Publications by authors named "Rene Melis"

Background: Monitoring the recovery trajectory during and after hospitalization can be a valuable method to observe whether additional care is needed to optimize recovery. Hand grip strength tests are commonly used to measure an individual's physical condition. Eforto® is a system to monitor hand grip strength and grip work as measures of recovery.

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Introduction: Systemic inflammation and endothelial dysfunction are potentially modifiable factors implicated in Alzheimer's disease (AD), which offer potential therapeutic targets to slow disease progression.

Methods: We investigated the relationship between baseline circulating levels of inflammatory (TNF-α, IL-1ß) and endothelial cell markers (VCAM-1, ICAM-1, E-selectin) and 18-month cognitive decline (ADAS-cog12) in 266 mild-to-moderate AD patients from the NILVAD study. We employed individual growth models to examine associations, potential mediation, and interaction effects while adjusting for confounders.

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Introduction: To improve outcomes after knee or hip surgery, better insight is needed in long-term recovery patterns in the context of ageing-related decline. We examined long-term trajectories of physical functioning (PF) in older women with and without hip and knee surgery and described profiles of cases with higher and lower resilience after surgery.

Methods: This observational study used data from 10,434 women (73-79 years) who completed survey 2 of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates how social health factors, like marital status and loneliness, are connected to the immune system and dementia risk in older adults.
  • Researchers measured various immune cell counts and neurodegeneration markers in a group of 8,374 participants over several years to analyze these relationships.
  • Findings suggest that being never married is linked to higher markers of immune imbalance and neurodegeneration, particularly in males, while social support shows mixed effects on immune system measures between genders.
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Background: Social health markers, including marital status, contact frequency, network size, and social support, have been shown to be associated with cognition. However, the mechanisms underlying these associations remain poorly understood. We investigated whether depressive symptoms and inflammation mediated associations between social health and subsequent cognition.

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Background: Multiple factors influence the recovery process of low back pain (LBP). The identification and increased knowledge of risk factors might contribute to a better understanding of the course of LBP.

Objectives: To investigate the association of habitual physical activity (PA) and sedentary behaviour (SB), measured at baseline, with disability trajectories in adults with LBP.

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Background: Multiple factors influence the recovery process of low back pain (LBP). The identification and increased knowledge of prognostic factors might contribute to a better understanding of the course of LBP. The purpose of this study is to investigate the association of the STarT Back Screening Tool (SBST) risk score and the type of leg pain (non-radiating LBP, referred non-radicular, and radicular radiating leg pain) with the disability trajectory (at baseline, the slope, and recovery at one year) in adults with low back pain.

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Objectives: To systematically evaluate the performance of COVID-19 prognostic models and scores for mortality risk in older populations across three health-care settings: hospitals, primary care, and nursing homes.

Study Design And Setting: This retrospective external validation study included 14,092 older individuals of ≥70 years of age with a clinical or polymerase chain reaction-confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis from March 2020 to December 2020. The six validation cohorts include three hospital-based (CliniCo, COVID-OLD, COVID-PREDICT), two primary care-based (Julius General Practitioners Network/Academisch network huisartsgeneeskunde/Network of Academic general Practitioners, PHARMO), and one nursing home cohort (YSIS) in the Netherlands.

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Purpose: Measuring dynamical resilience indicators based on time series data may improve the prediction of health deterioration in older adults after hospital discharge. We examined the feasibility of an intensive prospective cohort study examining dynamical resilience indicators based on time series data of symptoms and physical activity in acutely ill older adults who visited the Emergency Department (ED).

Methods: This is a prospective cohort study with time series data from symptom questionnaires and activity trackers.

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Despite extensive research efforts to mechanistically understand late-onset Alzheimer's disease (LOAD) and other complex mental health disorders, curative treatments remain elusive. We emphasize the multiscale multicausality inherent to LOAD, highlighting the interplay between interconnected pathophysiological processes and risk factors. Systems thinking methods, such as causal loop diagrams and systems dynamic models, offer powerful means to capture and study this complexity.

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Background And Objectives: The existing literature highlights the importance of reading books in middle-to-older adulthood for cognitive functioning; very few studies, however, have examined the importance of childhood cognitive resources for cognitive outcomes later in life.

Research Design And Methods: Using data from 11 countries included in the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) data set ( = 32,783), multistate survival models (MSMs) were fit to examine the importance of access to reading material in childhood on transitions through cognitive status categories (no cognitive impairment and impaired cognitive functioning) and death. Additionally, using the transition probabilities estimated by the MSMs, we estimated the remaining years of life without cognitive impairment and total longevity.

