Assisting age related capabilities by ambient technology to prevent functional decline

The elderly is characterized by age related capabilities and handicaps. Whereas age related capabilities like plasticity and adaptability on changing living conditions can lead to subjective well-being and support the recovery of limiting conditions like disease and disability, age related handicaps can enforce these conditions. Multimorbidity can lead to acute and chronic functional decline, especially when limiting conditions are enforced by age related handicaps. In a "circulus vitiosus" disease and disability threaten the independence of the elderly that leads to immobility, social isolation, depression and other health conditions with amplification and generation of new diseases. Ambient Technology has the potential to interrupt this "circulus vitiosus" by limiting age related handicaps, assist age related capabilities, prevent acute or chronic diseases and as a consequence can improve the quality of life of elderly and their care giving relatives. In this overview we demonstrate a brief summary of past experience with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as part of Ambient Technology (AT) in the "TeleReha" project and ongoing approaches in the "Vitanet" project and the "FOG-1" project followed by a future considerations conducting ICT-Project in elderly

Which chronic diseases and disease combinations are specific to multimorbidity in the elderly? Results of a claims data based cross-sectional study in Germany

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Growing interest in multimorbidity is observable in industrialized countries. For Germany, the increasing attention still goes still hand in hand with a small number of studies on multimorbidity. The authors report the first results of a cross-sectional study on a large sample of policy holders (n = 123,224) of a statutory health insurance company operating nationwide. This is the first comprehensive study addressing multimorbidity on the basis of German claims data. The main research question was to find out which chronic diseases and disease combinations are specific to multimorbidity in the elderly.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The study is based on the claims data of all insured policy holders aged 65 and older (n = 123,224). Adjustment for age and gender was performed for the German population in 2004. A person was defined as multimorbid if she/he had at least 3 diagnoses out of a list of 46 chronic conditions in three or more quarters within the one-year observation period. Prevalences and risk-ratios were calculated for the multimorbid and non-multimorbid samples in order to identify diagnoses more specific to multimorbidity and to detect excess prevalences of multimorbidity patterns.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>62% of the sample was multimorbid. Women in general and patients receiving statutory nursing care due to disability are overrepresented in the multimorbid sample. Out of the possible 15,180 combinations of three chronic conditions, 15,024 (99%) were found in the database. Regardless of this wide variety of combinations, the most prevalent individual chronic conditions do also dominate the combinations: Triads of the six most prevalent individual chronic conditions (hypertension, lipid metabolism disorders, chronic low back pain, diabetes mellitus, osteoarthritis and chronic ischemic heart disease) span the disease spectrum of 42% of the multimorbid sample. Gender differences were minor. Observed-to-expected ratios were highest when purine/pyrimidine metabolism disorders/gout and osteoarthritis were part of the multimorbidity patterns.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The above list of dominating chronic conditions and their combinations could present a pragmatic start for the development of needed guidelines related to multimorbidity.</p

Retrospective evaluation of whole exome and genome mutation calls in 746 cancer samples

Funder: NCI U24CA211006Abstract: The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) curated consensus somatic mutation calls using whole exome sequencing (WES) and whole genome sequencing (WGS), respectively. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium, which aggregated whole genome sequencing data from 2,658 cancers across 38 tumour types, we compare WES and WGS side-by-side from 746 TCGA samples, finding that ~80% of mutations overlap in covered exonic regions. We estimate that low variant allele fraction (VAF < 15%) and clonal heterogeneity contribute up to 68% of private WGS mutations and 71% of private WES mutations. We observe that ~30% of private WGS mutations trace to mutations identified by a single variant caller in WES consensus efforts. WGS captures both ~50% more variation in exonic regions and un-observed mutations in loci with variable GC-content. Together, our analysis highlights technological divergences between two reproducible somatic variant detection efforts

Mutterschaft

Thiessen B. Mutterschaft. In: Ehlert G, Funk H, Stecklina G, eds. Grundbegriffe Soziale Arbeit und Geschlecht. 2nd ed. 2022: 413-417

Elternschaft und Familiengründung

Peltz K, Thiessen B. Elternschaft und Familiengründung. In: Stecklina G, Wienforth J, eds. Handbuch Lebensbewältigung und Soziale Arbeit: Praxis, Theorie und Empirie . Weinheim: Beltz Juventa; 2019

Mutterschaft

Thiessen B. Mutterschaft. In: Ehlert G, Funk H, Stecklina G, eds. Wörterbuch Soziale Arbeit und Geschlecht. Weinheim: Beltz Juventa; 2011: 297-300

Familie

Thiessen B. Familie. In: Ehlert G, Funk H, Stecklina G, eds. Wörterbuch Soziale Arbeit und Geschlecht. Weinheim: Beltz Juventa; 2011: 123-125

Familie

Thiessen B. Familie. In: Ehlert G, Funk H, Stecklina G, eds. Grundbegriffe Soziale Arbeit und Geschlecht. 2nd ed. 2022: 166-169