Presence Of Fatigue Research Articles

Only partial improvement in health-related quality of life after treatment of chronic hepatitis C virus infection with direct acting antivirals in a real-world setting-results from the German Hepatitis C-Registry (DHC-R).

Improvement of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is frequently reported as a benefit when treating hepatitis C virus infection (HCV) with direct acting antivirals (DAA). As most of the available data were obtained from clinical trials, limited generalizability to the real-world population might exist. This study aimed to investigate the impact of DAA therapy on changes in HRQoL in a real-world setting. HRQoL of 1180 participants of the German Hepatitis C-Registry was assessed by Short-Form 36 (SF-36) questionnaires. Scores at post-treatment weeks 12-24 (FU12/24) were compared to baseline (BL). Changes of ≥2.5 in mental and physical component summary scores (MCS and PCS) were defined as a minimal clinical important difference (MCID). Potential predictors of HRQoL changes were analysed. Overall, a statistically significant increase in HRQoL after DAA therapy was observed, that was robust among various subgroups. However, roughly half of all patients failed to achieve a clinically important improvement in MCS and PCS. Low MCS (p<.001, OR=0.925) and PCS (p<.001, OR=0.899) BL levels were identified as predictors for achieving a clinically important improvement. In contrast, presence of fatigue (p=.023, OR=1.518), increased GPT levels (p=.005, OR=0.626) and RBV containing therapy regimens (p=.001, OR=1.692) were associated with a clinically important decline in HRQoL after DAA therapy. In conclusion, DAA treatment is associated with an overall increase of HRQoL in HCV-infected patients. Nevertheless, roughly half of the patients fail to achieve a clinically important improvement. Especially patients with a low HRQoL seem to benefit most from the modern therapeutic options.

Fatigue is related to depression in idiopathic dystonia.

Dystonia is a movement disorder presented with involuntary muscle contraction causing abnormal posture, movement, or both. Besides motor symptoms, patients may also report non-motor symptoms such as pain, anxiety, apathy, depression, sleep problems, fatigue, and cognitive impairment. The etiology of fatigue in patients with dystonia is not yet well understood. To evaluate the presence of fatigue, depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, and daily sleepiness in patients with focal and segmental dystonia and to determine which of these non-motor symptoms influence the occurrence and severity of fatigue. Patients were surveyed for symptoms of fatigue, depression, anxiety, night-time sleep problems, and daily sleepiness using the Fatigue Assessment Scale, Beck Depression Inventory II, Beck Anxiety Inventory, Pittsburgh Sleep Questionnaire Index, and Epworth Sleepiness Scale. Demographic data (sex, age, and disease duration) were collected from patient medical records. On statistical analysis, we used SPSS for Windows 10. The level of significance was set at p<0.05. Sixty patients (43 female and 17 male) with focal or segmental dystonia were evaluated. Fatigue was reported by 67.2% of patients. Fatigue (general, physical, and mental fatigue) was found to correlate with depression, anxiety, and sleep problems. Daily sleepiness correlated only with mental fatigue. Disease duration, age, and gender did not influence the symptoms of fatigue. Multiple regression analysis showed that depression mostly predicted symptoms of general, physical, and mental fatigue. Depression mostly predicted symptoms of general, physical, and mental fatigue in patients with focal and segmental dystonia.

Predictive capacity of the brain natriuretic peptide in the screening of heart failure in a high altitude population

BackgroundHeart failure (HF) is growing in importance as a significant cause of disease and mortality. When It is suspected, it can be ruled out if BNP values are below 100 pg/mL. Diagnostic certainty can be obtained if echocardiogram shows reduced ejection fraction, diastolic dysfunction or right-sided heart disease. Physiological changes at high altitude are known to affect BNP values. This study pretends to evaluate BNP values when used for HF diagnosis in Huancayo, Perú, a high altitude population located at 3,250 m above sea level. MethodsThis is a cross-sectional, diagnostic test type study. A total of 83 medical charts of patients with suspected HF, admitted to the Emergency Room and Internal Medicine Service of Ramiro Prialé Prialé National Hospital, were reviewed. Data processing was performed with SPSS program for Windows version 21.0. Pearson's Chi Square test was used for categorical variables analysis and ANOVA for continuos variables. P values under 0.05 were considered significant. Results and conclusionsMedium age was 74 years. Patient’s characteristics that were associated with confirmed HF and high BNP levels were the following: presence of fatigue, night cough, elevated heart rate, shortness of breath, history of lung fibrosis and decreased oxygen arterial saturation (p < 0.05) Pulmonary hypertension, mitral and tricuspid regurgitation, and cor pulmonale were also associated with higher BNP levels. Most subjects had BNP values >100 pg/mL, with low specificity for HF diagnosis (11.5 %). Individuals without heart failure had mean BNP values above 300 pg/mL; while individuals with cor pulmonale had a mean of 975 pg/mL. BNP values were high in patients with or without HF. A cut-off point of ≥130pg/mL is proposed to increase specificity. The predictive capacity of BNP for HF identification at this high altitude population is low because of a high number of false positive results.

Glatiramer Acetate Treatment in Multiple Sclerosis-Associated Fatigue-Beneficial Effects on Self-Assessment Scales But Not on Molecular Markers.

Although fatigue is a common symptom in multiple sclerosis (MS), its pathomechanisms are incompletely understood. Glatiramer acetate (GA), an immunomodulatory agent approved for treatment of relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS), possesses unique mechanisms of action and has been shown to exhibit beneficial effects on MS fatigue. The objective of this study was to correlate clinical, neuropsychological, and immunological parameters in RRMS patients with fatigue before and during treatment with GA. In a prospective, open-label, multicenter trial, 30 patients with RRMS and fatigue were treated with GA for 12 months. Inclusion criterion was the presence of fatigue as one of the most frequent and disabling symptoms. Before and during treatment, fatigue was assessed using the Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS), the MS-FSS, and the Modified Fatigue Impact Scale (MFIS). In addition, fatigue and quality of life were assessed using the Visual Analog Scales (VAS). Laboratory assessments included screening of 188 parameters using real-time PCR microarrays followed by further analysis of several cytokines, chemokines, and neurotrophic factors. Fatigue self-assessments were completed in 25 patients. After 12 months of treatment with GA, 13 of these patients improved in all three scales (with the most prominent effects on the MFIS), whereas 5 patients had deteriorated. The remaining 7 patients exhibited inconsistent effects within the three scales. Fatigue and overall quality of life had improved, as assessed via VAS. Laboratory assessments revealed heterogeneous mRNA levels of cytokines, chemokines, and neurotrophic factors. In conclusion, we were not able to correlate clinical and molecular effects of GA in patients with RRMS and fatigue.

Factors that affect the duration of wearing disposable personal protective equipment by healthcare professionals in Wuhan during treatment of COVID-19 patients: An epidemiological study.

The purpose of this study of healthcare workers who cared for COVID‐19 patients was to identify factors that affected the duration of wearing personal protective equipment (PPE). The results of this study will provide initial guidance to practicing clinicians and a foundation for further research on this topic. This cross‐sectional study examined 139 frontline healthcare professionals who worked at a single hospital in Wuhan, China, from March 16 to April 1, 2020. General and demographic data, physical and mental status, use of personal protective equipment, type of hospital work, and duration of wearing personal protective equipment were recorded. The mean duration of wearing personal protective equipment was 194.17 min (standard deviation: 3.71). Multiple linear regression analysis indicated that the duration of wearing personal protective equipment was significantly associated with the presence of a chronic disease, working hours when feeling discomfort, lack of patient cooperation and subsequent psychological pressure, prolonged continuous wearing of personal protective equipment, feeling anxious about physical strength, and the presence of fatigue when wearing personal protective equipment. These factors should be considered by practicing healthcare professionals and in future studies that examine the optimal duration of wearing personal protective equipment.

On the Impact of Biceps Muscle Fatigue in Human Activity Recognition.

Nowadays, Human Activity Recognition (HAR) systems, which use wearables and smart systems, are a part of our daily life. Despite the abundance of literature in the area, little is known about the impact of muscle fatigue on these systems’ performance. In this work, we use the biceps concentration curls exercise as an example of a HAR activity to observe the impact of fatigue impact on such systems. Our dataset consists of 3000 biceps concentration curls performed and collected from 20 volunteers aged between 20–35. Our findings indicate that fatigue often occurs in later sets of an exercise and extends the completion time of later sets by up to 31% and decreases muscular endurance by 4.1%. Another finding shows that changes in data patterns are often occurring during fatigue presence, causing seven features to become statistically insignificant. Further findings indicate that fatigue can cause a substantial decrease in performance in both subject-specific and cross-subject models. Finally, we observed that a Feedforward Neural Network (FNN) showed the best performance in both cross-subject and subject-specific models in all our evaluations.

