Publications by authors named "Nicholl B"

Background: People with low back pain (LBP) are often recommended to self-manage their condition, but it can be challenging without support. Digital health interventions (DHIs) have shown promise in supporting self-management of LBP, but little is known about healthcare providers' (HCPs) engagement in implementing these.

Aims: We aimed to examine HCPs' engagement in patient recruitment for the selfBACK app clinical trial and explore their perceptions of the app.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Identifying clusters of multiple long-term conditions (MLTCs), also known as multimorbidity, and their associated burden may facilitate the development of effective and cost-effective targeted healthcare strategies. This study aimed to identify clusters of MLTCs and their associations with long-term health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in two UK population-based cohorts.

Methods: Age-stratified clusters of MLTCs were identified at baseline in UK Biobank (n = 502,363, 54.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Digital Health (DH) integrates digital technologies into healthcare to increase efficiency and improve patient experiences, benefiting both primary care and military healthcare systems. However, it raises concerns about the potential shift of healthcare responsibilities onto patients, creating workloads or treatment burdens that affect care, adherence, equity, and resource allocation. It is critical to assess this in the military context to enhance patient-centred care and outcomes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Adults with intellectual disability experience more pain than adults without and, despite a higher number of medications being prescribed, may be less likely to receive medication for pain. We conducted a systematic review of existing literature on medication for pain and painful conditions in adults with intellectual disability to explore if there is any association with polypharmacy, multimorbidity or demographic characteristics.

Methods: This systematic review followed PRISMA guidelines.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The increasing prevalence of multiple long-term conditions (MLTCs) poses significant health challenges, leading to worse life expectancy and quality of life for affected individuals.
  • An initiative named SysteMatic aims to create a co-designed action plan focused on equitable prevention and care for MLTCs, involving individuals with lived experiences, healthcare professionals, and industry partners in the UK.
  • The Hub will analyze both personal experiences and large-scale health data to set specific innovation goals and foster system transformation over the next 3-7 years.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This article attempts to highlight the importance of including research sustainability as imperative when assessing human medical research in terms of ethical principles. Using a scoping review of recent literature, the complexity of research sustainability is highlighted with key themes and concepts surrounding this important topic being recognized and discussed. An overall paucity of guidance documents was identified and recommendations have been made to practically address this deficiency.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - This study seeks to better classify individuals with multiple long-term health conditions (MLTCs) by identifying specific clusters of these conditions across various age groups and their links to negative health outcomes and healthcare utilization.
  • - Researchers employed latent class analysis on data from large cohorts, including over 1.8 million individuals, to determine how different MLTC clusters impact mortality, hospital hospitalizations, and general practitioner usage over ten years.
  • - Findings indicated that certain MLTC clusters, particularly those involving cardiometabolic and pain/mental health issues, showed strong associations with higher risks of mortality and healthcare use, particularly in younger and middle-aged individuals, while data from the UKHLS group did not reveal significant risks.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Frailty, social isolation, and loneliness have individually been associated with adverse health outcomes. This study examines how frailty in combination with loneliness or social isolation is associated with socioeconomic deprivation and with all-cause mortality and hospitalisation rate in a middle-aged and older population. Baseline data from 461,047 UK Biobank participants (aged 37-73) were used to assess frailty (frailty phenotype), social isolation, and loneliness.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: There has been conflicting evidence on the association between multimorbidity and blood pressure (BP) control. This study aimed to investigate this associations in people with hypertension attending primary care in Canada, and to assess whether individual long-term conditions are associated with BP control.

Methods: This was a cross-sectional study in people with hypertension attending primary care in Toronto between January 1, 2017 and December 31, 2019.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Components of social connection are associated with mortality, but research examining their independent and combined effects in the same dataset is lacking. This study aimed to examine the independent and combined associations between functional and structural components of social connection and mortality.

Methods: Analysis of 458,146 participants with full data from the UK Biobank cohort linked to mortality registers.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: In the United Kingdom (UK), cancer screening invitations are based on general practice (GP) registrations. We hypothesize that GP electronic medical records (EMR) can be utilised to calculate a lung cancer risk score with good accuracy/clinical utility.

Methods: The development cohort was Secure Anonymised Information Linkage-SAIL (2.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

selfBACK is an artificial intelligence based self-management app for low back pain (LBP) recently reported to reduce LBP-related disability. The aim of this study was to examine if age, gender, or education modify the effectiveness of the selfBACK intervention using secondary analysis of the selfBACK randomized controlled trial. Persons seeking care for LBP were recruited from primary care in Denmark and Norway and an outpatient clinic (Denmark).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: We aimed to classify individuals with RA and ≥2 additional long-term conditions (LTCs) and describe the association between different LTC classes, number of LTCs and adverse health outcomes.

Methods: We used UK Biobank participants who reported RA (n=5,625) and employed latent class analysis (LCA) to create classes of LTC combinations for those with ≥2 additional LTCs. Cox-proportional hazard and negative binomial regression were used to compare the risk of all-cause mortality, major adverse cardiac events (MACE), and number of emergency hospitalisations over an 11-year follow-up across the different LTC classes and in those with RA plus one additional LTC.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: selfBACK provides individually tailored self-management support for low back pain (LBP) via an artificial intelligence-based smartphone app. We explore whether those with depressive/stress symptoms can benefit from this technology.

Methods: Secondary analysis of the selfBACK randomized controlled trial (n = 461).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: To investigate association between presence of multimorbidity in people with established and early rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and risk, duration and cause of hospitalisations.

Design: Longitudinal observational study.

Setting: UK Biobank, population-based cohort recruited between 2006 and 2010, and the Scottish Early Rheumatoid Arthritis (SERA), inception cohort recruited between 2011 and 2015.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Low back pain (LBP) is one of the most common reasons for disability globally. Digital interventions are a promising means of supporting people to self-manage LBP, but implementation of digital interventions has been suboptimal. An artificial intelligence-driven app, selfBACK, was developed to support self-management of LBP as an adjunct to usual care.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Early identification of colorectal cancer (CRC) is an international priority. Multimorbidity (presence of ≥2 long-term conditions (LTCs)) is increasing and the relationship between CRC and LTCs is little-understood. This study explores the relationship between individual LTCs, multimorbidity and CRC incidence and mortality.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Frailty, a state of reduced physiological reserve, is common in people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Frailty can occur at any age; however, the implications in younger people (eg, aged <65 years) with COPD are unclear. We assessed the prevalence of frailty in UK Biobank participants with COPD; explored relationships between frailty and forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) and quantified the association between frailty and adverse outcomes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Frailty and multimorbidity are common in type 2 diabetes (T2D), including people <65 years. Guidelines recommend adjustment of treatment targets in people with frailty or multimorbidity. It is unclear how recommendations to adjust treatment targets in people with frailty or multimorbidity should be applied to different ages.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The risk of COVID-19 in those with chronic pain is unknown. We investigated whether self-reported chronic pain was associated with COVID-19 hospitalisation or mortality. UK Biobank recruited 502,624 participants aged 37 to 73 years between 2006 and 2010.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Infection with SARS-CoV-2 virus (COVID-19) impacts disadvantaged groups most. Lifestyle factors are also associated with adverse COVID-19 outcomes. To inform COVID-19 policy and interventions, we explored effect modification of socioeconomic-status (SES) on associations between lifestyle and COVID-19 outcomes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: To assess the prevalence of frailty in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and its association with baseline and longitudinal disease activity, all-cause mortality and hospitalisation.

Participants: People with RA identified from the Scottish Early Rheumatoid Arthritis (SERA) inception cohort (newly diagnosed, mean age 58.2 years) and UK Biobank (established disease identified using diagnostic codes, mean age 59 years).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Cohorts such as UK Biobank are increasingly used to study multimorbidity; however, there are concerns that lack of representativeness may lead to biased results. This study aims to compare associations between multimorbidity and adverse health outcomes in UK Biobank and a nationally representative sample.

Methods And Findings: These are observational analyses of cohorts identified from linked routine healthcare data from UK Biobank participants (n = 211,597 from England, Scotland, and Wales with linked primary care data, age 40 to 70, mean age 56.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: SELFBACK, an artificial intelligence (AI)-based app delivering evidence-based tailored self-management support to people with low back pain (LBP), has been shown to reduce LBP-related disability when added to usual care. LBP commonly co-occurs with multimorbidity (≥ 2 long-term conditions) or pain at other musculoskeletal sites, so this study explores if these factors modify the effect of the SELFBACK app or influence outcome trajectories over time.

Methods: Secondary analysis of a randomized controlled trial with 9-month follow-up.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: International guidelines consistently endorse the promotion of self-management for people with low back pain (LBP); however, implementation of these guidelines remains a challenge. Digital health interventions, such as those that can be provided by smartphone apps, have been proposed as a promising mode of supporting self-management in people with chronic conditions, including LBP. However, the evidence base for digital health interventions to support self-management of LBP is weak, and detailed descriptions and documentation of the interventions are lacking.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF