10/01/2024


Late life is a period during which individuals are increasingly confronted with challenges and losses. These challenges can have a negative impact on late life functioning, which is often reflected in poor well-being or an increase in depressive feelings. Current research points out that positive psychological resources might enhance coping with late life stressors. Forgiveness is a variable that has received increasing interest as a positive psychological resource and is linked with several aspects of late life health and well-being. The idea of forgiveness being pivotal in late life can be framed within the life stage theory of Erikson. Erikson's psychosocial crisis in late life consists of finding a balance between feelings of despair and the achievement of ego-integrity and it is considered as a potential explaining process in the association between forgiveness and positive late life functioning. The results of three quantitative studies in older adults (75+) provide indeed preliminary evidence that forgiveness is a resource in late life. They show that the relationship between forgiveness and late life well-being can be partly explained by the developmental task of finding a balance between integrity and despair.
Pharmacotherapy in older adults with personality disorders (PD) is a new and important area of attention. Nowadays, symptom based pharmacotherapy in older adults with PD is based on multidisciplinary guidelines, which are constructed on research performed in patients up to 50 years of age. There is no specific guideline for older adults with PD.

Providing a description of patient characteristics number of comorbid psychiatric disorders, use of medication, including polypharmacy, in older adults (≥ 65 years) with personality disorders.

A retrospective cross-sectional patient file study (n = 50) in a clinical center of excellence for older adults with personality disorders (outpatient setting).

. From the file study, it appears that 1) the unspecified/other specified personality disorder and the borderline personality disorder (BPD) occur most frequently, 2) there is a trend (no significant difference) that older adults with BPS use most medication (somatic medication and psychotropics) and 3) there is a trend (no significant difference) that polypharmacy is the most prevalent amongst older adults with BPD.

The use of medication in certain subgroups of older adults with PD tends to be high. Further research is necessary to optimize pharmacotherapy in older adults with PD.
The use of medication in certain subgroups of older adults with PD tends to be high. Further research is necessary to optimize pharmacotherapy in older adults with PD.A novel anatomically accurate model of rat glomerular filtration is used to quantify shear stresses on the glomerular capillary endothelium and hoop stresses on the glomerular capillary walls. Plasma, erythrocyte volume, and plasma protein mass are distributed at network nodes using pressure differentials calculated taking into account volume loss to filtration, improving on previous models which only took into account blood apparent viscosity in calculating pressures throughout the network. Filtration is found to be heterogeneously distributed throughout the glomerular capillary network and is determined by concentration of plasma proteins and surface area of the filtering capillary segments. Hoop stress is primarily concentrated near the afferent arteriole, whereas shear stress is concentrated near the efferent arteriole. Using parameters from glomerular micropuncture studies, conditions of diabetes mellitus (DM), 5/6-Nephrectomy (5/6-Nx), and Angiotensin II-induced hypertension (HTN) are simulated and compared to their own internal controls to assess the changes in mechanical stresses. Hoop stress is increased in all three conditions, while shear stress is increased in 5/6-Nx, decreased in HTN, and maintained at control levels in DM by the hypertrophic response of the glomerular capillaries. The results indicate that these alterations in mechanical stresses and the consequent release of cytokines by or injury of the glomerular cells may play a significant role in the progression of glomerulopathy in these disease conditions.Recent clinical guidelines recommend lower blood pressure (BP) goals for most patients, and recent trends have favored use of automated unattended BP measurements in the office setting to minimize observer error and white-coat effects. Patients attending a routinely scheduled CVD clinic visit were prospectively randomized to BP measured using an attended, followed by an unattended method, or vice versa, after a controlled rest period. All study BP measurements were obtained in triplicate using the automated Omron HEM-907XL BP monitor, and averaged. The outcome was difference in SBP. Routinely measured clinic BP from the same visit was extracted from the medical record, and compared with attended and unattended BP. A total of 102 patients were randomized, and mean age was 63 years, 52% female and 75% Caucasian. Attended and unattended SBP was 125.4 ± 20.4 and 122.6 ± 21.0 mm Hg, mean ± SD, respectively. https://www.selleckchem.com/products/kpt-330.html Routine clinic SBP was 130.6 ± 23.6 mm Hg. Attended SBP was 2.7 mm Hg higher than the unattended measurement (95% CI 1.3-4.1; P = .0002). Routine clinic SBP was 5.2 mm Hg higher than attended SBP (95% CI 2.4-8.0; P = .0003) and 8.0 mm Hg higher than unattended SBP (95% CI 5.4-10.5; P less then .0001). Attended measurement of BP is significantly higher than unattended measurement and the difference is physiologically meaningful, even in a CVD cohort with generally well-controlled hypertension. Furthermore, routine clinic SBP substantially overestimates both attended and unattended automated SBP, with important implications for treatment decisions like dose and/or drug escalation.The precise genetic diagnosis of dystrophinopathies can be challenging, largely due to rare deep intronic variants and more complex structural variants (SVs). We report on the genetic characterization of a dystrophinopathy patient. He remained without a genetic diagnosis after routine genetic testing, dystrophin protein and mRNA analysis, and short- and long-read whole DMD gene sequencing. We finally identified a novel complex SV in DMD via long-read whole-genome sequencing. The variant consists of a large-scale (~1Mb) inversion/deletion-insertion rearrangement mediated by LINE-1s. Our study shows that long-read whole-genome sequencing can serve as a clinical diagnostic tool for genetically unsolved dystrophinopathies.