Chronic Disease Self-Management of Post-Acute Sequelae of COVID-19 Among Older Adults: A Mixed-Methods Analysis.

Introduction: Approximately 20-30% of individuals who contract acute coronavirus disease (COVID-19) infection develop longer term complications of their initial infection, referred to as Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC). PASC is characterized by chronic, varying symptomatology. Methods: Using a mixed methods study design, we aimed to gain insight into individuals' experience with PASC, including cognitive issues, fatigue, and sleep disturbances. We explored whether our previously developed application (app), aimed at improving self-management skills among individuals with chronic diseases, is relevant for individuals with PASC and gained information to adapt the app for individuals with PASC. The study included 19 individuals, aged 40 years and older, recruited from our research participant database, Nova Southeastern University clinics, and community locations. We included this age range because older adults are more likely to have comorbid conditions, allowing us to better understand the impact of COVID-19 infection in these individuals. Participants completed seven standardized self-report questionnaires online, and an individual semi-structured interview via videoconferencing. Quantitative data were assessed using descriptive statistics and calculating individuals' scores in relation to norms. Qualitative data were analyzed using a thematic analysis approach. Triangulation of the data was accomplished by calculating correlations between participants' responses on self-report scales and themes found in semi-structured interviews. Results: Themes included disruption of everyday life, diverse physical symptoms, and cognitive problems including brain fog, fatigue, coping, and emotional upset. Quantitative analysis demonstrated that participants experienced high levels of fatigue, negative mood, cognitive problems, and overall reduction in health-related quality of life (HRQOL). Correlation analyses revealed that individual interview responses were related to participants' self-report of symptoms on standard questionnaires. Discussion: Findings indicate that self-report questionnaires may reflect the experience of individuals with PASC and its impact. Additionally, further efforts to expand our prior mobile app are warranted among individuals with PASC.

Preferences for Alternative Care Modalities Among French Adults With Chronic Illness.

Importance: The COVID-19 pandemic led to the implementation of alternative care modalities (eg, teleconsultations and task shifting) that will continue to be implemented in parallel to traditional care after the pandemic. An ideal balance between alternative and traditional care modalities is unknown. Objectives: To quantify the ideal postpandemic balance between alternative and traditional care modalities among patients with chronic illness and to qualify the circumstances in which patients consider it appropriate to replace traditional care with alternative care. Design, Setting, and Participants: This survey study invited 5999 adults with chronic illness in ComPaRe, a French nationwide e-cohort of adults with chronic conditions who volunteer their time to participate in research projects, to participate in this study, which was performed from January 27 to February 23, 2021. Main Outcomes and Measures: Participants rated the ideal proportion at which they would use 3 alternative care modalities instead of the traditional care equivalent on a 0% to 100% scale (with 0% indicating using alternative care modalities for none of one's future care and 100% indicating using alternative care modalities for all of one's future care) of their overall future care: (1) teleconsultations, (2) online symptom-checkers to react to new symptoms, and (3) remote monitoring to adapt treatment outside consultations. The median ideal proportion of alternative care use was calculated. Perceived appropriate circumstances in which each alternative modality could replace traditional care were collected with open-ended questions. Analyses were performed on a weighted data set representative of patients with chronic illness in France. Results: Of the 5999 invited individuals, 1529 (mean [SD] age, 50.3 [14.7] years; 1072 [70.1%] female) agreed to participate (participation rate, 25.5%). Participants would choose teleconsultations for 50.0% of their future consultations (IQR, 11.0%-52.0%), online symptom-checkers over contacting their physician for 22.0% of new symptoms (IQR, 2.0%-50.0%), and remote monitoring instead of consultations for 52.3% of their treatment adaptations (IQR, 25.4%-85.4%). Participants reported 67 circumstances for which replacing traditional with alternative care modalities was considered appropriate, including 31 care activities (eg, prescription renewal and addressing acute or minor complaints), 25 patient characteristics (eg, stable chronic condition and established patient-physician relationship), and 11 required characteristics of the alternative care modalities (eg, quality assurance). Conclusions and Relevance: Results of this survey study suggest that after the pandemic, patients would choose alternative over traditional care for 22% to 52% of the time across different care needs. Participants proposed 67 criteria to guide clinicians in replacing traditional care with alternative care. These findings provide a guide for redesigning care in collaboration with patients after the pandemic.

Chemically modified mRNA beyond COVID-19: Potential preventive and therapeutic applications for targeting chronic diseases.

Chemically modified mRNA represents a unique, efficient, and straightforward approach to produce a class of biopharmaceutical agents. It has been already approved as a vaccination-based method for targeting SARS-CoV-2 virus. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the prospect of synthetic modified mRNA to efficiently and safely combat various diseases. Recently, various optimization advances have been adopted to overcome the limitations associated with conventional gene therapeutics leading to wide-ranging applications in different disease conditions. This review sheds light on emerging directions of chemically modified mRNAs to prevent and treat widespread chronic diseases, including metabolic disorders, cancer vaccination and immunotherapy, musculoskeletal disorders, respiratory conditions, cardiovascular diseases, and liver diseases.

Change in healthcare during Covid-19 pandemic was assessed through observational designs.

OBJECTIVE: Methodological challenges for investigating the changes in healthcare utilization during COVID-19 pandemic must be considered for obtaining unbiased estimates. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: A population-based study in the Lombardy region (Italy) measured the association between the level of epidemic restrictions (increasing exposure during pre-epidemic, post-lockdown, and lockdown periods) and the recommended healthcare (outcome) for patients with schizophrenia, heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, breast cancer, and pregnancy women. Two designs are applied: the self-controlled case series (SCCS) and the usual cohort design. Adjustments for between-patients unmeasured confounders and seasonality of medical services delivering were performed. RESULTS: Compared with pre-epidemic, reductions in delivering recommended healthcare during lockdown up to 73% (95% confidence interval: 63%-80%) for timeliness of breast cancer surgery, and up to 20% (16%-23%) for appropriated gynecologic visit during pregnancy were obtained from SCCS and cohort design, respectively. Healthcare provision came back to pre-epidemic levels during the post-lockdown, with the exception of schizophrenic patients for whom the SCCS showed a reduction in continuity of care of 11% (11%-12%). CONCLUSION: Strategies for investigating the changes in healthcare utilization during pandemic must be implemented. Recommendations for taking into account sources of systematic uncertainty are discussed and illustrated by using motivating examples.

Probiotic Supplements: Their Strategies in the Therapeutic and Prophylactic of Human Life-Threatening Diseases.

Chronic diseases and viral infections have threatened human life over the ages and constitute the main reason for increasing death globally. The rising burden of these diseases extends to negatively affecting the economy and trading globally, as well as daily life, which requires inexpensive, novel, and safe therapeutics. Therefore, scientists have paid close attention to probiotics as safe remedies to combat these morbidities owing to their health benefits and biotherapeutic effects. Probiotics have been broadly adopted as functional foods, nutraceuticals, and food supplements to improve human health and prevent some morbidity. Intriguingly, recent research indicates that probiotics are a promising solution for treating and prophylactic against certain dangerous diseases. Probiotics could also be associated with their essential role in animating the immune system to fight COVID-19 infection. This comprehensive review concentrates on the newest literature on probiotics and their metabolism in treating life-threatening diseases, including immune disorders, pathogens, inflammatory and allergic diseases, cancer, cardiovascular disease, gastrointestinal dysfunctions, and COVID-19 infection. The recent information in this report will particularly furnish a platform for emerging novel probiotics-based therapeutics as cheap and safe, encouraging researchers and stakeholders to develop innovative treatments based on probiotics to prevent and treat chronic and viral diseases.

Telehealth at scale can improve chronic disease management in the community during a pandemic: An experience at the time of COVID-19.

BACKGROUND: During the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth became a vital resource to contain the virus's spread and ensure continuity of care of patients with a chronic condition, notably arterial hypertension and heart disease. This paper reports the experience based on a telehealth platform used at scale to manage chronic disease patients in the Italian community. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Patients' health status was remotely monitored through ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM), resting or ambulatory electrocardiogram (ECG), spirometry, sleep oximetry, and cardiorespiratory polysomnography performed in community pharmacies or general practitioners' offices. Patients also monitored their blood pressure (BP), heart rate (HR), blood oxygen saturation (SpO2), body temperature, body weight, waist circumference, blood glucose, and lipids at home through a dedicated smartphone app. All data conveyed to the web-based telehealth platform were used to manage critical patients by doctors promptly. Data were analyzed and compared across three consecutive periods of 2 months each: i) before the national lockdown, ii) during the lockdown (from March 9 to May 17, 2020), and iii) after the end of the containment measures. Overall, 13,613 patients visited community pharmacies or doctors' offices. The number of overall tests dropped during and rose after the lockdown. The overall proportion of abnormal tests was larger during the outbreak. A significant increase in the prevalence of abnormal ECGs due to myocardial ischemia, contrasted by a significantly improved BP control, was observed. The number of home users and readings exchanged increased during the pandemic. In 226 patients, a significant increase in the proportion of SpO2 readings and a significant reduction in the entries for all other parameters, except BP, was observed. The proportion of abnormal SpO2 and BP values was significantly lower during the lockdown. Following the lockdown, the proportion of abnormal body weight or waist circumference values increased. CONCLUSIONS: Our study results support the usefulness of a telehealth solution to detect deterioration of the health status during the COVID-19 pandemic. TRIAL REGISTRATION: The study is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov at number NCT03781401.

