Ulrike Grittner

Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin | Charité · Institute of Biometry and Clinical Epidemiology

Background : Aquaporin-4 immunoglobulin-G positive (AQP4-IgG⁺) neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD) is an autoimmune astrocytopathy associated with optic neuritis (ON). Myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein antibody-associated disease (MOGAD) is an oligodendrocytopathy with similar phenotype. Serum glial fibrillary acidic protein (sGFAP), a...

In preparation for the PRO B study which aims to examine the effects of an app-based intensified patient-reported outcome (PRO) monitoring for metastatic breast cancer patients, prior assessment of its feasibility was carried out. Sixteen breast cancer patients visiting the breast cancer unit at Charité were recruited and downloaded an app connecte...

Background Cytogenetic testing (CGT) in uveal melanoma patients reveals prognostic information about the individual risk of developing distant metastasis with dismal prognosis. There is currently no medical intervention strategy with proven effect on the prognosis, rendering the result of the cytogenetic testing purely informative. We explored pati...

Different transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) protocols have been tested to improve visuospatial neglect (VSN). So far, methodological heterogenity limits reliable conclusions about optimal stimualtion set-up. With this proof-of-principle study behavioral effects of two promising (uni- vs. bilateral) stimulation protocols were directly c...

Introduction: With the worldwide increase of life expectancy leading to a higher proportion of older adults experiencing age-associated deterioration of cognitive abilities, the development of effective and widely accessible prevention and therapeutic measures has become a priority and challenge for modern medicine. Combined interventions of cogni...

Background Myasthenia gravis (MG) leads to exertion-dependent muscle weakness, but also psychological and social well-being are limited. We aim to describe the burden of disease in MG including sociodemographic, economical, psychosocial as well as clinical aspects, to compare health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of patients with MG to the general...

Importance: Developing interventions against age-related memory decline and for older adults experiencing neurodegenerative disease is one of the greatest challenges of our generation. Spermidine supplementation has shown beneficial effects on brain and cognitive health in animal models, and there has been preliminary evidence of memory improvemen...

Purpose Given the psychosocial burdens patients in advanced stages of cancer face, innovative care concepts are needed. At the same time, such vulnerable patient groups are difficult to reach for participation in intervention studies and randomized patient inclusion may not be feasible. This article aims to identify systematic biases respectively s...

Introduction: The year 2020 was marked by the COVID-19 pandemic. Policy responses to COVID-19 affected social and economic life and the availability of alcohol. Previous research has shown an overall small decrease in alcohol use in Denmark in the first months of the pandemic. The present paper focused on identifying which subgroups of individuals...

Object Recent studies demonstrated that gross total resection of brain metastases cannot always be achieved. Subtotal resection (STR) can result in an early recurrence and might affect patient survival. We initiated a prospective observational study to establish a MRI-based risk assessment for incomplete resection of brain metastases. Methods All...

Introduction Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in women. A considerable number of women with breast cancer who have been treated with chemotherapy, subsequently develop neurological symptoms such as concentration and memory difficulties (also known as ‘chemobrain’). Currently, there are no validated therapeutic approaches available to...

Introduction A substantial number of patients diagnosed with COVID-19 experience long-term persistent symptoms. First evidence suggests that long-term symptoms develop largely independently of disease severity and include, among others, cognitive impairment. For these symptoms, there are currently no validated therapeutic approaches available. Cogn...

It is currently unknown whether a virtual social environment can support young people in building their skills to overcome peer pressure when offered alcohol. This study evaluated the efficacy of the newly developed virtual reality simulation game VR FestLab on the refusal self-efficacy regarding social pressures to drink of Danish male and female...

The aim of the present study was to investigate the awareness of patient navigation (PN) in the general population in Germany and to assess which navigator tasks are considered most important. The analysis drew on a 2019 nationwide telephone survey of 6110 adults. We compared rankings of emotional support, administrative support and information amo...

Introduction: Given rapid global population aging, developing interventions against age-associated cognitive decline is an important medical and societal goal. We evaluated a cognitive training protocol combined with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on trained and non-trained functions in non-demented older adults. Methods: Fifty-s...

The pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCVs) protect against diseases caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae , such as meningitis, bacteremia, and pneumonia. It is challenging to estimate their population-level impact due to the lack of a perfect control population and the subtleness of signals when the endpoint – like all-cause pneumonia – is non-specif...

Background & Aims Sustained weight loss is highly desirable in obesity. Although the role of incretins in the regulation of body weight is well known, macronutrient specific incretin response and the effects of weight loss on this response have not been investigated before. We aimed to examine GLP-1, GIP, ghrelin, insulin, and satiety response to m...

Purpose To investigate the association of age with delay in spine surgery and the effects on neurological outcome after traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI). Methods Ambispective cohort study (2011–2017) in n = 213 patients consecutively enrolled in a Level I trauma center with SCI care in a metropolitan region in Germany. Age-related differences in...

