Objective: Studies of dementia involving the oldest old are few in Sub-Saharan Africa. Survivors of the Ibadan arm of the Indianapolis-Ibadan Dementia Project who were enrolled in 1992 or 2001 were re-examined between 2021 and 2022.
Aim: To revisit these subjects and evaluate them for the presence of cognitive and functional impairment and assign diagnoses as relevant as well as determine factors that mitigate development of dementia and cognitive impairment and thus promote healthy aging.
While large language models (LLMs) have shown promise in diagnostic reasoning, their impact on management reasoning, which involves balancing treatment decisions and testing strategies while managing risk, is unknown. This prospective, randomized, controlled trial assessed whether LLM assistance improves physician performance on open-ended management reasoning tasks compared to conventional resources. From November 2023 to April 2024, 92 practicing physicians were randomized to use either GPT-4 plus conventional resources or conventional resources alone to answer five expert-developed clinical vignettes in a simulated setting.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Older adults commonly experience chronic medical conditions and are at risk of cognitive impairment as a result of age, chronic comorbidity, and medications prescribed to manage multiple chronic conditions. Anticholinergic medications are common treatments for chronic conditions and have been repeatedly associated with poor cognitive outcomes, including delirium and dementia, in epidemiologic studies. However, no study has definitively evaluated the causal relationship between anticholinergics and cognition in a randomized controlled trial design.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Older adults commonly experience chronic medical conditions and are at risk of cognitive impairment as a result of age, chronic comorbidity, and medications prescribed to manage multiple chronic conditions. Anticholinergic medications are common treatments for chronic conditions, and have been repeatedly associated with poor cognitive outcomes, including delirium and dementia, in epidemiologic studies. However, no study has definitively evaluated the causal relationship between anticholinergics and cognition in a randomized controlled trial design.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Alzheimers Dis
October 2024
Background: Despite the need to increase engagement of underrepresented groups (URG) in Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) studies, enrollment remains low.
Objective: Compare referral sources across racial and ethnic groups among participants enrolled in ADRC studies.
Methods: Data for this cross-sectional secondary analysis were extracted from the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center Uniform Data Set.
Importance: Large language model (LLM) artificial intelligence (AI) systems have shown promise in diagnostic reasoning, but their utility in management reasoning with no clear right answers is unknown.
Objective: To determine whether LLM assistance improves physician performance on open-ended management reasoning tasks compared to conventional resources.
Design: Prospective, randomized controlled trial conducted from 30 November 2023 to 21 April 2024.
Introduction: We examined the burden of neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPSs) in early-onset (EO) and late-onset (LO) Alzheimer's disease (AD) and adjusted for age effects via the inclusion of cognitively unimpaired (CU) individuals.
Methods: Cross-sectional data from 2940 EOAD, 8665 LOAD, and 8775 age-stratified CU individuals (early-CU, n = 2433; late-CU, n = 6342) from the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center database were included. Fisher's exact tests compared EOAD and LOAD on the presence and severity of NPSs.
Background: Pathology testing is a very common investigation in the intensive care unit (ICU). Many tests are ordered on a routine basis rather than for a specific clinical indication, resulting in potential patient harm and unnecessary financial and environmental costs.
Objective: The objective of this study was to determine whether a multifaceted intervention based on the principles of education, audit, and feedback can result in a decrease in unnecessary pathology tests without a commensurate increase in adverse patient outcomes and to measure this decrease in terms of the associated reduction in environmental and financial costs.
Objective: We assessed the concordance of patient-reported race and ethnicity for emergency department (ED) patients compared with what was recorded in the electronic health record.
Methods: We conducted a single-center, prospective, observational study of 744 ED patients (English- and/or Spanish-speaking), asking them to describe their race and ethnicity. We compared the distributions of ethnicity and race between patient-reported and electronic health record data using McNemar's test.
Importance: More than 80% of patients who present to the emergency department (ED) with acute heart failure (AHF) are hospitalized. With more than 1 million annual hospitalizations for AHF in the US, safe and effective alternatives are needed. Care for AHF in short-stay units (SSUs) may be safe and more efficient than hospitalization, especially for lower-risk patients, but randomized clinical trial data are lacking.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAs the public health framework has been implemented in schools through multi-tiered systems of support, as in Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), a prominent interpretation has been that 80% of students will benefit from universal or Tier 1 schoolwide behavior support, around 15% will require added selective or Tier 2 targeted support, and 5% will require the more intensive selective or Tier 3 intervention. The PBIS framework also emphasizes the use of tiered logic, with strengthened efforts at the universal and selective levels when student behavioral or mental health needs exceed expected levels. The prediction that 5% of students will require indicated support was based mostly on students at risk for discipline encounters (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLancet Respir Med
September 2023
Background: There is a clinical need for therapeutics for COVID-19 patients with acute hypoxemic respiratory failure whose 60-day mortality remains at 30-50%. Aviptadil, a lung-protective neuropeptide, and remdesivir, a nucleotide prodrug of an adenosine analog, were compared with placebo among patients with COVID-19 acute hypoxaemic respiratory failure.
