Towards a "prescribing license" for medical students: development and quality evaluation of an assessment for safe prescribing

Purpose This report describes the development and validation process of an assessment with national consensus in appropriate and safe pharmacotherapy. Methods A question-database on safe prescription based on literature of pharmacotherapy-related harm was developed by an expert group from Dutch medical faculties. Final-year medical students concluded a 2-year education program on appropriate and safe prescription by one of nine assessment variants of 40 multiple-choice questions each. An expert panel of professionals (n = 10) answered all database questions and rated questions on relevance. Questions were selected for revision based on lack of relevance or poor test and item characteristics. Results A total of 576 final-year medical students of the Radboud University was assessed. There was no significant difference in performance between students and content expert group (p = 0.7), probably due to learning behavior. Out of 165 questions, 59 were selected for revision. Conclusion Joint national effort from a team of experts in prescription and pharmacotherapy is an appropriate way to achieve a valid and reliable last-year student drug prescription assessment

Cerebrovascular and amyloid pathology in predementia stages: the relationship with neurodegeneration and cognitive decline (vol 9, 101, 2017)

Pathophysiology, epidemiology and therapy of agein

Embracing complexity with systems thinking in general practitioners' clinical reasoning helps handling uncertainty

Clinical reasoning in general practice is increasingly challenging because of the rise in the number of patients with multimorbidity. This creates uncertainty because of unpredictable interactions between the symptoms from multiple medical problems and the patient's personality, psychosocial context and life history. Case analysis may then be more appropriately managed by systems thinking than by hypothetic‐deductive reasoning, the predominant paradigm in the current teaching of clinical reasoning. Application of “systems thinking” tools such as causal loop diagrams allows the patient's problems to be viewed holistically and facilitates understanding of the complex interactions. We will show how complexity levels can be graded in clinical reasoning and demonstrate where and how systems thinking can have added value by means of a case history

Towards a "prescribing license" for medical students: development and quality evaluation of an assessment for safe prescribing

Contains fulltext : 207072.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access

Genetic overlap between Alzheimer's disease and blood lipid levels

Late-onset Alzheimer's disease (AD) has a significant genetic component, but the molecular mechanisms through which genetic risk factors contribute to AD pathogenesis are unclear. We screened for genetic sharing between AD and the blood levels of 615 metabolites to elucidate how the polygenic architecture of AD affects metabolomic profiles. We retrieved summary statistics from genome-wide association studies of AD and the metabolite blood levels and assessed for shared genetic etiology, using a polygenic risk score-based approach. For the blood levels of 31 metabolites, all of which were lipids, we identified and replicated genetic sharing with AD. We also found a positive genetic concordance - implying that genetic risk factors for AD are associated with higher blood levels - for 16 of the 31 replicated metabolites. In the brain, lipids and their intermediate metabolites have essential structural and functional roles, such as forming and dynamically regulating synaptic membranes. Our results imply that genetic risk factors for AD affect lipid levels, which may be leveraged to develop novel treatment strategies for AD

Biomarkers in dementia: The Dutch Parelsnoer Initiative on neurodegenerative diseases

Pathophysiology, epidemiology and therapy of agein

White Matter Hyperintensities Potentiate Hippocampal Volume Reduction in Non-Demented Older Individuals with Abnormal Amyloid-beta

Contains fulltext : 170424.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)Cerebral small vessel disease (cSVD) and amyloid-beta (Abeta) deposition often co-exist in (prodromal) dementia, and both types of pathology have been associated with neurodegeneration. We examined whether cSVD and Abeta have independent or interactive effects on hippocampal volume (HV) in a memory clinic population. We included 87 individuals with clinical diagnoses of Alzheimer's disease (AD) (n = 24), mild cognitive impairment (MCI) (n = 26), and subjective cognitive complaints (SCC) (n = 37). cSVD magnetic resonance imaging markers included white matter hyperintensity (WMH) volume, lacunar infarct presence, and microbleed presence. Abeta pathology was assessed as cerebrospinal fluid-derived Abeta1 - 42 levels and dichotomized into normal or abnormal, and HV was determined by manual volumetric measurements. A linear hierarchical regression approach was applied for the detection of additive or interaction effects between cSVD and Abeta on HV in the total participant group (n = 87) and in the non-demented group (including SCC and MCI individuals only, n = 63). The results revealed that abnormal Abeta and lacunar infarct presence were independently associated with lower HV in the non-demented individuals. Interestingly, Abeta and WMH pathology interacted in the non-demented individuals, such that WMH had a negative effect on HV in individuals with abnormal CSF Abeta42 levels, but not in individuals with normal CSF Abeta42 levels. These associations were not present when individuals with AD were included in the analyses. Our observations suggest that relatively early on in the disease process older individuals with abnormal Abeta levels are at an increased risk of accelerated disease progression when concomitant cSVD is present

Cerebrovascular and amyloid pathology in predementia stages: the relationship with neurodegeneration and cognitive decline

Neuro Imaging Researc