Publications by authors named "Hodgkins C"

Article Synopsis
  • Ankle fractures are common, with a significant portion being unstable and requiring surgery. This study compares traditional plate-and-screw fixation with an intramedullary fibula nail for surgical treatment.
  • The research involves a review of 203 cases by a skilled surgeon, focusing on complications and the need for hardware removal over an average follow-up of about 18.8 months.
  • Results show that all fractures healed with minimal complications, suggesting fibula nails could be a safer alternative to traditional methods, potentially reducing complications and hardware removal needs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The Achilles tendon is frequently injured in the young to middle aged population. Previous studies have shown that there is an increased risk of delay in postsurgical wound healing amongst tobacco smoking patients with Achilles tendon injury. This study utilized the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Project (ACS-NSQIP) database.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The Childhood Obesity Plan aimed to reduce sugar and energy in foods through a voluntary sugar-reduction programme. Our primary objective was to determine whether this implementation strategy had been successful, focusing on the out-of-home sector. We used a repeated cross-sectional design to evaluate nutritional changes in desserts served by leading chain restaurants.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Project SWEET examined the barriers and facilitators to the use of non-nutritive sweeteners and sweetness enhancers (hereafter "S&SE") alongside potential risks/benefits for health and sustainability. The Beverages trial was a double-blind multi-centre, randomised crossover trial within SWEET evaluating the acute impact of three S&SE blends (plant-based and alternatives) vs. a sucrose control on glycaemic response, food intake, appetite sensations and safety after a carbohydrate-rich breakfast meal.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - The study investigates the effects of consuming non-nutritive sweeteners and sweetness enhancers (S&SEs) on appetite and related health outcomes, particularly focusing on how acute versus repeated intake influences these factors in food consumption.
  • - Conducted as part of the SWEET Project, the research includes five double-blind trials with 213 participants across Europe, comparing traditional sugar-sweetened products to those reformulated with S&SEs in various food forms.
  • - Ethical approvals have been obtained, and findings will be shared in open-access journals and an online research data archive, ensuring transparency and accessibility of the results.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) of β-lactam antibiotics provides critical knowledge in hospital intensive care unit environments to support dosing within the narrow window between therapeutic failure and toxicity. Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) is the most suitable analytical technique for these drugs; however, clinicians, patients, and laboratories would benefit from shortening the timeframe between the collection of samples and reporting of results.

Methods: The authors developed a very rapid LC-MS/MS method for 9 β-lactam antimicrobial drugs on a commercial core-shell reverse-phase LC column by exploiting the performance of such stationary phase materials at a high mobile-phase linear velocity and using a simple flow split to optimize ionization conditions in the mass spectrometer ion source.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study aims to evaluate the effects of consuming sweeteners and sweetness enhancers (S&SEs) within a healthy diet on weight loss maintenance and obesity-related health factors compared to sugar.
  • It involves over 330 adults and 40 children, starting with a low-energy diet for adults to achieve weight loss, followed by a 10-month phase where participants are randomly assigned to diets with or without S&SEs.
  • The trial is ethically approved and will assess various health outcomes, including body weight, gut microbiota, and risk markers for type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases through clinical investigations at multiple time points. *
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Diagnosis of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection has primarily been achieved using reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for acute infection, and serology for prior infection. Assay with RT-PCR provides data on presence or absence of viral RNA, with no information on virus replication competence, infectivity, or virus characterisation. Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) is typically not used in clinical virology, despite its potential to provide supplemental data about the presence of viral proteins and thus the potential for replication-competent, transmissible virus.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The focus of the current paper is on a design of responsible governance of food consumer science e-infrastructure using the case study Determinants and Intake Data Platform (DI Data Platform). One of the key challenges for implementation of the DI Data Platform is how to develop responsible governance that observes the ethical and legal frameworks of big data research and innovation, whilst simultaneously capitalizing on huge opportunities offered by open science and the use of big data in food consumer science research. We address this challenge with a specific focus on four key governance considerations: data type and technology; data ownership and intellectual property; data privacy and security; and institutional arrangements for ethical governance.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: To evaluate the treatment of unstable lateral malleolar fractures using a fibula nail with both proximal and distal locking capabilities.

Design: Retrospective review of 110 single-surgeon consecutive fibula nails.

Setting: Single-surgeon, private practice community hospital.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The epidemiology of any given topic sometimes is overlooked. This is true particularly with sports physicians and sports injuries. The identification of sports-specific injury patterns by collection and examination of data can help prevent injuries.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Mobile health, predominantly wearable technology and mobile apps, have been considered in Parkinson disease to provide valuable ecological data between face-to-face visits and improve monitoring of motor symptoms remotely.

Objective: We explored the feasibility of using a technology-based mHealth platform comprising a smartphone in combination with a smartwatch and a pair of smart insoles, described in this study as the PD_manager system, to collect clinically meaningful data. We also explored outcomes and disease-related factors that are important determinants to establish feasibility.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The need for more dental hygiene educators has led to the increased practice of hiring part-time faculty members; however, there is little literature on their job satisfaction or intent to stay in education. The aim of this study was to explore demographic and job satisfaction variables that may predict part-time dental hygiene faculty members' intent to stay in education within the framework of Herzberg's motivation-hygiene theory. A cross-sectional, correlational survey was conducted with a national convenience sample of part-time dental hygiene faculty members (n = 177).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Context: Lesser metatarsophalangeal (MTP) instability is a common condition that can become debilitating and require surgery.

Evidence Acquisition: An extensive literature review was performed through MEDLINE and Google Scholar for publications relating to the etiology, diagnosis, and treatment of lesser MTP instability using the keywords , and from database inception to 2019.

Study Design: Clinical review.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: The "Women and Trauma" Study (WTS) conducted in the National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network (CTN-0015) resulted in research publications, presentations, and a train-the-trainer workshop to support dissemination efforts for skills-based trauma treatment in substance use community treatment. Twelve years after its completion, this paper aims to examine whether and how the WTS contributed to knowledge in the field of trauma and addictions and inspired community treatment programs (CTPs) to train staff to identify and provide trauma-related services.

Method: We present findings from two different analyses that explored longer term study impacts on treatment and dissemination: (1) a post-study site survey covering 4 domains from 4/7 programs that participated in delivering the WTS to evaluate their perceptions of study impact on their treatment community; and (2) an analysis of citations of its publications to determine impact on the scientific community.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Despite the established evidence and theoretical advances explaining human judgments under uncertainty, developments of mobile health (mHealth) Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS) have not explicitly applied the psychology of decision making to the study of user needs. We report on a user needs approach to develop a prototype of a mHealth CDSS for Parkinson's disease (PD), which is theoretically grounded in the psychological literature about expert decision making and judgement under uncertainty.

Methods: A suite of user needs studies was conducted in 4 European countries (Greece, Italy, Slovenia, the UK) prior to the development of PD_Manager, a mHealth-based CDSS designed for Parkinson's disease, using wireless technology.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The rise in use of food supplements based on botanical ingredients (herbal supplements) is depicted as part of a trend empowering consumers to manage their day-to-day health needs, which presupposes access to clear and accurate information to make effective choices. Evidence regarding herbal supplement efficacy is extremely variable so recent regulations eliminating unsubstantiated claims about potential effects leave producers able to provide very little information about their products. Medical practitioners are rarely educated about herbal supplements and most users learn about them via word-of-mouth, allowing dangerous misconceptions to thrive, chief among them the assumption that natural products are inherently safe.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Pseudoaneurysms are a rare complication of foot and ankle surgeries that can potentially lead to serious sequelae, especially when there is delay in the diagnosis. Due to the rarity of this occurrence, guidelines for management are limited for orthopedic surgeons. Once diagnosed, the surgeon has to decide quickly on many options for how to best manage the patient.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Most food in the United Kingdom is purchased in supermarkets, and many of these purchases are routinely tracked through supermarket loyalty card data. Using such data may be an effective way to develop remote public health interventions and to measure objectively their effectiveness at changing food purchasing behavior.

Objective: The Front-of-pack food Labels: Impact on Consumer Choice (FLICC) study is a pilot randomized controlled trial of a digital behavior change intervention.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The Nutrition and Health Claims Regulation (NHCR) EC No 1924/2006 aims to provide an appropriate level of consumer protection whilst supporting future innovation and fair competition within the EU food industry. However, consumers' interpretation of health claims is less well understood. There is a lack of evidence on the extent to which consumers are able to understand claims defined by this regulatory framework.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Parkinson's disease is a degenerative neurological condition causing multiple motor and non-motor symptoms that have a serious adverse effect on quality of life. Management is problematic due to the variable and fluctuating nature of symptoms, often hourly and daily. The PD_Manager mHealth platform aims to provide a continuous feed of data on symptoms to improve clinical understanding of the status of any individual patient and inform care planning.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Health claims on food packaging are regulated to inform and protect consumers; however, many consumers do not accurately interpret the meaning of the claims. Whilst research has shown different types of misinterpretation, it is not clear how those interpretations are formed. The aim of this study was to elicit the causal beliefs and causal models about food and health held by consumers, that is their understanding of the causal relationships between nutrients, health outcomes, and the causal pathways connecting them, and investigate how well this knowledge explains the variation in inferences they draw about health benefits from health claims.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Extended-release naltrexone (XR-NTX), an opioid antagonist, and sublingual buprenorphine-naloxone (BUP-NX), a partial opioid agonist, are pharmacologically and conceptually distinct interventions to prevent opioid relapse. We aimed to estimate the difference in opioid relapse-free survival between XR-NTX and BUP-NX.

Methods: We initiated this 24 week, open-label, randomised controlled, comparative effectiveness trial at eight US community-based inpatient services and followed up participants as outpatients.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: To evaluate exercise as a treatment for stimulant use disorders.

Methods: The STimulant Reduction Intervention using Dosed Exercise (STRIDE) study was a randomized clinical trial conducted in 9 residential addiction treatment programs across the United States from July 2010 to February 2013. Of 497 adults referred to the study, 302 met all eligibility criteria, including DSM-IV criteria for stimulant abuse and/or dependence, and were randomized to either a dosed exercise intervention (Exercise) or a health education intervention (Health Education) control, both augmenting treatment as usual and conducted thrice weekly for 12 weeks.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Images on food and dietary supplement packaging might lead people to infer (appropriately or inappropriately) certain health benefits of those products. Research on this issue largely involves direct questions, which could (a) elicit inferences that would not be made unprompted, and (b) fail to capture inferences made implicitly. Using a novel memory-based method, in the present research, we explored whether packaging imagery elicits health inferences without prompting, and the extent to which these inferences are made implicitly.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF