Using Interpreter-Tutors in School Programs for Students who are Deaf-Blind

This article presents a model for providing the necessary educational support to children who are deaf-blind in public schools. The model relies on the services of a new paraprofessional—the interpreter-tutor.

53 Does the Community Geriatrician’s Role in Advanced Care Planning Help Community Dwellers Achieve Their Preferred Place of Care?

Introduction

Advanced Care Planning (ACP) is well established for patients with terminal cancer diagnoses but is poorly utilised when caring for elderly patients with other terminal illnesses. We aimed to assess the effectiveness of ACP in our older, community dwellers following a period of increased awareness.

Methods

A closed loop audit was undertaken, assessing deaths from a dementia care home within rural Norfolk, before and after implementation of an education and focus programme (cycle 1=Jan 2017-Jan 2018, cycle 2: Feb 2018-Jan-2019). Deceased patients were identified from care home records and data from electronic hospital and general practice records were analysed. Results were compared according to existing guidance outlined in the Palliative Gold Standards Framework (GSF) and Department of Health End of Life Care Strategy 2009. Compliance between cycles was compared using the chi-square test with p=.05 indicative of statistical significance.

Results

59 patients were included (median age=84, male=31). Results of the audit for each criterion are shown in table 1. More patients achieved their preferred place of care (PPOC) following the implementation of the education programme, with access to end of life medications significantly improving.

Conclusions

Increasing awareness and understanding of ACP in the community has been shown to improve compliance with GSF standards, particularly access to end of life medications. Further efforts are still required to improve care and a third cycle is scheduled for January 2020, following further training.

Impact of contouring variability on oncological PET radiomics features in the lung

Radiomics features extracted from oncological PET images are currently under intense scrutiny within the context of risk stratification for a variety of cancers. However, the lack of robustness assessment poses problems for their application across institutions and for broader patient populations. The objective of the current study was to examine the extent to which radiomics parameters from oncological PET vary in response to manual contouring variability in lung cancer. Imaging data employed in the study consisted of 26 PET scans with lesions in the lung being created through the use of an anthropomorphic phantom in conjunction with Monte Carlo simulations. From each of the simulated lesions, 25 radiomics features related to the gray-level co-occurrence matrices (GLCOM), gray-level size zone matrices (GLSZM), and gray-level neighborhood difference matrices (GLNDM) were extracted from ground truth contour and from manual contours provided by 10 raters in regard to four intensity discretization schemes with number of gray levels of 32, 64, 128, and 256, respectively. The impact of interrater variability in tumor delineation upon the agreement between raters on radiomics features was examined via interclass correlation and leave-p-out assessment. Only weak and moderate correlations were found between segmentation accuracy as measured by the Dice coefficient and percent feature error from ground truth for the vast majority of the features being examined. GLNDM-based texture parameters emerged as the top performing category of radiomcs features in terms of robustness against contouring variability for discretization schemes engaging number of gray levels of 32, 64, and 128 while GLCOM-based parameters stood out for discretization scheme engaging 256 gray levels. How and to what extent interrater reliability of radiomics features vary in response to the number of raters were largely feature-dependent. It was concluded that impact of contouring variability on PET-based radiomics features is present to varying degrees and could be experienced as a barrier to convey PET-based radiomics research to clinical relevance.

Slowing improvements in life expectancy across European Economic Area countries

Background

Life expectancy improvements have slowed down in several European countries since around 2011. The relative contributions from changes in specific conditions (e.g. cancers) and broader risk factors (e.g. smoking or austerity) remain unclear. We aimed to explore the different potential causes in 17 European Economic Area (EEA) countries.

Methods

We compared Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study estimates for life expectancy, years of life lost (YLLs) and population attributable fractions (PAFs) for risk factors, for 2005-2011 and 2011-2017 for 17 EEA countries. Three countries with the largest absolute improvements and three with the smallest were selected for analysis by gender, age, condition and risk factors.

Results

Norway, France and Belgium had the largest improvement in life expectancy (+1.5, +1.2 and +1.2 years respectively) from 2011 to 2017, and Germany, Iceland and the UK the smallest (+0.1, +0.2 and +0.2 years). Life expectancy reduced slightly for women aged over 80 in Germany and UK, men aged over 50 in Germany, and for men in all age groups up to 90 years in Iceland. Norway, France and Belgium saw faster improvements in YLLs from lung cancer and Norway and France for COPD in both men and women, and from self-harm in men, after 2011 than before. PAF for tobacco declined faster after 2011. Germany, Iceland and the UK saw slower improvements in cardiovascular disease and in Germany and the UK lung cancer. In Iceland, YLLs for cancers, self harm, respiratory disease, cirrhosis and dementia all worsened after 2011. PAF for tobacco remained high or declined less after 2011 in all 3 countries. PAFs for alcohol and drug use remained high in Iceland and UK.

Conclusions

Differential changes in major fatal diseases and risk factors help explain national changes in life expectancies, but national differences in data availability may affect results. Further research is needed into the ‘causes of the causes’, such as the 2008 economic crash in Iceland.

Key messages

Differential changes in major fatal diseases and risk factors help explain national changes in life expectancies. Norway, France and Belgium had the largest improvement in life expectancy from 2011 to 2017, and Germany, Iceland and the UK the smallest.