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Background: Count scores, disease clustering, and pairwise associations between diseases remain ubiquitous in multimorbidity research despite two major shortcomings: they yield no insight into plausible mechanisms underlying multimorbidity, and they ignore higher-order interactions such as effect modification.

Objectives: We argue that two components are currently missing but vital to develop novel multimorbidity metrics. Firstly, networks should be constructed which consists simultaneously of signs, symptoms, and diseases, since only then could they yield insight into plausible shared biological mechanisms underlying diseases.

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The capacity to perceived vitality (CPV) ratio is a novel measure for intrinsic capacity or resilience based on grip work and self-perceived fatigue. CPV has been associated with pre-frailty in older adults and post-surgery inflammation in adults. To better understand the utility of this measure in a frail population, we examined the association between CPV and inflammation in geriatric inpatients.

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Numerous clinical trials based on a single-cause paradigm have not resulted in efficacious treatments for Alzheimer's disease (AD). Recently, prevention trials that simultaneously intervened on multiple risk factors have shown mixed results, suggesting that careful design is necessary. Moreover, intensive pilot precision medicine (PM) trial results have been promising but may not generalize to a broader population.

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Background: As populations age, multimorbidity (the presence of two or more chronic morbidities) is increasingly more common. These evolving demographics demand further research into the identification of morbidity patterns in different settings as well as the longitudinal effects of these patterns.

Methods: Prospectively collected data on 12,755 older persons aged 65+ years were derived from The Older Persons and Informal Caregivers Survey Minimum DataSet (TOPICS-MDS, www.

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Article Synopsis
  • This study investigates how social health markers at the start can impact cognitive ability and decline over 11 to 18 years in older adults across different studies.
  • Utilizing data from nearly 17,000 participants, researchers employed multilevel models to link social health factors to cognitive functions like executive function and memory.
  • Results show that while good social health is generally linked to better cognitive capability, the strength of these associations varies by specific social factors and across different studies, indicating a need for tailored interventions.
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Background And Objectives: Successful aging has been described as a multifactorial and dynamic process. The aims of the study were to detect aging trajectories of physical function and behavioral, psychological, and social well-being; and to explore the correlations between functional versus well-being trajectories by age group.

Research Design And Methods: Data were gathered from the Swedish National Study on Aging and Care in Kungsholmen ( = 1,375).

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Objectives: The aim of the current study was to investigate the health-related quality of life (HRQol) of the family caregiver in MCI, explore possible determinants and study possible differences with mild dementia.

Methods: This secondary data analysis included 145 persons with MCI and 154 persons with dementia and their family caregivers from two Dutch cohort studies. HRQoL was measured with the VAS of the EuroQol-5D-3L version.

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Introduction: Care integration is a promising strategy to achieve sustainable health-care systems. With DementiaNet, a 2-year program, we facilitated collaboration between primary health-care professionals. We studied changes in primary dementia care integration during and after DementiaNet participation.

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To evaluate a minute-by-minute monitoring algorithm against a periodic early warning score (EWS) in detecting clinical deterioration and workload. Periodic EWSs suffer from large measurement intervals, causing late detection of deterioration. This might be prevented by continuous vital sign monitoring with a real-time algorithm such as the Visensia Safety Index (VSI).

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Article Synopsis
  • Previous analyses indicated a link between social connections and cognitive health, but this study utilized individual data from a diverse international sample of over 39,000 participants to assess these impacts more comprehensively.
  • Findings showed that strong social connections—both in terms of structure (like marriage and community engagement) and quality (feeling connected)—are tied to reduced risks of mild cognitive impairment, dementia, and mortality.
  • Unique to Asian participants, being married or in a relationship significantly contributed to lower dementia risk, highlighting the varying importance of social factors across different cultures.
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Article Synopsis
  • Orthostatic hypotension (OH) is a common issue in older adults, linked to various health problems like dizziness and falls, and is diagnosed through single-time blood pressure measurements.
  • This study explored the use of near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) to continuously measure cerebral oxygenation and its relationship with blood pressure (BP) and cerebral blood velocity (CBv) during posture changes in 41 participants aged 20-88.
  • Results showed that BP and NIRS-measured oxygen levels correlated well shortly after standing, while longer-term associations were weak, highlighting the importance of NIRS for understanding OH repercussions during postural changes.
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