Background Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) requires early diagnosis and tight surveillance of disease activity. Remote self-collection of blood for the analysis of inflammation markers and autoantibodies could improve the monitoring of RA and facilitate the identification of individuals at-risk for RA. Objective Randomized, controlled trial to evaluate the accuracy, feasibility, and acceptability of an upper arm self-sampling device (UA) and finger prick-test (FP) to measure capillary blood from RA patients for C-reactive protein (CRP) levels and the presence of IgM rheumatoid factor (RF IgM) and anti-cyclic citrullinated protein antibodies (anti-CCP IgG). Methods RA patients were randomly assigned in a 1:1 ratio to self-collection of capillary blood via UA or FP. Venous blood sampling (VBS) was performed as a gold standard in both groups to assess the concordance of CRP levels as well as RF IgM and CCP IgG. General acceptability and pain during sampling were measured and compared between UA, FP, and VBS. The number of attempts for successful sampling, requests for assistance, volume, and duration of sample collection were also assessed. Results Fifty seropositive RA patients were included. 49/50 (98%) patients were able to successfully collect capillary blood. The overall agreement between capillary and venous analyses for CRP (0.992), CCP IgG (0.984), and RF IgM (0.994) were good. In both groups, 4/25 (16%) needed a second attempt and 8/25 (32%) in the UA and 7/25 (28%) in the FP group requested assistance. Mean pain scores for capillary self-sampling (1.7/10 ± 1.1 (UA) and 1.9/10 ± 1.9 (FP)) were significantly lower on a numeric rating scale compared to venous blood collection (UA: 2.8/10 ± 1.7; FP: 2.1 ± 2.0) (p=0.003). UA patients were more likely to promote the use of capillary blood sampling (net promoter score: +28% vs. −20% for FP) and were more willing to perform blood collection at home (60% vs. 32% for FP). Conclusions These data show that self-sampling is accurate and feasible within one attempt by the majority of patients without assistance, allowing tight monitoring of RA disease activity as well as identifying individuals at-risk for RA. RA patients seem to prefer upper arm-based self-sampling to traditional finger pricking. Trial registration DRKS.de Identifier: DRKS00023526. Registered on November 6, 2020.

Background: Walking represents a major component of physical activity (PA), and its restriction could degrade autonomy and quality of life. An important objective for preventive and/or rehabilitative strategies to improve balance and gait in normal and pathological aging conditions is to focus on physical activity. Activity monitors have recently been getting increasingly popular and represent a modern solution to measure—and communicate—PA notably in terms of steps/day. These activity monitors are well-suited for various populations as they can be worn on a variety of locations on the body, including the wrist and the hip (i.e., the two most common locations), in an undifferentiated way according to the manufacturer's instruction. The aim of this study was hence to verify potential differences in step count (SC) by comparing this parameter assessed using wrist- and hip-worn activity trackers over a 24-h period in free-living conditions in young and older adults.Methods: Young adults (n = 22) and older adults (n = 22) voluntarily participated in this study. They were required to wear two commercially-available Actigraph GT3X+ activity monitors simultaneously at two locations recommended by the manufacturer, i.e., one positioned around the wrist and one above the hip, over a 24-h period in free-living conditions. The manufacturer's software was used to obtain estimates of the SC.Results: For both groups, the wrist-worn activity tracker provided significantly higher SC than the hip-worn activity tracker did. For both placements on the body, older adults exhibited significantly lower SC than young adults. Interestingly, for both young and older participants, the difference between both measurements tended to decrease for longer distances.Conclusion: The different estimations of the step count provided by the comparison between two identical Actigraph GT3x on the wrist or the hip during the 24-h observation period in free-living conditions in young and older adults strongly suggests that caution is needed when using total step per day values as an outcome to quantify walking behavior. Probably we can suggest the same caution across implementation of different activity Tracker.

Background Recent studies have thoughtfully and convincingly demonstrated the possibility of estimating the circadian rhythms of young adults’ social activity by analyzing their telephone call-detail records (CDRs). In the field of health monitoring, this development may offer new opportunities for supervising a patient’s health status by collecting objective, unobtrusive data about their daily social interactions. However, before considering this future perspective, whether and how similar results could be observed in other populations, including older ones, should be established. Objective This study was designed specifically to address the circadian rhythms in the telephone calls of older adults. Methods A longitudinal, 12-month dataset combining CDRs and questionnaire data from 26 volunteers aged 65 years or older was used to examine individual differences in the daily rhythms of telephone call activity. The study used outgoing CDRs only and worked with three specific telecommunication parameters: (1) call recipient (alter), (2) time of day, and (3) call duration. As did the studies involving young adults, we analyzed three issues: (1) the existence of circadian rhythms in the telephone call activity of older adults, (2) their persistence over time, and (3) the alter-specificity of calls by calculating relative entropy. Results We discovered that older adults had their own specific circadian rhythms of outgoing telephone call activity whose salient features and preferences varied across individuals, from morning until night. We demonstrated that rhythms were consistent, as reflected by their persistence over time. Finally, results suggested that the circadian rhythms of outgoing telephone call activity were partly structured by how older adults allocated their communication time across their social network. Conclusions Overall, these results are the first to have demonstrated the existence, persistence, and alter-specificity of the circadian rhythms of the outgoing telephone call activity of older adults. These findings suggest an opportunity to consider modern telephone technologies as potential sensors of daily activity. From a health care perspective, these sensors could be harnessed for unobtrusive monitoring purposes.