Syncope: Advances in Diagnosis and Treatment 2024.

Aim: In light of many recent advances in the field of vasovagal syncope, a selective review has been undertaken of these developments.

Methods: Recent publications on the following topics were reviewed; understanding of vasovagal syncope pathophysiology, tilt-testing methodology and interpretation, drug, ablation and pacemaker therapy.

Results And Conclusions: The vasovagal syncope field is very active in researching its pathophysiology, using it to gain better understanding of the process and applying this knowledge to therapy.

Inpatient referrals to a specialist falls and syncope service: prevalence of STOPPFall FRIDs and review of deprescribing patterns.

Purpose: Falls are the commonest cause of accidental death in older people and the most frequent reason for their presentation to hospital. The Screening Tool of Older Persons Prescriptions in older adults with high falls risk (STOPPFall) facilitates deprescribing by providing a clear consensus on which medications are considered fall-risk-increasing drugs (FRIDs). This study aimed to determine the prevalence of STOPPFall FRIDs in inpatients referred to a falls and syncope service (FASS).

The Association between Psychotropic Medication Use and Gait and Mobility Impairment in Community-Dwelling Older People. Data from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA).

Background: Little work to date has quantified the effect of psychotropic medications (antidepressants, benzodiazepines, 'Z' drugs, antipsychotics, anticholinergics) on mobility and gait in later life. The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between these medications and mobility/gait parameters in a large cohort of community-dwelling older people.

Methods: Participants were included if they were ≥60 years at TILDA Wave 1 and underwent gait and mobility assessment (Gaitrite system), with follow-up at Wave 3 (4 years).

A novel DNA methylation-based surrogate biomarker for chronic systemic inflammation (InfLaMeS): results from the Health and Retirement Study.

Chronic low-grade systemic inflammation is a risk factor for chronic diseases and mortality and is an important biomarker in health research. DNA methylation (DNAm) surrogate biomarkers are valuable exposure, risk factor and health outcome predictors in studies where the measures cannot be measured directly and often perform as well or better than direct measure. We generated a DNAm surrogate biomarker for chronic, systemic inflammation from a systemic inflammation latent variable of seven inflammatory markers and evaluated its performance relative to measured inflammatory biomarkers in predicting several age-associated outcomes of interest, including mortality, activities of daily living and multimorbidity in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS).