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Progression of aphasia severity (Johnson et al., 2019)

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Version 2 2019-04-08, 22:48
Version 1 2019-04-08, 20:41
journal contribution
posted on 2019-04-08, 22:48 authored by Lisa Johnson, Alexandra Basilakos, Grigori Yourganov, Bo Cai, Leonardo Bonilha, Chris Rorden, Julius Fridriksson
Background and Purpose: The severity of aphasic impairment in chronic stroke survivors is typically thought to be stable by 6 months postonset. However, a recent study showed that stroke survivors with aphasia experience language improvement or decline in the chronic phase, years beyond onset. Little is known about why some individuals improve whereas others remain stable or decline. Additionally, no study has tracked changes in aphasia from assessments completed at multiple time points across many years. The current study offers a comprehensive analysis of potential predictive demographic and health information to determine which factors predict dynamic changes in aphasia severity in chronic stroke.
Methods: Individuals in the chronic stage of a single-event, left-hemisphere ischemic stroke were identified from an archival database and included for study (N = 39). Participants were included if they had undergone 2 or more standardized language assessments acquired at time points at least 6 months apart, with the 1st assessment at least 6 months postinjury. A linear mixed-effects model was used to determine the impact of treatment and a variety of demographic and health factors on language change.
Results: Over time, half of the participants improved (51%), whereas approximately a quarter (26%) decreased, and a quarter (23%) remained stable. A greater number of aphasia treatment hours significantly predicted language improvement (p = .03), whereas older stroke age was associated with long-term decline (p = .04). Two interactions were found to be significant in predicting improvement in individuals with diabetes: Increased exercise and younger age at stroke were significant in predicting outcomes (p < .05).
Conclusions: Factors that significantly influence language recovery in chronic aphasia include stroke age and receiving aphasia treatment. For those with diabetes, increased exercise was shown to improve outcomes. Results from this study offer clinicians greater insight into the influence of patient factors on long-term recovery from stroke aphasia while suggesting a potential adjunct to language therapy: exercise.

Supplemental Material S1. Individual participant data.

Johnson, L., Basilakos, A., Yourganov, G., Cai, B., Bonilha, L., Rorden, C., & Fridriksson, J. (2019). Progression of aphasia severity in the chronic stages of stroke. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 28, 639–649. https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_AJSLP-18-0123

Funding

This work was supported by grants from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders to Julius Fridriksson (R03 DC005915, R01 DC008355, R01 DC009571, R03 DC010262, R01 DC011739, R21 DC014170, and P50 DC014664) and to Alexandra Basilakos (T32 DC014435).

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