6,684 results match your criteria: "Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care.[Affiliation]"

Background: Extended reality (XR), encompassing technologies such as virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality, has rapidly gained prominence in health care. However, existing XR research often lacks rigor, proper controls, and standardization.

Objective: To address this and to enhance the transparency and quality of reporting in early-phase clinical evaluations of XR applications, we present the "Reporting for the early-phase clinical evaluation of applications using extended reality" (RATE-XR) guideline.

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Skin autofluorescence (SAF), reflecting advanced glycation end-products' accumulation in tissue, has been proposed as a non-invasive aging biomarker. Yet, SAF has not been compared to well-established blood-based aging biomarkers such as MetaboHealth in association with frailty. Furthermore, no previous study determined the longitudinal association of SAF with frailty.

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Article Synopsis
  • Prediction models help make medical decisions by estimating risks, advising high-risk individuals to undergo interventions while suggesting low-risk individuals avoid them.
  • Traditional models may overlook the complexities of interventions since they often assess risk at just one point in time, while in reality, decisions are made repeatedly and may change over time.
  • The article discusses how to formulate estimands for making better sequential predictions about interventions, using the example of choosing between vaginal delivery and cesarean section to inform future research and improve decision-making in clinical practice.
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Background: It is unclear if certain post-stroke somatic symptoms load onto items of the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), a self-report depression questionnaire. We investigated these concerns in a stroke sample using factor analysis, benchmarked against a non-stroke comparison group.

Methods: The secondary dataset constituted 787 stroke and 12,016 non-stroke participants.

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Background: Both the symptoms and diagnoses of mental health disorders affect individuals' occupational status and income. However, studies that compare the impact of differences between symptoms and diagnoses on occupational outcomes are lacking.

Aims: This study aimed to compare labour market attachment and income until midlife between individuals with different histories of mental disorder symptoms and diagnoses.

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Age-Specific Rural-Urban Disparities in the Incidence of Ischemic Stroke in the Netherlands.

Neurology

December 2024

From the Department of Neurology (E.V., J.I.V., N.A.H., F.-E.D.L.), Radboud University Medical Center, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior, Nijmegen; and Department of Epidemiology (I.V.), Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care, University Medical Center Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Article Synopsis
  • A study aimed to compare ischemic stroke incidence rates between rural and urban areas in the Netherlands, focusing on younger adults (15-49 years) and older adults (50+ years).
  • Researchers analyzed hospital data from 1998 to 2018, examining 23,720 younger patients and 369,107 older patients, and categorized municipalities based on urbanization and socioeconomic status.
  • Results showed that younger adults in rural areas had a 5% higher risk of ischemic stroke compared to those in urban settings, while older adults had a 3% lower risk, highlighting significant age-specific disparities in stroke incidence.
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Underrepresentation of women in cardiovascular disease clinical Trials-What's in a Name?

Int J Cardiol Heart Vasc

December 2024

Laboratory of Experimental Cardiology, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Background: Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in women worldwide. Yet, women are often underrepresented in cardiovascular clinical trials. Trial characteristics may influence the participation of women.

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Objective: In 2016, a selective preventive spinal immobilization protocol for emergency medical service (EMS) nurses was introduced in the Netherlands. This protocol leaves more room for autonomous decision-making in the pre-hospital phase regarding preventive spinal immobilization (PSI), compared to the previous strict protocol. In this study, we explored the experiences and perspectives of EMS nurses on decisionmaking about PSI after the change from a strict to a selective PSI protocol.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Advances in health have made HIV more manageable, but stigma and discrimination continue to hinder efforts to end the pandemic in Ghana by 2030, prompting a study on the experiences of people with HIV (PWH) in healthcare settings.
  • - A mixed-methods study with 420 participants found that 13.8% had experienced stigma, primarily in communities and homes, with common forms including gossip, verbal harassment, and physical assault affecting access to healthcare and mental health.
  • - Key predictors of stigma included being female and having TB-HIV co-infection, while self-employed individuals reported lower odds of facing stigma at clinics, indicating social dynamics in stigma experiences among PWH.
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Background: In paediatric palliative care, children with life-threatening and life-limiting conditions, their families, and their health care professionals often face difficult decisions about treatment, goals of care, and delivery of care. Advance care planning and shared decision-making are strategies that can improve quality of care by discussing goals and preferences on future care. In this paper, we provide recommendations that aim to optimise advance care planning and shared decision-making in paediatric palliative care in the Netherlands.

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Objectives: Total tumor volume (TTV) is associated with overall and recurrence-free survival in patients with colorectal cancer liver metastases (CRLM). However, the labor-intensive nature of such manual assessments has hampered the clinical adoption of TTV as an imaging biomarker. This study aimed to develop and externally evaluate a CRLM auto-segmentation model on CT scans, to facilitate the clinical adoption of TTV.

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Article Synopsis
  • Decentralized clinical trials (DCTs) are designed to improve trial participation by moving activities closer to participants, but understanding what motivates people to join these trials, especially those with type 2 diabetes, is still unclear.
  • Focus groups in the Netherlands, Germany, and Austria with participants aged around 66 identified seven key themes about trial participation, including location, time, interaction with healthcare professionals, and technology use, revealing a total of 20 different motivating factors.
  • The most significant motivators for DCT participation were flexibility in location and time; however, factors like digital infrastructure and personal interaction were seen as both helpful and challenging, suggesting future DCT designs could benefit from addressing these barriers directly.
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Federated learning as a smart tool for research on infectious diseases.

