Decreased physical activity, reduced QoL and presence of debilitating fatigue in patients with Addison's disease

Background: Health-related quality of life in patients with Addison's disease has been assessed in various European countries, indicating a reduced quality of life. However, no studies have addressed the impact of Addison's disease on physical activity. Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the quality of life in Dutch patients...

Bayesian inference for an illness-death model for stroke with cognition as a latent time-dependent risk factor

Longitudinal data can be used to estimate the transition intensities between healthy and unhealthy states prior to death. An illness-death model for history of stroke is presented, where time-dependent transition intensities are regressed on a latent variable representing cognitive function. The change of this function over time is described by...

Job Strain and the risk of stroke: An individual-participant data meta-analysis

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Psychosocial stress at work has been proposed to be a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. However, its role as a risk factor for stroke is uncertain. METHODS: We conducted an individual-participant-data meta-analysis of 196 380 males and females from 14 European cohort studies to investigate the association between...

Long working hours and risk of coronary heart disease and stroke: a systematic review and meta-analysis of published and unpublished data for 603 838 individuals

Background: Long working hours might increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, but prospective evidence is scarce, imprecise, and mostly limited to coronary heart disease. We aimed to assess long working hours as a risk factor for incident coronary heart disease and stroke. Methods: We identified published studies through a systematic review...

Promoting the use of outcome measures by an educational programme for physiotherapists in stroke rehabilitation: A pilot randomized controlled trial

Objective: To determine the influence of tutor expertise on the uptake of a physiotherapists' educational programme intended to promote the use of outcome measures in the management of patients with stroke. Design: Pilot randomized controlled trial. Methods: Thirty physiotherapists involved in stroke management were randomized into two groups...

Strongly increased levels of fibrinogen elastase degradation products in patients with ischemic stroke

Ischemic stroke is associated with leucocyte activation. Activated leucocytes release elastase, an enzyme that can degrade fibrinogen. Fibrinogen elastase degradation products (FgEDP) may serve as a specific marker of elastase proteolytic activity. In a case-control study of 111 ischemic stroke patients and 119 controls, significantly higher...

Robot-mediated ACtive REhabilitation (ACRE2) for the hemiplegic upper limb after a stroke: A pilot study

Although scientific evidence shows that therapy improves movement recovery following a stroke, the duration of the reimbursed therapy available to patients is decreasing. To compensate for the reduction in personal therapy self-training procedures using robotic arms have been developed for hemiplegic patients. In this Dutch pilot study, the...

Plasma levels of apolipoprotein E and risk of stroke in old age

Recently, high plasma apoE levels have been shown to be related to increased cardiovascular mortality, independent of APOE genotype. Here we studied the association of plasma apoE levels with risk of stroke. Within the Leiden 85-plus Study, a prospective population-based study of 561 subjects aged 85 years, we measured plasma apoE level and...

Burden of informal caregiving for stroke patients: Identification of caregivers at risk of adverse health effects

Background: We assessed the objective and subjective burden of caregiving for stroke patients and investigated which characteristics of the patient, the informal caregiver and the objective burden contribute most to subjective burden and to the condition of feeling substantially burdened. Methods: We studied a sample of 151 stroke survivors and...

What really matters: An inquiry into the relative importance of dimensions of informal caregiver burden

Objective: Prevailing measures of subjective caregiver burden either have no overall summary score or do not consider the relative importance caregivers attach to different dimensions of burden. Our aim was to assess which dimensions informal caregivers perceive as being important to their overall burden from care giving. Design: Cross-sectional...

Moderate alcohol consumption: Effects on lipids and cardiovascular disease risk

Light to moderate alcohol consumption is associated with a reduced risk of coronary heart disease, as well as ischaemic stroke and possibly type 2 diabetes. Epidemiological and physiological data are in favour of a causal relationship. Proposed protective mechanisms include the stimulation of HDL-mediated processes such as reverse cholesterol...