Background: Serious illness is characterised by uncertainty, particularly in older age groups. Uncertainty may be experienced by patients, family carers, and health professionals about a broad variety of issues. There are many evidence gaps regarding the experience and management of uncertainty.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The anticipatory prescribing of injectable medications is recommended practice in controlling distressing symptoms in the last days of life. A 2017 systematic review found practice and guidance was based on inadequate evidence. Since then, there has been considerable additional research, warranting a new review.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: uncertainty pervades the complex illness trajectories experienced by older adults with multimorbidity. Uncertainty is experienced by older people, their informal carers and professionals providing care, yet is incompletely understood. We aimed to identify and synthesise systematically the experience of uncertainty in advanced multimorbidity from patient, carer and professional perspectives.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn secondary analyses of a randomised controlled trial of exercise during pregnancy, we examined associations between mid-pregnancy maternal body mass index (BMI) and excessive gestational weight gain (GWG) with offspring health. Follow-up data were available on 57 mother-child pairs at 1-year and 52 pairs at 7-year follow-ups. Clinical assessments included body composition and fasting blood tests.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Play Kindly is a gamified animated app designed to address common behavioral problems in childhood. The interface is designed to appeal to Pacific people, a population group with a higher risk of developing clinically significant behavioral problems than most other ethnic groups in New Zealand.
Objective: The aim of this study is to explore the opinions of parents and professionals about the acceptability, usability, and content of Play Kindly.
BMJ Support Palliat Care
June 2020
Introduction: Frail older people are known to have low rates of advance care planning (ACP). Many frail patients prefer less aggressive treatment, but these preferences are often not known or respected. Frail patients often have multiple hospital admissions, potentially providing opportunities for ACP.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThere are limited data on long-term outcomes of mothers or their offspring following exercise interventions during pregnancy. We assessed long-term effects of an exercise intervention (home-based stationary cycling) between 20-36 weeks of gestation on anthropometry and body composition in mothers and offspring after 1 and 7 years. 84 women were randomised to intervention or usual activity, with follow-up data available for 61 mother-child pairs (38 exercisers) at 1 year and 57 (33 exercisers) at 7 years.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective The objective of this study was to identify characteristics associated with recurrent large-for-gestational-age (LGA) infants in obese women and to explore the relationship between interpregnancy weight change and gestational weight gain (GWG) on risk of recurrence. Study Design We conducted a population-based historical cohort study of 1,190 obese women in Missouri who delivered LGA infants in their first pregnancy with two consecutive pregnancies resulting in singleton live births during 1998 to 2005. Adjusted odds ratios (aORs) for recurrent LGA infants were calculated with multiple logistic regression.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExtracampine hallucinations (EH), the sense of a presence or fleeting movement in the absence of an associated visual percept, have been reported in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients but their prevalence, characteristics, and temporal relationship to visual hallucinations (VH) remain unclear. Given that, VH are predictive of cognitive impairment in PD, improved understanding of EH may have significant prognostic implications. The objective of this study is to evaluate the prevalence and characteristics of EH in a large unselected population with PD and to assess the temporal relationship between EH, VH, and memory decline.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWomens Health (Lond)
November 2013
Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is the most common medical complication of pregnancy and is particularly prevalent among obese women. Both GDM and obesity confer significant comorbidities for the mother and her offspring, including perinatal complications, excessive fetal growth and long-term risks for maternal and offspring obesity and diabetes. Exercise has well-documented health benefits and reduces peripheral insulin resistance in nonpregnant individuals, a major risk factor for the development of diabetes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA 34-year-old woman with a history of relapsing psychosis presented with a 15-month history of impassivity and social withdrawal associated with cognitive impairment. The subsequent recurrence of psychomotor agitation, auditory hallucinations and delusional thinking resulted in an emergency admission under psychiatric services. Initial investigations, including MRI of the brain and cerebrospinal fluid studies were unremarkable and she was treated for a primary psychiatric disorder.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To determine whether anthropometric and biochemical features differ in in vitro fertilization (IVF) children conceived via fresh (IVFF) or thawed (IVFT) embryo transfer compared with naturally conceived controls.
Design: A cross-sectional controlled study.
Setting: University clinical research unit.
Objective: The purpose of this study was to estimate the impact of interpregnancy weight change from first to second pregnancies in obese women on the risk of large-for-gestational-age (LGA) and small-for-gestational-age (SGA) infants.
Study Design: A population-based historical cohort analysis of 10,444 obese women in Missouri who delivered their first 2 singleton live infants from 1998-2005. Interpregnancy weight change was calculated as the difference between prepregnancy body mass index (BMI) of the first and second pregnancies.
Exerc Sport Sci Rev
July 2011
There is now a large body of evidence demonstrating the influence of the in utero environment on postnatal growth. Regular aerobic exercise during pregnancy elicits maternal and fetal adaptations that seem specific to the period of gestation in which training is initiated and maintained. This review considers the evidence for both positive and negative long-term health outcomes for offspring.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClin Endocrinol (Oxf)
April 2011
Context & Objective: A recent paper by our group reported that regular aerobic exercise during pregnancy led to lower foetal IGF-I and IGF-II concentrations and a modest reduction in offspring birth weight when compared with the offspring of nontraining control participants. Maternal hormonal alterations in response to exercise training may be associated with the regulation of nutrient availability for foetal growth through placental regulation of maternal metabolism.
Objective: To determine whether the reduction in offspring size was associated with changes in the maternal IGF axis [including placental growth hormone (PGH)], leptin and/or free fatty acids (FFA) in response to aerobic exercise training in the second half of pregnancy.
Context: Epidemiological studies have identified the importance of the in utero environment in providing a healthy start to life. Previous studies have suggested that the maternal environment, in particular a reduction in maternal insulin sensitivity, contributes significantly to fetal growth. Regular aerobic exercise, through an effect on maternal insulin sensitivity, may influence offspring size by regulating nutrient supply to the fetus.
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