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Common neuroanatomical regions are associated with both states of anorexia nervosa (AN) and autistic characteristics, but restoration of body mass index (BMI) has been associated with decreased presentation of autistic characteristics in some individuals with AN. This study aims to examine neuroanatomical correlates associated with autistic characteristics in those with acute anorexia nervosa (ac-AN) and those previously diagnosed with AN but whose weight has been restored (WR). In total, 183 individuals (healthy controls [HCs] = 67; n[ac-AN] = 68; n[WR] = 48) from the Brain imaging of Emotion And Cognition of adolescents with Anorexia Nervosa (BEACON) study were included, with autistic characteristics determined in both ac-AN and WR individuals (n = 116). To further examine BMI, ac-AN and WR group associations were compared. Random forest regression (RFR) models examined whether autistic characteristics and morphology of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), middle frontal gyrus (MFG), and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) were able to predict future levels of social anhedonia and alexithymia. Group-wise differences were identified within the volume and surface area of the MFG and OFC, which were unrelated to BMI. Autistic characteristics were inversely associated with MFG and ACC volume, with differences in associations between ac-AN and WR groups seen in the surface area of the MFG. RFR models identified moderate-to-weak performance and found that autistic characteristics were not important predictive features in a priori and exploratory models. Findings suggest that the presence of autistic characteristics in those with ac-AN are associated with the volume of the MFG and are unrelated to BMI restoration.
While clozapine has risks, relative risk of fatality is overestimated. The UK pharmacovigilance programme is efficient, but comparisons with other drugs can mislead because of reporting variations. Clozapine actually lowers mortality, partly by reducing schizophrenia-related suicides, but preventable deaths still occur. Clozapine should be used earlier and more widely, but there should be better monitoring and better management of toxicity.
EDAC (Eating Disorders and Autism Collaborative) is an innovative project aiming to increase research capacity by supporting collaboration in the fields of eating disorders and autism. EDAC comprises four integrated workstreams to co-produce interdisciplinary research, directed by Autistic individuals with lived experience of eating disorders. Workstream 1 will outline best collaborative practices, informing the research network. Workstream 2 will use arts-based methodologies to set research priorities, with emphasis on the perspectives of underrepresented groups. Workstream 3 will support interdisciplinary collaborations to develop innovative research. Finally, workstream 4 will maximise knowledge mobilisation with the aim of reducing barriers to rapid incorporation of research into policy and clinical practice. A core aim of EDAC is to embed a neurodiversity-affirming culture within eating disorder research and to support the development of a new generation of researchers conducting innovative and meaningful research with the potential to improve clinical outcomes.
To investigate the symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 infection, their dynamics and their discriminatory power for the disease using longitudinally, prospectively collected information reported at the time of their occurrence. We have analysed data from a large phase 3 clinical UK COVID-19 vaccine trial. The alpha variant was the predominant strain. Participants were assessed for SARS-CoV-2 infection via nasal/throat PCR at recruitment, vaccination appointments, and when symptomatic. Statistical techniques were implemented to infer estimates representative of the UK population, accounting for multiple symptomatic episodes associated with one individual. An optimal diagnostic model for SARS-CoV-2 infection was derived. The 4-month prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 was 2.1%; increasing to 19.4% (16.0%–22.7%) in participants reporting loss of appetite and 31.9% (27.1%–36.8%) in those with anosmia/ageusia. The model identified anosmia and/or ageusia, fever, congestion, and cough to be significantly associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection. Symptoms’ dynamics were vastly different in the two groups; after a slow start peaking later and lasting longer in PCR+ participants, whilst exhibiting a consistent decline in PCR- participants, with, on average, fewer than 3 days of symptoms reported. Anosmia/ageusia peaked late in confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection (day 12), indicating a low discrimination power for early disease diagnosis.