A high-precision feature extraction network of fatigue speech from air traffic controller radiotelephony based on improved deep learning

Air traffic controller (ATC) fatigue is receiving considerable attention in recent studies because it represents a major cause of air traffic incidences. Research has revealed that the presence of fatigue can be detected by analysing speech utterances. However, constructing a complete labelled fatigue data set is very time-consuming. Moreover, a manually constructed speech collection will often contain only little key information to be used effectively in fatigue recognition, while multilevel deep models based on such speech materials often have overfitting problems due to an explosive increase of model parameters. To address these problems, a novel deep learning framework is proposed in this study to integrate active learning (AL) into complex speech features selected from a large set of unlabelled speech data in order to overcome the loss of information. A shallow feature set is first extracted using stacked sparse autoencoder networks, in which fatigue state challenge features from a manually selected speaker set of are exploited as the input vector. A densely connected convolutional autoencoder (DCAE) is then proposed to learn advanced features automatically from spectrograms of the selected data to supplement the fatigue features. The network can be effectively trained using a relatively small number of labelled samples with the help of AL sampling strategies, and the addition of a dense block to the convolutional automatic encoder can decrease the number of parameters and make the model easier to fit. Finally, the two above-mentioned features are combined using multiple kernel learning with a support-vector-machine classifier. A series of comparative experiments using the Civil Aviation Administration of China radiotelephony corpus demonstrates that the proposed method provides a significant improvement in the detection precision compared to current state-of-the-art approaches.

Iron deficiency, depression, and fatigue in inflammatory boweldiseases.

Iron deficiency and anemia are common findings in IBD. Treatment of anemia improves quality of life. Neurological symptoms like depression or anxiety are also common in IBD; however, their relationship with ID has not been studied in detail. Prospective, single center, non-interventional trial in an IBD cohort (n = 98), which is generally at risk for ID. Quality of sleep (using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, Epworth Sleepiness Scale, and Insomnia Severity Index) and the presence of fatigue (Piper fatigue scale), depression (Self-rating Depression Scale [SDS]) or anxiety (Self-rating Anxiety Scale [SAS]) were related to ID (ferritin, transferrin saturation), anemia (hemoglobin), and inflammatory disease activity (CRP). ID was present in 35 %, anemia in 16 %, and inflammation in 30 %. The overall quality of sleep in this cohort was similar to that reported for the general population. ID, anemia, or inflammation had no influence on the PSQI (median 4.0 [CI 3.0-5.0]), the ESS 5.5 (5.0-7.0), and the ISI 4.00 (2.5-5.5). Fatigue (PFS; present in 30 %), anxiety (SAS; present in 24 %), and depression (SDS; present in 33 %) were more common than in the general population. Iron deficient and anemic patients were more likely to be depressed (p = 0.02 and p < 0.01) and showed a trend towards presence of fatigue (p = 0.06 and 0.07). Systemic inflammation as measured by CRP had no effect on any of these conditions. In this IBD cohort, ID and anemia affect depression and possibly fatigue independent of the presence of inflammation.

Fatigue in Saudi Patients with Primary Sjögren's Syndrome and Its Correlation with Disease Characteristics and Outcome Measures: A Cross-Sectional Study.

