Lifestyle training for schizophrenia: STEPWISE fails to make a difference

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Ben Janaway writes his debut elf blog on the STEPWISE RCT which is out today in the British Journal of Psychiatry: Structured lifestyle education for people with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder and first-episode psychosis.

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Poorer cardiovascular screening, diagnosis and management if you have a mental illness

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Joanne Wallace summarises a systematic review that highlights disparities in the management of cardiovascular risk factors in people with mental illness.

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Treating periodontitis to prevent heart disease – evidence unclear

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Only 1 trial at high risk of bias was included in this recent update of a 2014 Cochrane review of periodontal therapy for preventing cardiovascular disease (CVD) providing insufficient evidence to support or refute whether periodontal therapy can prevent the recurrence of CVD in the long term in patients with chronic periodontitis.

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Periodontitis and type II diabetes

The prevalence of type 2 diabetes in patients with schizophrenia is about one-third higher than in the general population.

This prospective cohort study included 1331 58–72-year old men from Northern Ireland suggests an association between moderate to severe periodontitis and type II diabetes.

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Depression and coronary heart disease: reasons to remain UPBEAT-UK

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Kirsten Lawson summarises the UPBEAT-UK programme of research into the relationship between coronary heart disease and depression and anxiety in primary care patients.

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The apples and oranges of social relationships: what are we measuring and how?

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Farhana Mann presents a helpful summary of a number of different tools that have been used in the study of social relationships, as they relate to health and social service use and cardiovascular outcomes.

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Atherosclerosis and periodontal disease is there an association?

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This review looked at the evidence linking carotid atherosclerosis with periodontal disease 15 studies involving 17,330 patients were included. The overall pooled result showed periodontal disease was associated with carotid atherosclerosis, OR=1.27 (95% C; 1.14–1.41; P = 0.001). However, once adjusted for smoking and diabetes mellitus, this reduced to borderline significance OR=1.08 (95% CI; 1.00–1.18; P = 0.05).

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Collaboration, collaboration, collaboration

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Kirsten Lawson explores the benefits of working across professional and therapeutic boundaries, highlighted beautifully by the recent COINCIDE RCT of collaborative care for patients with depression comorbid with diabetes or cardiovascular disease.

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Periodontal disease and coronary disease risk

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15 prospective studies were included in this review of periodontal disease (PD) & coronary disease risk. PD was associated with an increased risk of coronary disease RR=1.19; (95% CI; 1.13–1.26).

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How much impact can optimism and positivity have on clinical outcomes in cardiovascular disease?

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Jake Crawshaw summarises a systematic review which investigates the relationships between positive psychological constructs and health outcomes in cardiovascular disease.

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