Report from the BGS Falls and Postural Stability Meeting 2015

This year’s well attended Falls and Postural Stability Conference was held in Wembley, London. BGS member Mary Ni Lochlainn reports back.

The first session at this year’s BGS Falls and Postural Stability Conference was opened by Professor Alice Nieuwbower, from University of Leuven, Belgium, who discussed falls in the context of Parkinson’s Disease (PD).

Patients with PD are twice as likely to fall, compared to healthy older adults. It seems wobbling is a major factor here with ‘sway’ more predictive of falls than ‘gait speed’ in this population. Sway-metrics (probably not as much fun as they sound) show increased sway in patients taking levodopa, leading to a therapeutic challenge for clinicians.

September issue of Age and Ageing journal out now

The September 2014 issue of Age and Ageing, the journal of the British Geriatrics Society is out now.

A full table of contents is available here, with editorials, research papers, reviews, short reports, case reports book reviews and more. Hot topics this issue include:

• Vitamin D guidelines
• Adverse effects of anticholinergic medicines
• Interdisciplinary care and falls prevention
• Measuring quality of life in care homes
• Undergraduate education in geriatric medicine

The Editor’s View can be read here.

This issue’s free access papers are:

• Understanding vitamin D deficiency
• European undergraduate curriculum in geriatric medicine developed using an international modified Delphi technique
• Self-reported quality of care for older adults from 2004 to 2011: a cohort study

Vitamin D and bone health: A practical clinical guideline for patient management – National Osteoporosis Society Guideline

Dr Terence Ong is a Research Fellow at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust.

Professor Opinder Sahota is Professor of Orthogeriatric Medicine and Consultant Physician at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust

image by epSos.de

Vitamin D is not, in the truest sense, a vitamin because it is not exclusively obtained through diet alone. It is a secosteroid, mostly obtained intrinsically by the effect of ultraviolet radiation on previtamin D compounds and subsequent hydroxylation in the liver and kidneys.

Vitamin D plays an important role in calcium and phosphate homeostasis through its effect on gut and bone metabolism. Besides that, it also plays a key role in muscle function. In recent years, our understanding of vitamin D has expanded and we are starting to appreciate its much broader role in areas such as the immune system, cancer and cardiovascular disease.