Hand Exoskeleton Design for the Rehabilitation of Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis

[EN] Starting in 2015, various exoskeleton designs have been developed to facilitate interventions in the rehabilitation of patients with movement disabilities aimed primarily at flexing and extending the finger joints. This article covers the review and generation of a device for the physical rehabilitation of people diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Among the determining aspects for its manufacture, it has been detected that most have been designed with different technological tools with limited degrees of freedom (GDL) and the application of mechanical systems without studies of interaction with the user. The applied methodological framework for the development of exoskeletons of the hand includes a systematic review of the devices, referring to their mechanical, electronic and functional attributes according to the technological trends of the last five years. The information analyzed in this article allows the generation of an exoskeleton with the use of rapid prototyping techniques within user-centered digital manufacturing processes.Moya-Jiménez, R.; Magal-Royo, T.; Ponce, D.; Flores, M.; Caiza, M. (2020). Hand Exoskeleton Design for the Rehabilitation of Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis. Communications in Computer and Information Science. 1307:12-21. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62833-8_21221130

Immunological Adaptations to Pregnancy in Women with Type 1 Diabetes

Despite adequate glycemic control, pregnancy outcome of women with type 1 diabetes (T1D) is still unfavorable as compared to healthy women. In a rat-model of T1D under normoglycemic conditions, adverse pregnancy outcome was also observed, which was associated with aberrant immunological adaptations to pregnancy. Because similar processes may occur in women with T1D we studied the systemic immune response in non-pregnant and pregnant women with and without T1D. The systemic immune response was assessed by using flow cytometry to evaluate the number and activational status of subpopulations of lymphocytes, Natural Killer cells and monocytes in peripheral blood of non-pregnant and pregnant women with and without T1D. An increased white blood cell count, an increased Th1/Th2 ratio, increased Natural Killer cell expression of CD335 and enhanced activation of intermediate and non-classical monocytes was observed in pregnant women with T1D vs. healthy pregnant women. Also, the pregnancy outcome (i.e. incidence of preterm delivery and macrosomia) of women with T1D was unfavorable as compared to healthy women. This study showed that in T1D, the immunological adaptations to pregnancy are disturbed. In addition to hyperglycemia, these different immunological adaptations may be responsible for the greater frequency of complications in pregnant women with T1D