Methods: TESICO was a randomised trial of aviptadil and remdesivir versus placebo at 28 sites in the USA.
Background: We studied the effect of apolipoprotein E (APOE) ε4 status and sex on age of symptom onset (AO) in early- (EO) and late- (LO) onset Alzheimer's disease (AD).
Method: A total of 998 EOAD and 2562 LOAD participants from the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center (NACC) were included. We used analysis of variance to examine AO differences between sexes and APOE genotypes and the effect of APOE ε4, sex, and their interaction on AO in EOAD and LOAD, separately.
Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic had an unprecedented effect on those living and working in care-homes for older people, as residents were particularly vulnerable to contracting the SARS-CoV-2 virus, associated with high morbidity and mortality. Often undervalued, care-home nurses (RNs) are leaders, managing complex care while working in isolation from their professional peers. The pandemic made this more apparent, when care and treatments for COVID-19 were initially unknown, isolation increased due to withdrawal of many professional health services, accompanied by staff shortages.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: We studied the effect of apolipoprotein E (APOE) ε4 status and sex on rates of cognitive decline in early- (EO) and late- (LO) onset Alzheimer's disease (AD).
Method: We ran mixed-effects models with longitudinal cognitive measures as dependent variables, and sex, APOE ε4 carrier status, and interaction terms as predictor variables in 998 EOAD and 2562 LOAD participants from the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center.
Results: APOE ε4 carriers showed accelerated cognitive decline relative to non-carriers in both EOAD and LOAD, although the patterns of specific cognitive domains that were affected differed.
Am J Infect Control
July 2023
Background: Staff actions to prevent infection introduction and transmission in long-term care facilities (LTCFs) were key to reducing morbidity and mortality from COVID-19. Implementing infection control measures (ICMs) requires training, adherence and complex decision making while trying to deliver high quality care. We surveyed LTCF staff in England about their preparedness and morale at 3 timepoints during the COVID-19 epidemic.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRemedial Spec Educ
August 2022
Open-science reforms, which aim to increase credibility and access of research, have the potential to benefit the research base in special education, as well as practice and policy informed by that research base. Awareness of open science is increasing among special education researchers. However, relatively few researchers in the field have experience using multiple open-science practices, and few practical guidelines or resources have been tailored to special education researchers to support their exploration and adoption of open science.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResearch conducted to date has highlighted barriers to initial adoption of universal behavior screening in schools. However, little is known regarding the experiences of those implementing these procedures and there have been no studies conducted examining the experiences of educators in different stages of implementing various tiered systems of supports. Universal screening is foundational to a successful Comprehensive, Integrated Three-Tiered (Ci3T) model of prevention-an integrated tiered system addressing academics, behavior, and social and emotional well-being.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Am Heart Assoc
July 2022
Background The transition to dialysis period carries a substantial increased cardiovascular risk in patients with chronic kidney disease. Despite this, alterations in cardiovascular functional capacity during this transition are largely unknown. The present study therefore sought to assess ventilatory exercise response measures in patients within 1 year of initiating dialysis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlzheimers Dement (Amst)
May 2022
Introduction: We previously reported genetic associations of the top Alzheimer's disease (AD) risk alleles with amyloid deposition and neurodegeneration. Here, we report the association of these variants with [F]flortaucipir standardized uptake value ratio (SUVR).
Methods: We analyzed the [F]flortaucipir scans of 352 cognitively normal (CN), 160 mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and 54 dementia (DEM) participants from Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI)2 and 3.
Background: Since 1964 when Indiana University performed its first kidney transplant, immunosuppression protocol was steroid-based until 2004 when steroid-free immunosuppression protocol was adopted. We describe clinical outcomes on our patients administered early steroid withdrawal (ESW) protocol (5 days) compared with our historical cohort (HC), who were on chronic steroid-based immunosuppression.
Methods: We performed a retrospective study evaluating kidney transplant recipients between 1993 and 2003 (HC, n = 1689) and between 2005 and 2016 (ESW cohort, n = 2097) at the Indiana University program, with a median follow-up of 10.