BackgroundThe Patient Assessment of Chronic Illness Care (PACIC) is a US measure of chronic illness quality of care, based on the influential Chronic Care Model (CCM). It measures a number of aspects of care, including patient activation; delivery system design and decision support; goal setting and tailoring; problem-solving and contextual counselling; follow-up and coordination. Although there is developing evidence of the utility of the scale, there is little evidence about its performance in the United Kingdom (UK). We present preliminary data on the psychometric performance of the PACIC in a large sample of UK patients with long-term conditions.MethodWe collected PACIC, demographic, clinical and quality of care data from patients with long-term conditions across 38 general practices, as part of a wider longitudinal study. We assess rates of missing data, present descriptive and distributional data, assess internal consistency, and test validity through confirmatory factor analysis, and through associations between PACIC scores, patient characteristics and related measures.ResultsThere was evidence that rates of missing data were high on PACIC (9.6% - 15.9%), and higher than on other scales used in the same survey. Most PACIC sub-scales showed reasonable levels of internal consistency (alpha = 0.68 – 0.94), responses did not demonstrate high skewness levels, and floor effects were more frequent (up to 30.4% on the follow up and co-ordination subscale) than ceiling effects (generally <5%). PACIC demonstrated preliminary evidence of validity in terms of measures of long-term condition care. Confirmatory factor analysis suggested that the five factor PACIC structure proposed by the scale developers did not fit the data: reporting separate factor scores may not always be appropriate.ConclusionThe importance of improving care for long-term conditions means that the development and validation of measures is a priority. The PACIC scale has demonstrated potential utility in this regard, but further assessment is required to assess low levels of completion of the scale, and to explore the performance of the scale in predicting outcomes and assessing the effects of interventions.

Huntington disease is a neurodegenerative disorder that involves preferential atrophy in the striatal complex and related subcortical nuclei. In this paper, which is based on a dataset extracted from the PREDICT-HD study, we use statistical shape analysis with deformation markers obtained through Large Deformation Diffeomorphic Metric Mapping of cortical surfaces to highlight specific atrophy patterns in the caudate, putamen, and globus pallidus, at different prodromal stages of the disease. Based on the relation to cortico-basal-ganglia circuitry, we propose that statistical shape analysis, along with other structural and functional imaging studies, may help expand our understanding of the brain circuitry affected and other aspects of the neurobiology of HD, and also guide the most effective strategies for intervention.

Objective This study compares self-paced timing performance (cross-sectionally and longitudinally) between participants with prodromal Huntington disease (pr-HD) and a comparison group of gene non-expanded participants from affected families (NC). Methods At baseline, participants in two groups (747 pr-HD: 188 NC) listened to tones presented at 550ms intervals, matched that pace by tapping response keys and continued the rhythm (self-paced) after the tone had stopped. Standardized cross-sectional and longitudinal linear models examined the relationships between self-paced timing precision and estimated proximity to diagnosis, and various other demographic factors. Results Pr-HD participants showed significantly less timing precision than NC. Cross-sectional comparison of pr-HD and NC participants showed a significant performance difference on two administration conditions of the task (dominant hand: p<.0001; alternating thumbs: p<.0001). Additionally, estimated proximity to diagnosis was related to timing precision in both conditions, (dominant hand: t=−11.14,df=920, p<.0001; alternating thumbs: t=−11.32, df=918, p<.0001), even considering demographic and experience variables. Longitudinal modeling showed that pr-HD participants worsen more quickly at the task than the NC group, and that decline rate increases with estimated proximity to diagnosis in both conditions (dominant hand: t=−2.85,df=417, p=.0045; alternating thumbs: t=−3.56, df= 445, p=.0004). Effect sizes based on adjusted mean annual change ranged from −0.34 to 0.25 in the longitudinal model. Conclusions The self-paced timing paradigm has potential for use as a screening tool and outcome measure in pr-HD clinical trials to gauge therapeutically-mediated improvement or maintenance of function.

We examined the Trail Making Test (TMT) in a sample of 767 participants with prodromal Huntington disease (prodromal HD) and 217 healthy comparisons to determine the contributions of motor, psychiatric, and cognitive changes to TMT scores. Eight traditional and derived TMT scores were also evaluated for their ability to differentiate prodromal participants closer to estimated age of diagnosis from those farther away and prodromal individuals from healthy comparisons. Results indicate that motor signs only mildly affected part A, and psychiatric symptoms did not affect either part. Tests of perceptual processing, visual scanning, and attention were primarily associated with part A, and executive functioning (response inhibition, set-shifting), processing speed, and working memory were associated with part B. Additionally, TMT scores differentiated between healthy comparisons and prodromal HD individuals as far as 9–15 years before estimated diagnosis. In participants manifesting prodromal motor signs and psychiatric symptoms, the TMT primarily measures cognition and is able to discriminate between groups based on health status and estimated time to diagnosis.

Objective The goals of this study were to determine the relationship between anxious symptoms and cognitive functioning in a non-demented, community-dwelling elderly sample (N = 48), and to determine the effect of depressive symptoms upon this relationship. Methods Anxious and depressive symptoms were assessed using Symptom Checklist 90-Revised. Cognitive functioning was assessed with the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status. Results Results indicated that while both cognitive functioning and anxious symptoms were within normal limits in this sample, anxious symptoms showed a significant, inverse relationship with global cognitive function [r(47) = −.400, p = .005]. In addition, specific relationships were noted between severity of anxious symptoms and visuospatial/constructional ability as well as immediate and delayed memory. With regard to the secondary objective, both anxiety and depressive symptoms together accounted for the highest level of variance [R2 = .175, F(2, 45) = 4.786, p = .013] compared to anxiety [R2(47) = .160, p = .005] and depression [R2(47) = .106, p = .024] alone. Nevertheless, neither anxious nor depressive symptoms emerged as a unique correlate with cognitive ability [r(47)= −.278, p = .058; r(48)= −.136, p = .363, respectively]. Conclusion This study demonstrates that subthreshold anxiety symptoms and cognitive functioning are significantly related even among generally healthy older adults whose cognitive ability and severity of anxious symptoms are within broad normal limits. These findings have implications both for clinical care of elderly patients, as well as for cognitive research studies utilizing this population.