The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the utilization of ambulatory care for patients with chronic neurological diseases in Japan: Evaluation of an administrative claims database.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected not only the emergency medical system, but also patients' regular ambulatory care, as such decrease in the number of patients visiting outpatient clinics decreased in 2020 than in 2019, or the ban lifting of subsequent visits by telephone for outpatient clinics since March 2020 in lieu of ambulatory care for chronic diseases. In this context, we investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on ambulatory care at Japanese outpatient clinics for patients with chronic neurological diseases during 2020. We collected data from the administrative claims database (DeSC database) covering more than 1 million individuals. Serial changes in the frequency of subsequent outpatient visits to clinics or hospitals (excluding large hospitals) for chronic ambulatory care of epilepsy, migraine, Parkinson's disease (PD), and Alzheimer's disease (AD) in 2020 were measured. As a result, since April 2020, the monthly outpatient visits for epilepsy, PD, and AD decreased slightly but significantly (approximately 0.90 in relative risk [RR]) but visits for migraine increased (RR = 1.15). Telephone visit was most frequently used in April-May, in less than 5% of monthly outpatient clinic visits for the examined neurological diseases. Outpatient visits for migraine treatment were more likely to be done by telephone than in case of other diseases (adjusted Odds ratio = 2.08). These results suggest that the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on regular ambulatory care for several chronic neurological diseases yielded different effect depending on the disease, in terms of the frequency or type of outpatient visits.

Older adults with non-communicable chronic conditions and their health care access amid COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh: Findings from a cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND: Burgeoning burden of non-communicable disease among older adults is one of the emerging public health problems. In the COVID-19 pandemic, health services in low- and middle-income countries, including Bangladesh, have been disrupted. This may have posed challenges for older adults with non-communicable chronic conditions in accessing essential health care services in the current pandemic. The present study aimed at exploring the challenges experienced by older Bangladeshi adults with non-communicable chronic conditions in receiving regular health care services during the COVID-19 pandemic. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study followed a cross-sectional design and was conducted among 1032 Bangladeshi older adults aged 60 years and above during October 2020 through telephone interviews. Self-reported information on nine non-communicable chronic conditions (osteoarthritis, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, hypercholesterolemia, diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases, chronic kidney disease, cancer) was collected. Participants were asked if they faced any difficulties in accessing medicine and receiving routine medical care for their medical conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The association between non-communicable chronic conditions and accessing medication and health care was analysed using binary logic regression model. RESULTS: Most of the participants aged 60-69 years (77.8%), male (65.5%), married (81.4%), had no formal schooling (58.3%) and resided in rural areas (73.9%). Although more than half of the participants (58.9%) reported having a single condition, nearly one-quarter (22.9%) had multimorbidity. About a quarter of the participants reported difficulties accessing medicine (23%) and receiving routine medical care (27%) during the pandemic, and this was significantly higher among those suffering from multimorbidity. In the adjusted analyses, participants with at least one condition (AOR: 1.95, 95% CI: 1.33-2.85) and with multimorbidity (AOR: 4.75, 95% CI: 3.17-7.10) had a higher likelihood of experiencing difficulties accessing medicine. Similarly, participants with at least one condition (AOR: 3.08, 95% CI: 2.11-4.89) and with multimorbidity (AOR: 6.34, 95% CI: 4.03-9.05) were significantly more likely to face difficulties receiving routine medical care during the COVID-19 pandemic. CONCLUSIONS: Our study found that a sizeable proportion of the older adults had difficulties in accessing medicine and receiving routine medical care during the pandemic. The study findings highlight the need to develop an appropriate health care delivery pathway and strategies to maintain essential health services during any emergencies and beyond. We also argue the need to prioritise the health of older adults with non-communicable chronic conditions in the centre of any emergency response plan and policies of Bangladesh.

Management of individuals with multiple chronic conditions: a continuing challenge.

Individuals with multiple chronic conditions (MCCs) represent a growing proportion of the adult population in the United States, particularly among lower-income individuals and people of color. Despite ongoing efforts to characterize this population and develop approaches for effective management, individuals with MCCs continue to contribute substantially to health care expenditures. Based on a review of recent literature, several identified barriers limit the effectiveness of care for patients with MCCs. Health care delivery system structural limitations, evidence-based care concerns, patient-clinician relationship constraints, and barriers to inclusion of patient-centered priorities may singly or in combination negatively affect outcomes for individuals with MCCs. The COVID-19 pandemic has shed further light on inequities contributing to suboptimal MCC patient management. Awareness of the prevalence and demographic attributes of patients with MCCs and the identified barriers to care may help improve patient engagement and treatment outcomes for this high-cost population. This paper provides recommendations for enhancing MCC patient care outcomes in the current and post-COVID-19 health care delivery settings.