Understanding the distribution and extent of suitable habitats is critical for the conservation of endangered and endemic taxa. Such knowledge is limited for many Central African species, including the rare and globally threatened Grey-necked Picathartes Picathartes oreas, one of only two species in the family Picathartidae endemic to the forests of Central Africa. Despite growing concerns about land-use change resulting in fragmentation and loss of forest cover in the region, neither the extent of suitable habitat nor the potential species’ distribution is well known. We combine 339 (new and historical) occurrence records of Grey-necked Picathartes with environmental variables to model the potential global distribution. We used a Maximum Entropy modelling approach that accounted for sampling bias. Our model suggests that Grey-necked Picathartes distribution is strongly associated with steeper slopes and high levels of forest cover, while bioclimatic, vegetation health, and habitat condition variables were all excluded from the final model. We predicted 17,327 km2 of suitable habitat for the species, of which only 2,490 km2 (14.4%) are within protected areas where conservation designations are strictly enforced. These findings show a smaller global distribution of predicted suitable habitat forthe Grey-necked Picathartes than previously thought. This work provides evidence to inform a revision of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List status, and may warrant upgrading the status of the species from “Near Threatened” to “Vulnerable”.
In the COVID-19 pandemic, people’s dwellings suddenly became a predominant site of economic activity. We argue that, predictably, policy-makers and employers took the home for granted as a background support of economic life. Acting as if home is a cost-less resource that is free for appropriation in an emergency, ignoring how home functions as a site of gendered relations of care and labour, and assuming home is a largely harmonious site, all shaped the invisibility of the imposition. Taking employee flexibility for granted and presenting work-from-home as a privilege offered by generous employers assumed rapid adaptation. As Australia emerges from lockdown, ‘building back better’ to meet future shocks entails better supporting adaptive capabilities of workers in the care economy, and of homes that have likewise played an unacknowledged role as buffer and shelter for the economy. Investing in infrastructure capable of providing a more equitable basis for future resilience is urgent to reap the benefits that work-from-home offers. This article points to the need for rethinking public investment and infrastructure priorities for economic recovery and reconstruction in the light of a gender perspective on COVID-19 ‘lockdown’ experience.
At the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in 2021, over 40 countries made commitments to low carbon, sustainable health care. Respiratory care provides a case study to explore how existing evidenced-based guidance can inform progress towards more sustainable care pathways and technologies. Our aim is to identify whether environmental aspects of health technology assessment (HTA) are referenced in guidance and the extent to which the four principles of sustainable health care (prevention, self-care, streamlining, and low carbon technology) are promoted in guidance.
Methods
Internet searches enabled identification of current national guidance on management of respiratory diseases in English, French or Polish. Guidances were reviewed to identify references to environmental aspects of HTA and recommendations that align with each of the four sustainable healthcare principles.
Results
Guidance on respiratory care is produced by varied stakeholders globally. Some principles of sustainable health care are frequently reflected in guidance to improve quality of care, but others are missed where environment sustainability is not considered. Reference to HTAs incorporating environmental impacts is lacking. There is limited engagement with the environmental impacts of inhalers in guidance. Guidance created by clinician groups (e.g., Greener Practice) and research networks (e.g., Centre for Sustainable Health Systems) has responded more quickly to the need to address sustainability concerns compared to guidance produced by national public bodies.
Conclusions
HTA organizations may need to take a broader perspective, incorporating environmental impacts in assessments. This could have an influential role in enabling evidence-informed guidance and development of sustainable care pathways and technologies. Limitations of our study were lack of evaluation of local guidance due to limited capacity, language restrictions, and subjectivity in assessing whether each sustainable healthcare principle was addressed in guidance. There may be limited transferability of our results to other specialties or settings. Further research on the sustainability impacts and relative merits of different health technologies and care pathways is required to inform HTA and guidance.
Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer's disease and affects about 1% of the population over the age of 60 years in industrialised countries. The aim of this review is to examine nutrition in PD across three domains: dietary intake and the development of PD; whole body metabolism in PD and the effects of PD symptoms and treatment on nutritional status. In most cases, PD is believed to be caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors and although there has been much research in the area, evidence suggests that poor dietary intake is not a risk factor for the development of PD. The evidence about body weight changes in both the prodromal and symptomatic phases of PD is inconclusive and is confounded by many factors. Malnutrition in PD has been documented as has sarcopaenia, although the prevalence of the latter remains uncertain due to a lack of consensus in the definition of sarcopaenia. PD symptoms, including those which are gastrointestinal and non-gastrointestinal, are known to adversely affect nutritional status. Similarly, PD treatments can cause nausea, vomiting and constipation, all of which can adversely affect nutritional status. Given that the prevalence of PD will increase as the population ages, it is important to understand the interplay between PD, comorbidities and nutritional status. Further research may contribute to the development of interventional strategies to improve symptoms, augment care and importantly, enhance the quality of life for patients living with this complex neurodegenerative disease.
The conservation flagship approach is a valuable tool for raising funds and awareness, but species-based campaigns have been criticized for providing little benefit to wider biodiversity. One possible solution is to use conservation areas as flagships, but we lack data on the types of area that most appeal to potential donors. Here, we used an online choice experiment involving hypothetical overseas conservation areas to investigate how respondents value a series of conservation area attributes. We calculated the average willingness to pay for each attribute and assessed preference heterogeneity. Our results suggest that community ownership is valued the most, followed by the presence of threatened bird species, low current funding in the conservation area, the presence of charismatic mammals, and charity ownership. Respondents could be divided into three groups, based on their education, environmental organization membership and income. The group of respondents who were less wealthy and were members of environmental organizations were not willing to pay for this kind of conservation action, suggesting that flagship area campaigns targeted at them should encourage other types of involvement. The other two groups, which included respondents who were less engaged in conservation (neither group included environmental organization members, with one group less wealthy and less educated, and the other wealthier), found community ownership particularly appealing, suggesting that many potential donors may be driven by social concerns. This is a key finding and suggests flagship conservation areas could attract a new audience of donors, helping to support current global efforts to increase the management effectiveness, connectivity and extent of protected areas and land under other effective area-based conservation measures.
People with psychosis experience cardiometabolic comorbidities, including metabolic syndrome, coronary heart disease and diabetes. These physical comorbidities have been linked to diet, inactivity and the effects of the illness itself, including disorganisation, impairments in global function and amotivation associated with negative symptoms of schizophrenia or co-morbid depression.
Methods
We aimed to describe the dietary intake, physical activity (PA) and sedentary behaviour patterns of a sample of patients with established psychosis participating in the Improving Physical Health and Reducing Substance Use in Severe Mental Illness (IMPaCT) randomised controlled trial, and to explore the relationship between these lifestyle factors and mental health symptomatology.
Results
A majority of participants had poor dietary quality, low in fruit and vegetables and high in discretionary foods. Only 29.3% completed ⩾150 min of moderate and/or vigorous activity per week and 72.2% spent ⩾6 h per day sitting. Cross-sectional associations between negative symptoms, global function, and PA and sedentary behaviour were observed. Additionally, those with more negative symptoms receiving IMPaCT therapy had fewer positive changes in PA from baseline to 12-month follow-up than those with fewer negative symptoms at baseline.
Conclusion
These results highlight the need for the development of multidisciplinary lifestyle and exercise interventions to target eating habits, PA and sedentary behaviour, and the need for further research on how to adapt lifestyle interventions to baseline mental status. Negative symptoms in particular may reduce patient's responses to lifestyle interventions.
During the Randomized Assessment of Rapid Endovascular Treatment (EVT) of Ischemic Stroke (ESCAPE) trial, patient-level micro-costing data were collected. We report a cost-effectiveness analysis of EVT, using ESCAPE trial data and Markov simulation, from a universal, single-payer system using a societal perspective over a patient’s lifetime.
Methods:
Primary data collection alongside the ESCAPE trial provided a 3-month trial-specific, non-model, based cost per quality-adjusted life year (QALY). A Markov model utilizing ongoing lifetime costs and life expectancy from the literature was built to simulate the cost per QALY adopting a lifetime horizon. Health states were defined using the modified Rankin Scale (mRS) scores. Uncertainty was explored using scenario analysis and probabilistic sensitivity analysis.
Results:
The 3-month trial-based analysis resulted in a cost per QALY of $201,243 of EVT compared to the best standard of care. In the model-based analysis, using a societal perspective and a lifetime horizon, EVT dominated the standard of care; EVT was both more effective and less costly than the standard of care (−$91). When the time horizon was shortened to 1 year, EVT remains cost savings compared to standard of care (∼$15,376 per QALY gained with EVT). However, if the estimate of clinical effectiveness is 4% less than that demonstrated in ESCAPE, EVT is no longer cost savings compared to standard of care.
Conclusions:
Results support the adoption of EVT as a treatment option for acute ischemic stroke, as the increase in costs associated with caring for EVT patients was recouped within the first year of stroke, and continued to provide cost savings over a patient’s lifetime.
The first episode of psychosis is a critical period in the emergence of cardiometabolic risk.
Aims
We set out to explore the influence of individual and lifestyle factors on cardiometabolic outcomes in early psychosis.
Method
This was a prospective cohort study of 293 UK adults presenting with first-episode psychosis investigating the influence of sociodemographics, lifestyle (physical activity, sedentary behaviour, nutrition, smoking, alcohol, substance use) and medication on cardiometabolic outcomes over the following 12 months.
Results
Rates of obesity and glucose dysregulation rose from 17.8% and 12%, respectively, at baseline to 23.7% and 23.7% at 1 year. Little change was seen over time in the 76.8% tobacco smoking rate or the quarter who were sedentary for over 10 h daily. We found no association between lifestyle at baseline or type of antipsychotic medication prescribed with either baseline or 1-year cardiometabolic outcomes. Median haemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) rose by 3.3 mmol/mol in participants from Black and minority ethnic (BME) groups, with little change observed in their White counterparts. At 12 months, one-third of those with BME heritage exceeded the threshold for prediabetes (HbA1c >39 mmol/mol).
Conclusions
Unhealthy lifestyle choices are prevalent in early psychosis and cardiometabolic risk worsens over the next year, creating an important window for prevention. We found no evidence, however, that preventative strategies should be preferentially directed based on lifestyle habits. Further work is needed to determine whether clinical strategies should allow for differential patterns of emergence of cardiometabolic risk in people of different ethnicities.
Decision-makers are increasingly recognizing the usefulness of qualitative research to inform patient-centered policy decisions, and are accordingly increasingly demanding qualitative evidence as part of health technology assessment (HTA). In the context of tight HTA timelines, a new form of evidence synthesis has emerged—rapid qualitative reviews. The need for rapidity requires either an increase in resources or, more commonly, a compromise in rigor, yet guidance on appropriate compromises for qualitative reviews is lacking.
Methods:
In order to inform de novo guidance, we conducted a systematic scoping review to identify existing guidance and published examples of rapid qualitative reviews. We searched Medline and CINAHL using medical subject headings and keywords related to “rapid reviews” and “qualitative” research, and screened the 1,771 resultant citations independently in duplicate. Additionally, we searched the grey literature and solicited examples from our contacts and other evidence-synthesis organizations. We summarized included guidance and reviews using the Search, AppraisaL, Synthesis, Analysis (SALSA) framework to identify abbreviations in the review process.
Results:
We found no guidance documents specific to rapid qualitative reviews. We found one published peer-reviewed rapid qualitative review, and several more (>10; grey literature search in process) through our organizational contacts. While methods to abbreviate the process are poorly reported, an abbreviated literature search (years and databases searched) and the use of a single reviewer appear common.
Conclusions:
A number of agencies are producing rapid qualitative reviews, however our review identifies the urgent need to develop and explore methods for the synthesis of qualitative research that balance rapidity and rigor.
The embedded liberalism of the law of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is often contrasted to a common laissez-faire liberalism of old-generation investment agreements (IIAs). While WTO law broadly attempts to reconcile trade liberalisation with regulatory flexibility, old-generation IIAs have been liberal instruments overly protective of investor interests at the expense of the state’s right to regulate. But the unharnessed liberalism of these IIAs progressively gives way to new more balanced instruments and a paradigm shift is witnessed towards a model that resembles WTO law’s embedded liberalism. The chapter explores this shift in international investment law towards models that radically change the landscape of the discipline, through the widespread use of public policy exceptions and other provisions aiming to safeguard the state’s regulatory flexibility. The focus is on very new investment agreements, including megaregionals, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), and recently adopted model bilateral investment treaties, such as the Brazilian model ‘cooperation and facilitation investment agreement’ (CFIA). In light of these instruments, it examines how embedded liberalism and the state’s right to regulate from ‘emergent’ concepts in international investment law are becoming the quintessence of new IIAs.
In no other society in the world have urbanisation and industrialization been as comprehensively based on migrant labour as in South Africa. Rather than focusing on the well-documented narrative of displacement and oppression, A Long Way Home captures the humanity, agency and creative modes of self-expression of the millions of workers who helped to build and shape modern South Africa. The book spans a three-hundred-year history beginning with the exportation of slave labour from Mozambique in the eighteenth century and ending with the strikes and tensions on the platinum belt in recent years. It shows not only the age-old mobility of African migrants across the continent but also, with the growing demand for labour in the mining industry, the importation of Chinese indentured migrant workers. Contributions include 18 essays and over 90 artworks and photographs that traverse homesteads, chiefdoms and mining hostels, taking readers into the materiality of migrant life and its customs and traditions, including the rituals practiced by migrants in an effort to preserve connections to “home” and create a sense of “belonging”. The essays and visual materials provide multiple perspectives on the lived experience of migrant labourers and celebrate their extraordinary journeys. A Long Way Home was conceived during the planning of an art exhibition entitled ‘Ngezinyawo: Migrant Journeys’ at Wits Art Museum. The interdisciplinary nature of the contributions and the extraordinary collection of images selected to complement and expand on the text make this a unique collection.
This article reports on a case study of a decade-long organizing forms response to the need for groundbreaking innovation while maintaining existing operational performance – the explore–exploit conundrum. Employing ‘grounded research,’ data were collected on the experiences of the Asia-Pacific arm of a multinational professional service firm’s key decision-makers, innovators and entrepreneurs. The findings reveal a three-tiered organizing forms response to the explore–exploit paradox, characterized by a novel combination of heavy exploitation-driven actions alongside deep exploration projects. This case suggests that one successful approach to delivering on both explore and exploit focuses on a productive tension that emerges by enacting innovative organizing forms with contextual awareness. This productive tension was sufficiently powerful to impel individuals to innovate, but also sufficiently contained to avoid interfering with commercial outcomes. An explore–exploit framework conceptualizes organizational changes incorporating complexity and contradiction, without the implicit emphasis on removing or denying the existing tension.
The epidemiology of autism in adults has relied on untested projections
using childhood research.
Aims
To derive representative estimates of the prevalence of autism and key
associations in adults of all ages and ability levels.
Method
Comparable clinical diagnostic assessments of 7274 Adult Psychiatric
Morbidity Survey participants combined with a population case-register
survey of 290 adults with intellectual disability.
Results
The combined prevalence of autism in adults of all ages in England was
11/1000 (95% CI 3–19/1000). It was higher in those with moderate to
profound intellectual disability (odds ratio (OR) = 63.5, 95% CI
27.4–147.2). Male gender was a strong predictor of autism only in those
with no or mild intellectual disability (adjusted OR = 8.5, 95% CI
2.0–34.9; interaction with gender, P = 0.03).
Conclusions
Few adults with autism have intellectual disability; however, autism is
more prevalent in this population. Autism measures may miss more women
with autism.