BackgroundFatigue is a prevalent symptom affecting primary Sjögren’s syndrome (pSS) patients. The purpose of this study is to determine the prevalence of fatigue in Saudi pSS patients and its correlation with disease features and outcome measures using a validated tool.MethodsThis is a cross-sectional study evaluating fatigue in pSS using the Arabic version of the fatigue severity scale (FSS). The EULAR Sjögren’s syndrome disease activity index (ESSDAI) and EULAR Sjögren’s syndrome patient reported index (ESSPRI) were calculated.ResultsForty-one patients met the sample criteria and were involved in the final report. There were predominantly females (78%) with a mean (±SD) age and disease duration of 58.76±12.7 and 4.6±2.28 years, respectively. Based on the FSS, 18 (43.9%) patients had a positive test with a mean score of 5.43±0.76. The mean ESSDAI was 9.95±7.73, while the mean EESPRI was 5.17±2.4 with individual component scores were dryness (5.23±2.62), fatigue (5.4±2.88), and pain (4.88±3.31). The FSS had a significant correlation with PGA (r=0.559; p<0.001), PhGA (r=0.671; p<0.001), ESSDAI (r=0.402; p=0.01), ESSPRI fatigue component (r=0.0.621; p<0.001), ESSPRI pain component (r=0.558; p<0.001), and missed significance for the ESSPRI dryness component (r=0.289; p=0.071). There was no correlation between the total ESSPRI score and presence of fatigue (r=−0.261; p=0.104) nor the FSS score (r=−0.136; p=0.409).ConclusionFatigue is prevalent in Saudi pSS patients. FSS correlated with ESSDAI and ESSPRI components but not its total score signaling other unmeasured factors contributing to fatigue development.

Assessment of Fatigue Using Wearable Sensors: A Pilot Study

Background: Fatigue is a broad, multifactorial concept encompassing feelings of reduced physical and mental energy levels. Fatigue strongly impacts patient health-related quality of life across a huge range of conditions, yet, to date, tools available to understand fatigue are severely limited. Methods: After using a recurrent neural network-based algorithm to impute missing time series data form a multisensor wearable device, we compared supervised and unsupervised machine learning approaches to gain insights on the relationship between self-reported non-pathological fatigue and multimodal sensor data. Results: A total of 27 healthy subjects and 405 recording days were analyzed. Recorded data included continuous multimodal wearable sensor time series on physical activity, vital signs, and other physiological parameters, and daily questionnaires on fatigue. The best results were obtained when using the causal convolutional neural network model for unsupervised representation learning of multivariate sensor data, and random forest as a classifier trained on subject-reported physical fatigue labels (weighted precision of 0.70 ± 0.03 and recall of 0.73 ± 0.03). When using manually engineered features on sensor data to train our random forest (weighted precision of 0.70 ± 0.05 and recall of 0.72 ± 0.01), both physical activity (energy expenditure, activity counts, and steps) and vital signs (heart rate, heart rate variability, and respiratory rate) were important parameters to measure. Furthermore, vital signs contributed the most as top features for predicting mental fatigue compared to physical ones. These results support the idea that fatigue is a highly multimodal concept. Analysis of clusters from sensor data highlighted a digital phenotype indicating the presence of fatigue (95% of observations) characterized by a high intensity of physical activity. Mental fatigue followed similar trends but was less predictable. Potential future directions could focus on anomaly detection assuming longer individual monitoring periods. Conclusion: Taken together, these results are the first demonstration that multimodal digital data can be used to inform, quantify, and augment subjectively captured non-pathological fatigue measures.

The problem of fatigue in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus according to the data on a Russian RENAISSANCE cohort

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic autoimmune disease with a wide range of clinical manifestations. Numerous observations and surveys of patients have shown that the most common symptom of SLE is fatigue complaints in 51 to 90% of patients.Objective: to determine the significance of fatigue in the general health status of RENAISSANCE cohort patients with SLE who were hospitalized in the Clinic, V.A. Nasonova Research Institute of Rheumatology.Patients and methods. The investigation included SLE patients aged 18 years and older who met the 2012 SLICC criteria. The standard examination accepted in the management of patients with SLE was made. Disease activity was determined by SLEDAI-2K; irreversible lesions in various organs were identified using the SLICC damage index. The SF-36 and the LupusQoL questionnaires were used to assess health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and the FACIT-Fatigue scale was applied to measure fatigue.Results and discussion. The investigation enrolled 328 patients, mainly women (91%); the mean age was 34.4±11.5 years; the duration of the disease was 106.3±97.9 months. In this group, moderate and high disease activities (SLEDAI-2K scores of 6–10 and 11–19, respectively) were observed at approximately the same frequency. At the time of inclusion, more than half (56.5%) of the patients already had various irreversible organ lesions. At Visit 1, the FACIT-Fatigue scale showed that fatigue was present in 148 (45%) of the 328 patients. According to the presence of fatigue, the patients were divided into two groups. Group 1 included 148 patients with fatigue; Group 2 consisted of 180 patients without fatigue. The Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Disease Activity Index 2000 (SLEDAI-2K) and anti-DNA antibody levels were significantly higher in the fatigue group (p=0.01 and p=0.02, respectively); the patients also had decreased HRQOL according to 7 LupusQol domains (p&lt;0.001). The patients with fatigue were significantly more likely to receive intravenous glucocorticoids and rituximab. At 12 months after the start of treatment, the patients with fatigue were found to have a statistically significant reduction in disease activity, as well as normalization of anti-DNA antibody levels, improvements in HRQOL according to the LupusQol domains, and less severity of fatigue according to the FACIT-Fatigue scale.Conclusion. Fatigue was detected in almost half (45–53%) of SLE patients. It is associated with a higher disease activity by SLEDAI-2K and with a high anti-DNA antibody level. The patients with fatigue are observed to have an obvious worsening of HRQOL according to all LupusQol domains.

