symptoms of anal incontinence and quality of life : A psychometric study of the Norwegian version of the ICIQ-B amongst hospital outpatients

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Systematic review: what interventions improve dignity for older patients in hospital?

Aims and objectives. To review the evidence for interventions to improve dignity for older patients in acute care.Background. High profile cases have highlighted failure to provide dignified carefor older people in hospitals. There is good evidence on what older people con-sider is important for dignified care and abundant recommendations on improvingdignity, but it is unclear which interventions are effective.Design. Narrative systematic review.Methods. The Cochrane library, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, BNI andHMIC electronic databases were searched for intervention studies of any designaiming to improve inpatients’ dignity. The main population of interest was olderpatients, but the search included all patients. Studies that focused on ‘dignity ther-apy’ were excluded.Results. There were no intervention studies found in any country which aimed toimprove patient dignity in hospitals which included evaluation of the effect. Anarrative overview of papers that described implementing dignity interventions inpractice but included no formal evaluation was, therefore, undertaken. Fivepapers were identified. Three themes were identified: knowing the person; part-nership between older people and health care professionals; and, effective commu-nication and clinical leadership. The effect on dignity of improving these isuntested.Conclusions. There are currently no studies that have tested interventions toimprove the dignity of older people (nor anyone else) in hospitals. Furtherresearch using well designed trials of interventions is needed. There is also a needto develop and validate outcome measures for interventions to improve dignity.Relevance to clinical practice. At present nurses lack robust evidence on how to improve dignity. There is ample evidence on what undermines patients’ dignit

International Survey of Patients With IBS: Symptom Features and Their Severity, Health Status, Treatments, and Risk Taking to Achieve Clinical Benefit

While clinicians generally make treatment decisions in IBS related to the type of symptoms, other factors such as the perceived severity and the risks patients are willing to tolerate for effective treatment are also important to consider. These factors are not fully understood

Rare coding variants in PLCG2, ABI3, and TREM2 implicate microglial-mediated innate immunity in Alzheimer's disease

We identified rare coding variants associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in a 3-stage case-control study of 85,133 subjects. In stage 1, 34,174 samples were genotyped using a whole-exome microarray. In stage 2, we tested associated variants (P<1×10-4) in 35,962 independent samples using de novo genotyping and imputed genotypes. In stage 3, an additional 14,997 samples were used to test the most significant stage 2 associations (P<5×10-8) using imputed genotypes. We observed 3 novel genome-wide significant (GWS) AD associated non-synonymous variants; a protective variant in PLCG2 (rs72824905/p.P522R, P=5.38×10-10, OR=0.68, MAFcases=0.0059, MAFcontrols=0.0093), a risk variant in ABI3 (rs616338/p.S209F, P=4.56×10-10, OR=1.43, MAFcases=0.011, MAFcontrols=0.008), and a novel GWS variant in TREM2 (rs143332484/p.R62H, P=1.55×10-14, OR=1.67, MAFcases=0.0143, MAFcontrols=0.0089), a known AD susceptibility gene. These protein-coding changes are in genes highly expressed in microglia and highlight an immune-related protein-protein interaction network enriched for previously identified AD risk genes. These genetic findings provide additional evidence that the microglia-mediated innate immune response contributes directly to AD development

Use of and attitudes to complementary and alternative medicine in patients with functional bowel disorders

In this article, Sue Woodward, Christine Norton and Louise Barriball report on a service evaluation audit which was conducted to determine the prevalence of CAM use among patients attending a specialist NHS biofeedback service, to identify their perceptions of CAM and to assess their preparedness to use complimentary therapies within the department. Over a six-month period, patients were asked to complete an audit questionnaire while waiting for their appointments. Ninety three questionnaires were completed and returned by individuals during this time. Sixty three respondents (68%) had used CAM previously or were current users, and respondents reported using a total of 21 different complementary and alternative therapies for their bowel and/or other health problems. Herbal medicine was the most commonly used therapy for bowel problems (29%). Both positive and negative drivers for CAM use were identifed. This audit reveals that CAM use is common in patients with functional bowel disorders. </jats:p