This is a protocol for a Cochrane Review (intervention). The objectives are as follows: To assess the efficacy of different non‐pharmacological interventions for people with primary progressive aphasia (PPA) on global language abilities, word retrieval, functional communication, cognition, depressive symptoms, quality of life, and adverse events....

Objective Neglect after stroke is a disabling disorder and its rehabilitation is a major challenge. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) seems to be a promising adjuvant technique to improve standard care neglect therapy. Since electric fields are influenced by age-related factors, higher current densities are probably needed for effectiv...

Background Hereditary Transthyretin-Related Amyloidosis, a clinically heterogeneous autosomal dominant disease caused by pathogenic variants in the TTR gene, is characterized by the deposition of insoluble misfolded protein fibrils. The diagnosis, especially in non-endemic areas, is typically delayed by 4–5 years; a misdiagnosis due to clinical het...

Background Cytogenetic testing (CGT) in uveal melanoma patients reveals prognostic information about the individual risk of developing distant metastasis with dismal prognosis. There is currently no medical intervention strategy with proven effect on the prognosis, rendering the result of the cytogenetic testing purely informative. We explored pati...

Background: This randomized controlled trial investigated if uni- and bihemispheric transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) of the motor cortex can enhance the effects of visuo-motor grip force tracking task training and transfer to clinical assessments of upper extremity motor function. Methods: In a randomized, double-blind, sham-controlle...

Objective: To determine the contribution of common genetic variants to risk of early onset ischemic stroke (IS). Methods: We performed a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies of early onset IS, ages 18-59, using individual level data or summary statistics in 16,927 cases and 576,353 non-stroke controls from 48 different studies across No...

Background Despite the progress of research and treatment for breast cancer, still up to 30% of the patients afflicted will develop distant disease. Elongation of survival and maintaining the quality of life (QoL) become pivotal issues guiding the treatment decisions. One possible approach to optimise survival and QoL is the use of patient-reported...

Objective: The authors sought to validate the navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (nTMS)-based risk stratification model. The postoperative motor outcome in glioma surgery may be preoperatively predicted based on data derived by nTMS. The tumor-to-tract distance (TTD) and the interhemispheric resting motor threshold (RMT) ratio (as a surro...

Certain neurophysiological characteristics of sleep, in particular slow oscillations (SO), sleep spindles, and their temporal coupling, have been well characterized and associated with human memory formation. Delta waves, which are somewhat higher in frequency and lower in amplitude compared to SO, have only recently been found to play a critical r...

Introduction The heavy drinking of others may negatively affect an individual on several dimensions of life. Until now, there is scarce research about how to judge the severity of various experiences of such harms. This study aims to empirically scale the severity of such harm items and to determine who is at most risk of these harms. Methods We u...

For three decades, enzyme replacement therapy (ERT), and more recently, substrate reduction therapy, have been the standard-of-care for type I Gaucher disease (GD1). Since 2012, three different ERTs have been available. No clinical trial or academic study has ever compared these ERTs beyond one year. Herein we compare the impact of the ERTs on repe...

Background Head and brain anatomy have been related to e-field strengths induced by transcranial electrical stimulation (tES). Individualization based on anatomic factors require high-quality structural magnetic resonance images, which are not always available. Head circumference (HC) can serve as an alternative means, but its linkage to electric f...

Die außergewöhnlich geburtenstarken Jahrgänge der 1955er bis 1965er Jahre werden in den kommenden zwei bis drei Jahrzehnten zu erheblichen Herausforderungen für das System pflegerischer Versorgung führen. So könnten sich etwa heute schon bestehende Versorgungslücken zwischen Angebotsstruktur und Nachfrage nach pflegerischen Leistungen deutlich vers...

Objectives To investigate global and momentary effects of a tablet-based non-pharmacological intervention for nursing home residents living with dementia. Design Cluster-randomized controlled trial. Setting Ten nursing homes in Germany were randomly allocated to the tablet-based intervention (TBI, 5 units) or conventional activity sessions (CAS,...

Study design: Monocenter case-control study. Objective: Effects of spinal surgical adverse events (SSAE) on clinical and functional outcome, length of stay, and treatment costs after traumatic cervical spinal cord injury (SCI). Summary of background data: Traumatic SCI is a challenge for primary care centers because of the emergency setting an...

Introduction Many clinical studies reporting accelerometry data use sum score measures such as percentage of time spent in moderate to vigorous activity which do not provide insight into differences in activity patterns over 24 hours, and thus do not adequately depict circadian activity patterns. Here, we present an improved functional data analysi...

Background:Neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD) is a frequently disabling neuroinflammatory syndrome with a relapsing course. Blood-based disease severity and prognostic biomarkers for NMOSD are a yet unmet clinical need. Here, we evaluated serum glial fibrillary acidic protein (sGFAP) and neurofilament light (sNfL) as disease severity an...

Background Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are commonly-used surrogates for clinical outcomes in cancer research. When researching severe diseases such as cancer, it is difficult to avoid the problem of incomplete questionnaires from drop-outs or missing data from patients who pass away during the observation period. The aim of this explo...

Background & Aims: Weight loss is associated with an improvement of insulin sensitivity. Both, a negative energy balance and changes of body composition are integrative components of weight loss interventions. However, the individual impact of these two components on insulin sensitivity and energy metabolism is unclear. Methods: We performed a rand...

Background and aim: To report the six-month safety analyses among patients enrolled in the ‘Physical Fitness Training in Subacute Stroke – PHYS-STROKE’ trial and identify underlying risk factors associated with serious adverse events (SAE). Methods: We performed a pre-specified safety analysis of a multicenter, randomized controlled, endpoint...

Background: The aim of this study was to examine how gender, age and education, regional prevalence of male and female risky drinking and country-level economic gender equality are associated with harms from other people’s drinking. Methods: 24,823 adults in 10 countries were surveyed about harms from drinking by people they know and strangers. Cou...

Background Previous studies suggest that genetic polymorphisms and aging modulate inter-individual variability in brain stimulation-induced plasticity. However, the relationship between genetic polymorphisms and behavioral modulation through transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in older adults remains poorly understood. Objective Link in...

Aims To estimate the prevalence of parental substance use disorder (PSUD) in the general population based on young adults’ reports adjusted for non-participation using register-based indicators of PSUD. Design A national sample survey study combined with a retrospective register-based study. Setting Denmark. Participants 10,414 young people (aged 1...

Importance: Effects of thrombolysis in acute ischemic stroke are time-dependent. Ambulances that can administer thrombolysis (mobile stroke units [MSUs]) before arriving at the hospital have been shown to reduce time to treatment. Objective: To determine whether dispatch of MSUs is associated with better clinical outcomes for patients with acute...

Besides the liver, hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection also affects kidney allografts. The aim of this study was to longitudinally evaluate viscoelasticity changes in the liver and in kidney allografts in kidney transplant recipients (KTRs) with HCV infection after treatment with direct-acting antiviral agents (DAAs). Fifteen KTRs with HCV infection...

Background: Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) may improve motor recovery after stroke. This study investigated if uni- and bihemispheric tDCS of the motor cortex can enhances fine motor training outcome and transfer to clinical assessments of upper motor function. Methods: In a randomized, double-blinded, sham-controlled trial, forty c...

Background Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are commonly used and are surrogates for clinical outcomes in cancer research. In the research setting of very severe diseases such as cancer, it is difficult to avoid the problem of incomplete questionnaires from drop-out or missing data due to patients who deceased during observation period. We...

Variations in head and brain anatomy determine the strength and distribution of electrical fields in humans and may account for inconsistent behavioral and neurophysiological results in transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) studies. However, it is insufficiently understood which anatomical features contribute to the variability of the modelled...

Background Outpatient follow-up care for stroke survivors is often inadequate and mostly self-organized by the patients themselves. In the German health care system, there are no standard care programs for patients after they are discharged from the hospital to support them with their multifaceted and heterogeneous health care needs. The objective...

Background Genetic stratification of Parkinson's disease (PD) patients facilitates gene‐tailored research studies and clinical trials. The objective of this study was to describe the design of and the initial data from the Rostock International Parkinson's Disease (ROPAD) study, an epidemiological observational study aiming to genetically character...

Introduction Oral anticoagulation (OAC) substantially reduces stroke risk in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) at risk for stroke. Whether non-vitamin K-dependent oral anticoagulants (NOACs) improve OAC use in stroke prevention requires investigation. Methods To investigate temporal trends of OAC use in patients with known AF pre-stroke, we r...

Objectives Injury to major white matter pathways during language-area associated glioma surgery often leads to permanent loss of neurological function. The aim was to establish standardized tractography of language pathways as a predictor of language outcome in clinical neurosurgery. Methods We prospectively analyzed 50 surgical cases of patients...

Background Given the growing older population worldwide, and the associated increase in age-related diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD), investigating non-invasive methods to ameliorate or even prevent cognitive decline in prodromal AD is highly relevant. Previous studies suggest transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to be an effect...

Background In Germany, a higher life expectancy of women coincides with shortages of health professionals. Besides gynecologists (Gyns), the main providers of ambulatory healthcare for women 50+ are general practitioners (GPs), which do not provide gynecological care. However, GPs and Gyns willingness share tasks has not yet been analysed systemati...

Background: Non-pharmacological interventions (NPI) can improve cognitive and non-cognitive symptoms in nursing home residents living with dementia. However, delivery of suitable NPI can be challenging in everyday nursing home settings. Internet and communication technologies (ICT) may be promising tools for supporting NPI delivery in nursing homes...

Objectives: To investigate global and momentary effects of a tablet-based non-pharmacological intervention for nursing home residents living with dementia. Design: Cluster-randomized controlled trial. Setting: Ten nursing homes in Germany were randomly allocated to the tablet-based intervention (TBI, 5 units) or conventional activity sessions (CAS,...

Background Patient-reported outcome measures are commonly used and are surrogates for clinical outcomes in cancer research. In the research setting of very severe diseases such as cancer, it is difficult to avoid the problem of incomplete questionnaires from drop-out or missing data due to patients who deceased during observation period. We aimed t...