Risk factors for arteriovenous graft dysfunction among maintenance hemodialysis patients.

Risk factors for arteriovenous graft dysfunction among maintenance hemodialysis patients.</p

Drugs included in the study.

<p>Drugs included in the study.</p

Patient characteristics and association with using arteriovenous fistula and arteriovenous graft among end-stage renal disease hemodialysis patients.

<p>Patient characteristics and association with using arteriovenous fistula and arteriovenous graft among end-stage renal disease hemodialysis patients.</p

Cumulative incidence of vascular access dysfunction stratified by drugs.

<p>(a) ACEI & AVF (b) ACEI & AVG (c) ARB & AVF (d) ARB & AVG (e) CCB & AVF (f) CCB & AVG.</p

Risk factors for arteriovenous fistula dysfunction among maintenance hemodialysis patients.

<p>Risk factors for arteriovenous fistula dysfunction among maintenance hemodialysis patients.</p

Cumulative incidence of vascular access dysfunction.

<p>Cumulative incidence of vascular access dysfunction.</p

The statistical results in difference of brain activation for the three comparisons of (a) WCT vs. NW, (b) WMT vs. NW, and (c) WCT vs. WMT.

<p>The <i>t</i> values of significant differences with FDR correction for the multiple comparison in early or late phase are color-coded under the axis for each channel. The averaged dynamics of Hbdiff level for different tasks (green for NW, red for WCT, and blue for WMT) are also displayed at each channel. The horizontal solid lines depict the concentration level of zero, and the vertical solid lines label the time of zero for the task onset.</p

Maintaining Gait Performance by Cortical Activation during Dual-Task Interference: A Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study

<div><p>In daily life, mobility requires walking while performing a cognitive or upper-extremity motor task. Although previous studies have evaluated the effects of dual tasks on gait performance, few studies have evaluated cortical activation and its association with gait disturbance during dual tasks. In this study, we simultaneously assessed gait performance and cerebral oxygenation in the bilateral prefrontal cortices (PFC), premotor cortices (PMC), and supplemental motor areas (SMA), using functional near-infrared spectroscopy, in 17 young adults performing dual tasks. Each participant was evaluated while performing normal-pace walking (NW), walking while performing a cognitive task (WCT), and walking while performing a motor task (WMT). Our results indicated that the left PFC exhibited the strongest and most sustained activation during WCT, and that NW and WMT were associated with minor increases in oxygenation levels during their initial phases. We observed increased activation in channels in the SMA and PMC during WCT and WMT. Gait data indicated that WCT and WMT both caused reductions in walking speed, but these reductions resulted from differing alterations in gait properties. WCT was associated with significant changes in cadence, stride time, and stride length, whereas WMT was associated with reductions in stride length only. During dual-task activities, increased activation of the PMC and SMA correlated with declines in gait performance, indicating a control mechanism for maintaining gait performance during dual tasks. Thus, the regulatory effects of cortical activation on gait behavior enable a second task to be performed while walking.</p></div

Data_Sheet_1_Supratentorial and Infratentorial Lesions in Spinocerebellar Ataxia Type 3.PDF

Background: Spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (SCA) is a cerebellum-dominant degenerative disorder that is characterized primarily by infratentorial damage, although less severe supratentorial involvement may contribute to the clinical manifestation. These impairments may result from the efferent loss of the cerebellar cortex and degeneration of the cerebral cortex.Method: We used the three-dimensional fractal dimension (3D-FD) method to quantify the morphological changes in the supratentorial regions and assessed atrophy in the relatively focal regions in patients with SCA3. A total of 48 patients with SCA3 and 50 sex- and age-matched healthy individuals, as the control group, participated in this study. The 3D-FD method was proposed to distinguish 97 automatic anatomical label regions of gray matter (left cerebrum: 45, right cerebrum: 45, cerebellum: 7) between healthy individuals and patients with SCA3.Results: Patients with SCA3 exhibited reduced brain complexity within both the traditional olivopontocerebellar atrophy (OPCA) pattern and specific supratentorial regions. The study results confirmed the extensive involvement of extracerebellar regions in SCA3. The atrophied regions of SCA3 in infratentorial and supratentorial cortex showed a wide range of overlapped areas as in two functional cortexes, namely cerebellum-related cortex and basal ganglia-related cortex.Conclusions: Our results found that the atrophy of the SCA3 are not only limited in the infratentorial regions. Both cerebellar related cortex and basal ganglia related cortex were affected in the disease process of SCA3. Our findings might correlate to the common symptoms of SCA3, such as ataxia, Parkinsonism, dysarthria, and dysmetria. SCA3 should no longer be considered a disease limited to the cerebellum and its connections; rather, it should be considered a pathology affecting the whole brain.</p

The statistical results in brain activation during (a) NW, (b) WCT, and (c) WMT, respectively.

<p>The <i>t</i> values of significant activations with FDR correction for the multiple comparison in early or late phase are color-coded under the axis for each channel. The averaged dynamics of HbO (red curves), HbR concentrations (blue curves), and Hbdiff level (green curves) are also displayed at each channel. The horizontal solid lines depict the concentration level of zero, and the vertical solid lines label the time of zero for the task onset.</p