Nutritional Profile of Cancer Patients: An observational Study at a Tertiary Care Hospital

Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. So patient's condition affects their metabolism, muscle mass, body fat and the level of their energy. As a presumption cachexia, sarcopenia and fatigue affect the diagnosis and treatment process. In this study, cancer diagnosed patients, seen in out-patient (OP) department, admitted at day care for short treatment were invited to participate. The nutritional status was assessed using Karada Scanner, simple bioelectric impedance instrument. A standardized functional assessment of chronic illness therapy fatigue scale (FACT-G, version 4), 27-point scale questionnaire was administered to assess Cancer Related Fatigue (CRF). This pilot study provided a fresh positive correlation between the nutritional status of cancer patients and cancer related fatigue. BMI has significant positive correlation with total body fat % (P&lt;0.05). In malnourished cancer patients, up to 70.6% fall under stage IV cancer with definite loss of weight, appetite or decrease in intake and fatigue presence. With Karada scanner in OP clinic, FACT-G can be useful tool to objectively measure CRF.

Fatigue and Pruritus in Patients with Advanced Fibrosis Due to Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis: The Impact on Patient-Reported Outcomes.

Fatigue and pruritus are common in patients with chronic liver diseases of all etiologies, but clinical awareness is mostly restricted to those with cholestatic liver diseases. We assessed the impact of fatigue and pruritus on patient‐reported outcomes (PROs) of patients with advanced nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). Specifically, PROs (Short Form–36, Chronic Liver Disease Questionnaire–NASH, Euro‐Qol 5 Dimension, and Work Productivity and Activity Impairment instruments) were assessed at baseline in patients with histologically confirmed bridging fibrosis (F3) or compensated cirrhosis (F4) due to NASH enrolled in STELLAR 3 and 4. Presence of fatigue and pruritus were indicated by a score of 4 or less on the respective items of the Chronic Liver Disease Questionnaire–NASH (scale range, 1‐7). Among the included 1,669 patients with advanced NASH (mean age = 58 ± 9 years, 48% F3, 42% with psychiatric comorbidities), 33% and 27% had fatigue and pruritus, respectively. Patients with NASH with fatigue were younger, more likely to be female, cirrhotic, and diabetic, and had higher body mass index and more comorbidities (all P < 0.05). All PRO scores of patients with fatigue were significantly impaired (mean up to −31% of a PRO range size in comparison to patients without fatigue). In multivariate analysis, predictors of fatigue included diabetes, history of depression or nervous system comorbidities, and lower serum albumin (P < 0.05). Patients with pruritus had demographic characteristics similar to those with fatigue, but a higher prevalence of dermatologic comorbidities. All PROs were impaired (by up to −19% of a range size, all P < 0.01) in patients with NASH with pruritus. Female gender, lower serum albumin, and a history of depression, nervous system, and dermatologic comorbidities were associated with increased risk of pruritus (P < 0.05). Conclusion: Clinically significant fatigue and pruritus are common in patients with advanced NASH, and these symptoms negatively affect PROs.

