Publications by authors named "Wilby Williamson"

Background: People born preterm (<37 weeks' gestation) have a potentially adverse cardiac phenotype that progresses with blood pressure elevation.

Objectives: The authors investigated whether preterm-born and term-born adults exhibit similar cardiac structural and functional remodeling following a 16-week aerobic exercise intervention.

Methods: We conducted a randomized controlled trial in 203 adults (aged 18-35 years) with elevated blood pressure or stage 1 hypertension.

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Background: Preterm birth (< 37 weeks' gestation) alters cerebrovascular development due to the premature transition from a foetal to postnatal circulatory system, with potential implications for future cerebrovascular health. This study aims to explore potential differences in the Circle of Willis (CoW), a key arterial ring that perfuses the brain, of healthy adults born preterm.

Methods: A total of 255 participants (108 preterm, 147 full-term) were included in the analysis.

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Aims: Accurate staging of hypertension-related cardiac changes, before the development of significant left ventricular hypertrophy, could help guide early prevention advice. We evaluated whether a novel semi-supervised machine learning approach could generate a clinically meaningful summary score of cardiac remodelling in hypertension.

Methods And Results: A contrastive trajectories inference approach was applied to data collected from three UK studies of young adults.

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Importance: Cerebrovascular changes are already evident in young adults with hypertension and exercise is recommended to reduce cardiovascular risk. To what extent exercise benefits the cerebrovasculature at an early stage of the disease remains unclear.

Objective: To investigate whether structured aerobic exercise increases brain vessel lumen diameter or cerebral blood flow (CBF) and whether lumen diameter is associated with CBF.

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Premature birth is an independent predictor of long-term cardiovascular risk. Individuals affected are reported to have a lower rate of [Formula: see text]o at peak exercise intensity ([Formula: see text]o) and at the ventilatory anaerobic threshold ([Formula: see text]o), but little is known about their response to exercise training. The primary objective was to determine whether the [Formula: see text]o response to exercise training differed between preterm-born and term-born individuals; the secondary objective was to quantify group differences in [Formula: see text]o response.

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Background: An implementation gap exists between the evidence supporting physical activity in the prevention and management of long-term medical conditions and clinical practice. Person-centred conversations, i.e.

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Background: Exercise is advised for young adults with elevated blood pressure, but no trials have investigated efficacy at this age. We aimed to determine whether aerobic exercise, self-monitoring and motivational coaching lowers blood pressure in this group.

Methods: The study was a single-centre, open, two-arm, parallel superiority randomized clinical trial with open community-based recruitment of physically-inactive 18-35 year old adults with awake 24 h blood pressure 115/75mmHg-159/99 mmHg and BMI<35 kg/m.

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Background: Evidence is limited regarding the cumulative effect of risk factors on cognitive decline and the added value of physical function for cognitive function trajectory stratification. We operationalize 13 modifiable dementia risk factors in a scoring system and investigate the relationship between this brain health score, combined with simple measures of physical function, and risk of cognitive decline.

Methods: Population-based cohort study of persons aged 50 and older from the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing without a history of dementia at baseline who underwent repeated neuropsychological tests (8.

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Background: Preterm birth affects about 10% of live births worldwide and is associated with cardiac alterations. Animal models of preterm birth suggest that left ventricular functional impairment may be due to an up-regulation of myocardial fibrosis.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to determine whether diffuse left ventricular fibrosis is evident in young adults born preterm.

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Background A subpopulation of endothelial progenitor cells called endothelial colony-forming cells (ECFCs) may offer a platform for cellular assessment in clinical studies because of their remarkable angiogenic and expansion potentials in vitro. Despite endothelial cell function being influenced by cardiovascular risk factors, no studies have yet provided a comprehensive proteomic profile to distinguish functional (ie, more angiogenic and expansive cells) versus dysfunctional circulating ECFCs of young adults. The aim of this study was to provide a detailed proteomic comparison between functional and dysfunctional ECFCs.