State health disparities research in Rural America: Gaps and future directions in an era of COVID-19.

PURPOSE: In an era of the COVID-19 pandemic, improving health outcomes for diverse rural communities requires collective and sustained actions across transdisciplinary researchers, intersectoral partners, multilevel government action, and authentic engagement with those who carry the burden-rural communities. METHODS: Drawing from an analysis of transcriptions and documents from a national workshop on the "State of Rural Health Disparities: Research Gaps and Recommendations," this brief report underscores the gaps and priorities for future strategies for tackling persistent rural health inequities. FINDINGS: Four overarching recommendations were provided by national thought leaders in rural health: (1) create mechanisms to allow the rural research community time to build sustainable community-based participatory relationships; (2) support innovative research designs and approaches relevant to rural settings; (3) sustain effective interventions relevant to unique challenges in rural areas; and (4) recognize and identify the diversity within and across rural populations and adapt culturally and language-appropriate approaches. CONCLUSION: The COVID-19 public health crisis has exacerbated disparities for rural communities and underscored the need for diverse community-centered approaches in health research and dedicated funding to rural service agencies and populations.

Regulatory T cells and vaccine effectiveness in older adults. Challenges and prospects.

Since the discovery of lymphocytes with immunosuppressive activity, increasing interest has arisen in their possible influence on the immune response induced by vaccines. Regulatory T cells (Tregs) are essential for maintaining peripheral tolerance, preventing autoimmune diseases, and limiting chronic inflammatory diseases. However, they also limit beneficial immune responses by suppressing anti-infectious and anti-tumor immunity. Mounting evidence suggests that Tregs are involved, at least in part, in the low effectiveness of immunization against various diseases where it has been difficult to obtain protective vaccines. Interestingly, increased activity of Tregs is associated with aging, suggesting a key role for these cells in the lower vaccine effectiveness observed in older people. In this review, we analyze the impact of Tregs on vaccination, with a focus on older adults. Finally, we address an overview of current strategies for Tregs modulation with potential application to improve the effectiveness of future vaccines targeting older populations.

Paediatric primary care in Germany during the early COVID-19 pandemic: the calm before the storm.

OBJECTIVES: Globally, the COVID-19 pandemic has a major impact on healthcare provision. The effects in primary care are understudied. This study aimed to explore changes in consultation numbers and patient management during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to identify challenges for patient care. DESIGN: Survey of paediatric primary care practices on consultation numbers and patient management changes, and semistructured interviews to identify challenges for patient care. Surveys and interviews were partially linked in an explanatory sequential design to identify patient groups perceived to be at higher risk for worse care during the pandemic. SETTING: In and around Düsseldorf, a densely populated area in Western Germany. The primary care facilities are spread over an area with approximately 2 million inhabitants. PARTICIPANTS: Primary care in Germany is provided through practices run by self-employed specialist physicians that are contracted to offer services to patients under public health insurance which is compulsory to the majority of the population. The sample contained 44 paediatric primary care practices in the area, the response rate was 50%. RESULTS: Numbers of consultations for scheduled developmental examinations remained unchanged compared with the previous year while emergency visits were strongly reduced (mean 87.3 less/week in March-May 2020 compared with 2019, median reduction 55.0%). Children dependent on developmental therapy and with chronic health conditions were identified as patient groups receiving deteriorated care. High patient numbers, including of mildly symptomatic children presenting for health certificates, in combination with increased organisational demands and expected staff outages are priority concerns for the winter. CONCLUSIONS: Primary care paediatricians offered stable service through the early pandemic but expected strained resources for the upcoming winter. Unambiguous guidance on which children should present to primary care and who should be tested would help to allocate resources appropriately, and this guidance needs to consider age group specific issues including high prevalence of respiratory symptoms, dependency on carers and high contact rates.

Artificial Intelligence Can Improve Patient Management at the Time of a Pandemic: The Role of Voice Technology.

Artificial intelligence-driven voice technology deployed on mobile phones and smart speakers has the potential to improve patient management and organizational workflow. Voice chatbots have been already implemented in health care-leveraging innovative telehealth solutions during the COVID-19 pandemic. They allow for automatic acute care triaging and chronic disease management, including remote monitoring, preventive care, patient intake, and referral assistance. This paper focuses on the current clinical needs and applications of artificial intelligence-driven voice chatbots to drive operational effectiveness and improve patient experience and outcomes.