Quantifying Changes in Muscle Force in the Presence of Fatigue

Quantifying Changes in Muscle Force in the Presence of Fatigue

Comparison of Features of Corona Virus in Confirmed and Unconfirmed Patients In Lahore

Introduction: Coronavirus has spread rapidly in Pakistan. These patients were kept at quarantine facilities on suspicion, even before RT-PCR was done. We were able to collect clinical, laboratory, and management features from them. &#x0D; Objective: To assess the features of Corona confirmed and unconfirmed patients, and compare them. It could help in deciding if confirmed and unconfirmed patients were correctly identified and managed appropriately.&#x0D; Material and Methods: Retrospective, Descriptive, Crossectional study between 8th April to 30th April 2020. Patient data was collected from different sites retrospectively, on a Performa. Clinical, Laboratory, and Management data as collected. It was analyzed on SPSS 23. All patients in quarantines and ICU were included, irrespective of their corona PCR status, if the treating physicians had a strong suspicion. Home quarantine and less than 15-year old patients were excluded.&#x0D; Results: Clinical features showed more preponderance for males and smokers. Chronic disease patients were also significantly involved. Fatigue, nasal congestion, runny nose, sickness, and vomiting were more common in confirmed patients. CURB 65 scores 3 and 4 were more in unconfirmed patients. CT involvement was more common in unconfirmed patients as was high white cells and neutrophils. More patients had mechanical ventilation in the unconfirmed group, and they also had more secondary infections and shock. Antibiotic use was more common in the confirmed group.&#x0D; Conclusion: Corona was more common in males and smokers. Though fever and cough were common, the presence of fatigue, runny nose, nasal congestion sickness, and vomiting discriminated confirmed patients. Antibiotics should be used irrespective of RT-PCR results, especially if CT showed an abnormality.&#x0D;

Fibromyalgia: clinical presentation and variants of the disease

Fibromyalgia (FM) is a condition characterized by generalized pain syndrome and by the presence of fatigue, cognitive impairment, affective and multiple somatic symptoms. Pain syndrome can have national, ethnic, gender, and age characteristics.Objective: to evaluate the features of the course of FM in a large industrial center of the Russian Federation and to present its phenotypic options.Patients and methods. The investigation enrolled 92 FM patients (8 men, 84 women) aged 18 to 86 years (mean age, 50.5 years). The diagnosis was established according to the 2016 ACR criteria. Account was taken of data on disease duration, occupation, sport training loads, previous therapy, pain intensity, and somatic symptoms according to the 2010 ACR diagnostic criteria and on general health assessment in the patients. All the patients completed the hospital anxiety and depression scale (HADS).Results and discussion. The most significant somatic symptoms in the clinical picture of FM were shown to be muscle pain and muscle weakness, the manifestations of irritable bowel syndrome and fatigue; moreover, the prevalence of many symptoms in people over 60 years of age was lower than that in younger patients. Female gender was an additional risk factor for increases in pain and cognitive impairment. The presence of concomitant depression verified by HADS was associated with a substantial deterioration of the clinical manifestations of FM. At the same time, professional activities and sports were found to be protective factors against a number of symptoms of FM. It was hypothesized that there were several FM phenotypes (anxious, anxiety-depressive, egocentric, and vascular ones).Conclusion. The authors have demonstrated the features of the course of FM in a large industrial center of the Russian Federation and identified various disease phenotypes, which can be useful for determining the treatment policy for patients.

Prevalence and Associated Factors of Postpartum Anxiety and Depression Symptoms Among Women in Shanghai, China

BackgroundPostpartum anxiety (PPA) and postpartum depression (PPD) are associated with immediate and long-term health risks for both mothers and babies. The purpose of this paper was to evaluate relationships between sociodemographic, perinatal variables, and PPA and PPD symptoms of parturients 6 weeks postpartum. MethodsA cross-sectional survey with 1204 women who had a healthy and term birth in a baby-friendly hospital, Shanghai, China. PPA and PPD symptoms were measured by using the Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) and the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS). ResultsThe mean score of SAS and EPDS was 40.79 ± 8.48 and 8.18 ± 5.80, respectively. The estimated prevalence of PPA and PPD symptoms was 15.2% and 23.2%, respectively. Multivariable logistic regression analysis showed that the presence of fatigue and PPD symptoms were risk factors for PPA symptoms, whereas having support from family and being satisfied with labor experience were protective factors. In terms of PPD symptoms, its risk factors included smoking before pregnancy, maternal separation from baby, fatigue, encountering difficulties in breastfeeding, and the presence of PPA symptoms. In contrast, the protective factors for PPD symptoms were having support from family and having support from colleagues or friends. LimitationsConvenience sampling and voluntary participation may have led to a selection bias. ConclusionPPA and PPD symptoms occur commonly among parturients in Shanghai, China. The findings from this research provide a better understanding of factors associated with PPA and PPD symptoms and will help guide personalized approaches to the management of postpartum anxiety and depression.