BMC Infect Dis

November 2024

Julius Global Health, Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Background: The use of real-world data has become increasingly popular, also in the field of infectious disease (ID), particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. While much useful data for research is being collected, these data are generally stored across different sources. Privacy concerns limit the possibility to store the data centrally, thereby also limiting the possibility of fully leveraging the potential power of combined data.

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Article Synopsis
  • Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is a major cause of heart failure, and this study analyzes genetic factors by examining 14,256 DCM cases and 36,203 participants from the UK Biobank for related traits.
  • Researchers discovered 80 genomic risk loci and pinpointed 62 potential effector genes tied to DCM, including some linked to rare variants.
  • The study uses advanced transcriptomics to explore how cellular functions contribute to DCM, showing that polygenic scores can help predict the disease in the general population and emphasize the importance of genetic testing and development of precise treatments.
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Article Synopsis
  • Patients with colorectal cancer and liver-only metastases showed improved outcomes when treated with FOLFOXIRI and bevacizumab compared to FOLFIRI and bevacizumab or with panitumumab, especially regarding progression-free survival and resection rates.
  • The CAIRO5 trial involved 530 patients with initially unresectable liver metastases from colorectal cancer, evaluated across numerous centers in the Netherlands and Belgium, focusing on different treatment combinations based on tumor genetics.
  • While more effective responses were observed with certain treatments, there was an increase in toxic side effects, particularly in specific genetic tumor variants like RAS/BRAFV600E.
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It is crucial to identify high-risk patients with infectious conditions for appropriate management. We previously found that inflammatory markers added value to vital signs for predicting mortality in patients with suspected infection. In this study, the aim was to externally validate the added value of the inflammatory markers and to develop a new prediction model.

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Objectives: It is not clear whether the association between younger age at menopause and increased risk of dementia is modified by type of menopause. We examined the association of age at menopause or hysterectomy with dementia risk in three groups of women: those with natural menopause, premenopausal bilateral oophorectomy (surgical menopause) or premenopausal hysterectomy (without bilateral oophorectomy).

Study Design: Individual-level data from 233 802 women in five prospective cohort studies (from four countries) were harmonized and pooled.

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Background: Metabolomic scores based on age (MetaboAge) and mortality (MetaboHealth) are considered indicators of overall health, but their association with cognition in the general population is unknown. Therefore, the association between MetaboAge/MetaboHealth and level and decline in cognition was studied, as were differences between men and women.

Methods: Data of 2821 participants (50% women, age range 45-75) from the Doetinchem Cohort Study was used.

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Lessons Learnt from HIV and Noncommunicable Disease Healthcare Integration in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Glob Heart

November 2024

Julius Global Health, Department of Global Public Health and Bioethics, Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.

In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), a rising burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) coexists with a persistent high burden of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Integrating care for chronic conditions is potentially beneficial, but the optimal approach remains unclear. By use of a narrative review of 14 recent case studies from different SSA countries, examples of NCD and HIV healthcare integration were described.

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Article Synopsis
  • The SCUBY project analyzes the challenges and facilitators of scaling integrated care (IC) in Cambodia, Slovenia, and Belgium using a multi-case study approach with various data collection methods.
  • Key barriers identified across all three countries include issues with governance, workforce shortages, inadequate financing, and fragmented information systems.
  • The study suggests that responding to health workforce challenges through task shifting, along with a focus on the unique contexts of each country's health system, could enhance the scaling of integrated care.
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Keeping pace in the age of innovation: The perspective of Dutch pharmaceutical science students on the position of machine learning training in an undergraduate curriculum.

Curr Pharm Teach Learn

February 2025

Division of Pharmacology, Utrecht Institute for Pharmaceutical Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Utrecht, Utrecht, the Netherlands. Electronic address:

Background: Over the years, approaches of the pharmaceutical industry to discover and develop drugs have changed rapidly due to new scientific trends. Among others, they have started to explore Machine Learning (ML), a subset of Artificial Intelligence (AI), as a promising tool to generate new hypotheses regarding drug candidate selections for clinical trials and to predict adverse side effects. Despite these recent developments, the possibilities of ML in pharmaceutical sciences have so far hardly penetrated the training of pharmaceutical science students.

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Background: Sex differences exist in type 2 diabetes (T2D), and androgens have been implicated in the etiology of T2D in a sex-specific manner. We therefore aimed to investigate whether androgens play a role in explaining sex differences in glucose homeostasis and incidence of T2D.

Methods: We used observational data from the German population-based KORA F4 study (n = 1975, mean age: 54 years, 41% women) and its follow-up examination KORA FF4 (median follow-up 6.

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Reply to: Peak Corticosteroid Dose for Immune-Related Adverse Events and Survival: Not the Whole Story.

J Clin Oncol

November 2024

Rik J. Verheijden, MSc, Department of Medical Oncology, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands, Department of Epidemiology, Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands; Jolien S. de Groot, MD, PhD, Babs O. Fabriek, PhD, and Miki N. Hew, MD, PhD, Medicines Evaluation Board, Utrecht, the Netherlands; Anne M. May, PhD, Department of Epidemiology, Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands; and Karijn P.M. Suijkerbuijk, MD, PhD, Department of Medical Oncology, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands.

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