Abstract GS1-05: Apobec3 induced mutagenesis sensitizes murine models of triple negative breast cancer to immunotherapy by activating B-cells and CD4+ T-cells

Immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapies have led to remarkable clinical responses in cancers such as melanoma and non-small cell lung cancer. In breast cancer, current immunotherapy trials have placed an emphasis on triple negative breast cancers (TNBC), where early results suggest response rates of 10-20%. Thus, it is critical to identify predictive biomarkers to enhance patient selection for immunotherapy. With this goal in mind, we simulated a clinical trial employing anti-PD1 and anti-CTLA therapies in immune-intact genetically engineered mouse models (GEMMs) of TNBC. Testing of ICI therapies on 8 different GEMMs demonstrated that each model was resistant. Whole exome sequencing showed that each model also harbored a low mutation burden. Given that mutation load is predictive of immunotherapy response in other cancer types, and that Apobec3B activity is associated with higher tumor mutation burden (TMB) in breast cancer, we created two different tumor lines with overexpression of murine Apobec3.

In contrast to the parental lines, the Apobec3 overexpressing lines showed an elevated tumor mutation burden and new mutations were consistent with the Apobec mutation signature. These TNBC lines with new mutations resulting from Apobec3 activity were exquisitely sensitive to anti-PD1/anti-CTLA4 combination therapy; as assessed by reduction in tumor volume and extended overall survival. To identify features that predict response, we examined resistant and sensitive tumors at pretreatment, at 1 week of treatment, and at end stage by flow cytometry and mRNA-seq. Gene expression profiling identified multiple immune signatures as predictive of response to ICI therapy; specifically CD8+ T-effector memory cells, CD4+ T-cells, and activated B-Cells. Similarly, gene expression analysis showed that these cell types increased at 1 week of therapy in sensitive models but not in resistant models. Flow cytometry confirmed these predictions.

Next, we used an antibody based approach to separately deplete CD4+ T-Cells, CD8+ T-cells, or B-cells in Apobec3 mutagenized murine tumors receiving aPD1/aCTLA4 combination therapy. In each case, depletion of these populations significantly reduced the therapeutic response. However, mice receiving combination immunotherapy and depleted for CD8+ T-cells still exhibited a significant extension in overall survival compared to non-treated controls. In contrast, the CD4+ T-cell depleted mice and B-cell depleted mice exhibited no ICI therapeutic benefit.

Together, these data point to key immune biomarkers of response to anti-PD1/anti-CTLA4 therapy; we have further developed a genomic predictor of ICI response using our murine models and will test this on a human TNBC data set. Lastly, this GEMM system provides a rich RNA-seq resource, and new immune-activated models for TNBC, which uncovered a key role for B-cells and CD4+ T-cells in response to ICI therapies.

Citation Format: Hollern DP, Xu N, Mott KR, He X, Carey-Ewend K, Marron DS, Ford J, Parker JS, Vincent BG, Serody JS, Perou CM. Apobec3 induced mutagenesis sensitizes murine models of triple negative breast cancer to immunotherapy by activating B-cells and CD4+ T-cells [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2018 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2018 Dec 4-8; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2019;79(4 Suppl):Abstract nr GS1-05.

Conditional knockout of TOG results in CNS hypomyelination

The tumor overexpressed gene (TOG) protein is present in RNA granules that transport myelin basic protein (MBP) mRNA in oligodendrocyte processes to the myelin compartment. Its role was investigated by conditionally knocking it out (KO) in myelinating glia in vivo. TOG KO mice have severe motor deficits that are already apparent at the time of weaning. This phenotype correlates with a paucity of myelin in several CNS regions, the most severe being in the spinal cord. In the TOG KO optic nerve <30% of axons are myelinated. The number of oligodendrocytes in the corpus callosum, cerebellum, and cervical spinal cord is normal. In the absence of TOG, the most patent biochemical change is a large reduction in MBP content, yet normal amounts of MBP transcripts are found in the brain of affected animals. MBP transcripts are largely confined to the cell body of the oligodendrocytes in the TOG KO in contrast to the situation in wild type mice where they are found in the processes of the oligodendrocytes and in the myelin compartment. These findings indicate that MBP gene expression involves a post-transcriptional TOG-dependent step. TOG may be necessary for MBP mRNA assembly into translation permissive granules, and/or for transport to preferred sites of translation. GLIA 2017;65:489-501.

Lifestyle interventions for weight loss in adults with severe obesity: a systematic review

Severe obesity is an increasingly prevalent condition and is often associated with long-term comorbidities, reduced survival and higher healthcare costs. Non-surgical methods avoid the side effects, complications and costs of surgery, but it is unclear which non-surgical method is most effective. The objective of this article was to systematically review the effectiveness of lifestyle interventions compared to standard or minimal care for weight loss in adults with severe obesity. MEDLINE, EMBASE, CENTRAL, databases of on-going studies, reference lists of any relevant systematic reviews and the Cochrane Library database were searched from inception to February 2016 for relevant randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Inclusion criteria were participants with severe obesity (body mass index [BMI] > 40 kg/m² or BMI > 35 kg/m² with comorbidity) and interventions with a minimal duration of 12 weeks that were multi-component combinations of diet, exercise and behavioural therapy. Risk of bias was evaluated using the Cochrane risk of bias criteria. Meta-analysis was not possible because of methodological heterogeneity. Seventeen RCTs met the inclusion criteria. Weight change in kilograms of participants from baseline to follow-up was reported for 14 studies. Participants receiving the lifestyle intervention had a greater decrease in weight than participants in the control group for all studies (1.0-11.5 kg). Lifestyle interventions varied greatly between the studies. Overall lifestyle interventions with combined diet and exercise components achieved the greatest weight loss. Lifestyle interventions for weight loss in adults with severe obesity were found to result in increased weight loss when compared to minimal or standard care, especially those with combined diet and exercise components.