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Aims: To investigate the left ventricular response to exercise in young adults with hypertension, and identify whether this response can be predicted from changes in left atrial function at rest.

Methods: A total of 127 adults aged 18-40 years who completed clinical blood pressure assessment and echocardiography phenotyping at rest and during cardiopulmonary exercise testing, were included. Measurements were compared between participants with suboptimal blood pressure ≥120/80mm Hg (n = 68) and optimal blood pressure <120/80mm Hg (n = 59).

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This study examined the associations of body mass index (BMI), waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), waist circumference (WC), and physical activity (PA) with gray matter cerebral blood flow (CBF) in older adults. Cross-sectional data was used from the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (n = 495, age 69.0 ±7.

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Importance: Preterm-born individuals have higher blood pressure with an increased risk of hypertension by young adulthood, as well as potentially adverse cardiac remodeling even when normotensive. To what extent blood pressure elevation affects left ventricular (LV) structure and function in adults born preterm is currently unknown.

Objective: To investigate whether changes observed in LV structure and function in preterm-born adults make them more susceptible to cardiac remodeling in association with blood pressure elevation.

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Multisensory perception might provide an important marker of brain function in aging. However, the cortical structures supporting multisensory perception in aging are poorly understood. In this study, we compared regional gray matter volume in a group of middle-aged (n = 101; 49-64 years) and older (n = 116; 71-87 years) adults from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Aging using voxel-based morphometry.

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Objective: To establish normative reference values for total grey matter cerebral blood flow (CBF) measured using pseudo-continuous arterial spin labelling (pCASL) MRI in a large cohort of community-dwelling adults aged 54 years and older.

Background: Quantitative assessment of CBF may provide an imaging biomarker for the early detection of those at risk of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's and dementia. However, the use of this method to differentiate normal age-related decline in CBF from pathological reduction has been hampered by the lack of reference values for cerebral perfusion.

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Background: International and national committees have started to evaluate the evidence for the effects of physical activity on neurocognitive health in childhood and adolescence to inform policy. Despite an increasing body of evidence, such reports have shown mixed conclusions. We aimed to critically evaluate and synthesise the evidence for the effects of chronic physical activity on academic achievement, cognitive performance and the brain in children and adolescents in order to guide future research and inform policy.

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The thalamus is a central hub of the autonomic network and thalamic volume has been associated with high-risk phenotypes for sudden cardiac death. Heart rate response to physiological stressors (e.g.

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Hypertensive pregnancy is associated with increased maternal cardiovascular risk in later life. A range of cardiovascular adaptations after pregnancy have been reported to partly explain this risk. We used multimodality imaging to identify whether, by midlife, any pregnancy-associated phenotypes were still identifiable and to what extent they could be explained by blood pressure.

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Aims: We tested the hypothesis that the known reduction in myocardial functional reserve in preterm-born young adults is an independent predictor of exercise capacity (peak VO2) and heart rate recovery (HRR).

Methods And Results: We recruited 101 normotensive young adults (n = 47 born preterm; 32.8 ± 3.

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Background: Hypertension prevalence in young adults has increased and is associated with increased incidence of cerebrovascular and cardiovascular events in middle age. However, there is significant debate regards how to effectively manage young adult hypertension with recommendation to target lifestyle intervention. Surprisingly, no trials have investigated whether lifestyle advice developed for blood pressure control in older adults is effective in these younger populations.

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Importance: Risk of stroke and brain atrophy in later life relate to levels of cardiovascular risk in early adulthood. However, it is unknown whether cerebrovascular changes are present in young adults.

Objective: To examine relationships between modifiable cardiovascular risk factors and cerebrovascular structure, function, and white matter integrity in young adults.

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Background: Experimental and clinical studies show that prematurity leads to altered left ventricular (LV) structure and function with preserved resting LV ejection fraction (EF). Large-scale epidemiological data now links prematurity to increased early heart failure risk.

Objectives: The authors performed echocardiographic imaging at prescribed exercise intensities to determine whether preterm-born adults have impaired LV functional response to physical exercise.

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