Design and methods of the Longitudinal Eating Disorders Assessment Project research consortium for veterans

Introduction Military service members must maintain a certain body mass index and body fat percentage. Due to weight-loss pressures, some service members may resort to unhealthy behaviors that place them at risk for the development of an eating disorder (ED). Objectives To understand the scope and impact of EDs in military service members and veterans, we formed the Longitudinal Eating Disorders Assessment Project (LEAP) Consortium. LEAP aims to develop novel screening, assessment, classification, and treatment tools for veterans and military members with a focus on EDs and internalizing psychopathology. Methods We recruited two independent nationally representative samples of post-9/11 veterans who were separated from service within the past year. Study 1 was a four-wave longitudinal survey and Study 2 was a mixed-methods study that included surveys, structured-clinical interviews, and qualitative interviews. Results Recruitment samples were representative of the full population of recently separated veterans. Sample weights were created to adjust for sources of non-response bias to the baseline survey. Attrition was low relative to past studies of this population, with only (younger) age predicting attrition at 1-week follow-up. Conclusions We expect that the LEAP Consortium data will contribute to improved information about EDs in veterans, a serious and understudied problem

More than g-Factors: Second-stratum Factors should not be Ignored

Ree, Carretta, and Teachout (2015) outlined a compelling argument for the pervasiveness of dominant general factors (DGFs) in psychological measurement. We agree that DGFs are important and that they are found for various constructs (e.g., cognitive abilities, work withdrawal), especially when an “unrotated principal components” analysis is conducted (Ree et al., p. 8). When studying hierarchical constructs, however, a narrow emphasis on uncovering DGFs would be incomplete at best and detrimental at worst. This commentary largely echoes the arguments made by Wee, Newman, and Joseph (2014), and Schneider and Newman (2015), who provided reasons for considering second-stratum cognitive abilities. We believe these same arguments in favor of second-stratum factors in the ability domain can be applied to hierarchical constructs more generally.</jats:p

Obesity, inflammatory and thrombotic markers, and major clinical outcomes in critically ill patients with COVID‐19 in the US

Objective This study aimed to determine whether obesity is independently associated with major adverse clinical outcomes and inflammatory and thrombotic markers in critically ill patients with COVID‐19. Methods The primary outcome was in‐hospital mortality in adults with COVID‐19 admitted to intensive care units across the US. Secondary outcomes were acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), acute kidney injury requiring renal replacement therapy (AKI‐RRT), thrombotic events, and seven blood markers of inflammation and thrombosis. Unadjusted and multivariable‐adjusted models were used. Results Among the 4,908 study patients, mean (SD) age was 60.9 (14.7) years, 3,095 (62.8%) were male, and 2,552 (52.0%) had obesity. In multivariable models, BMI was not associated with mortality. Higher BMI beginning at 25 kg/m2 was associated with a greater risk of ARDS and AKI‐RRT but not thrombosis. There was no clinically significant association between BMI and inflammatory or thrombotic markers. Conclusions In critically ill patients with COVID‐19, higher BMI was not associated with death or thrombotic events but was associated with a greater risk of ARDS and AKI‐RRT. The lack of an association between BMI and circulating biomarkers calls into question the paradigm that obesity contributes to poor outcomes in critically ill patients with COVID‐19 by upregulating systemic inflammatory and prothrombotic pathways