Joint moment trade-offs across the upper extremity and trunk during repetitive work

Individuals can coordinate small kinematic changes at several degrees of freedom simultaneously in the presence of fatigue, leaving it unclear how overall biomechanical demands at each joint are altered. The purpose of this study was to evaluate trade-offs in joint moments between the trunk, shoulder, and elbow during repetitive upper extremity work. Participants performed four simulated workplace tasks cyclically until meeting fatigue termination criteria. Emergent fatigue-induced adaptations to repetitive work resulted in task-dependent trade-offs in joint moments. In general, reduced shoulder moments were compensated for by increased elbow and trunk joint moment contributions. Although mean joint moment changes were modest (range: 1–3 Nm) across participants, a wide distribution of responses was observed, with standard deviations exceeding 10 Nm. Re-distributing biomechanical demands across joints may alleviate constant tissue loads and facilitate continued task performance with fatigue but may be at the expense of increasing demands at adjacent joints.

Abstract #804964: Utilizing a Quality of Life Tool to Examine the Presence of Fatigue in Subjects with Diabetes

Abstract #804964: Utilizing a Quality of Life Tool to Examine the Presence of Fatigue in Subjects with Diabetes

Evaluation of quality of life and caregiver burden in home parenteral nutrition patients: A cross sectional study

Home total parenteral nutrition (HPN) is indicated in long-term intestinal failure (IF) to maintain or improve the nutritional status, guarantee patient survival and improve quality of life (QoL). The patients "caregiver" is often an essential partner to help perform daily activities. The aim of this study was to compare QoL, experienced distress and (if present) caregiver burden for relatives in two distinct categories of IF patients, i.e. those with short bowel syndrome as compared to those suffering from intestinal dysmotility. All HPN patients and their caregivers of our HPN population were invited for this study. Qol and distress were assessed using the validated HPN-Qol and the "Lastmeter" (distress thermometer) questionnaire (for HPN patients) or the Caregiver Strain Index (CSI) (for caregivers) for the short bowel and dysmotility groups as well as for the combination. During the year 2016 a total of 193 patients and their caregivers were invited. Fifty-six patients (37%) reported not to have a caregiver. Overall, 147 patients (76%) and 91 caregivers (63%) completed the questionnaires. The most common underlying conditions leading to IF were short bowel syndrome (SBS, 48%) and intestinal dysmotility disorders (42%). Both the SBS and the dysmotility group had a reasonable Qol (SBS 6 vs. dysmotility 5.8) but the experienced distress was significantly higher in the latter group (SBS 5 vs. dysmotility 7). The distress of the dysmotility group was mainly determined by fatigue, abdominal pain, immobility, inability to work/go to school, limited contact with friends, nausea and vomiting, bloating, abdominal pain, troubles with sleeping, dizziness, inability to eat, being cold, fatigue and decreased taste. The Qol of patients with SBS was not significantly affected by aspects associated with HPN. The caregiver of dysmotility patients experienced a higher burden when compared with the caregiver in the SBS group (strain 0-13, ≥7 reflect high burden), due to increased demands on time and perceived strain. Our results suggest that QoL of IF patients differ depending on the underlying disease, with the dysmotility group experiencing a higher burden when compared to short bowel patients. Also, in particular the burden that dysmotility patients experience with regard to eating, the presence of fatigue and abdominal pain significantly impacts their Qol. This study provides the first evaluation of perceived caregiver burden for relatives of patients with HPN. Here also the caregiver of dysmotility patients experienced a higher burden compared to caregivers of patients with SBS. These findings suggest that more focused care with attention to specific items within various groups (SBS, dysmotility) of the IF population is needed.