Health workers' use of electronic information concerning children with specific communication needs: research

Information regarding young children who experience barriers to the development of listening, language and learning is limited in the South African context. Health workers, in particular those involved in intervention with these children, such as medical practitioners, speech-language therapists and audiologists as well as occupational therapists, are in a position to disseminate information to parents and other interested persons, including educators and caregivers. These health workers also have access to and are active users of computers and the Internet. They may therefore benefit from receiving relevant and up-to-date electronic information. The study aimed to assess how these groups of health workers use computers and the Internet, as well as to determine their needs for specific electronic information. The results of this study were applied in developing a website containing relevant information. In die Suid-Afrikaanse konteks is daar beperkte inligting oor jong kinders vir wie daar struikelblokke is in die verwerwing van luister-, taal- en leervaardighede. Gesondheidswerkers wat spesifiek betrokke is by die intervensie van bogenoemde kinders, soos mediese praktisyns, spraak-taalterapeute en oudioloรซ asook arbeidsterapeute, bevind hulself in (tm)n posisie waar hulle inligting aan ouers asook ander belanghebbendes, byvoorbeeld onderwysers en versorgers, kan oordra. Hierdie gesondheidswerkers het ook toegang tot en is aktiewe gebruikers van rekenaars en die Internet. Hulle kan dus daarby baat om relevante en resente inligting elektronies te ontvang. Die doel van hierdie studie was om hierdie groepe gesondheidswerkers se rekenaar- en Internetgebruik te bepaal asook om hulle inligtingsbehoeftes vas te stel. Die inligting wat hieruit verkry is, is gebruik om 'n webwerf met relevante inligting te ontwikkel. Health SA Gesondheid Vol.9(2) 2004: 43-5

Berg adder (Bitis atropos): An unusual case of acute poisoning

A 5-year-old boy presented to hospital with mild local cytotoxic and severe neurotoxic symptoms. The neurotoxic symptoms included ptosis, fixed dilated pupils and flaccid paralysis with respiratory failure. Mild hyponatraemia was also a clinical feature. After various unsuccessful treatment options were followed, the Tygerberg Poison Information Centre was contacted and a diagnosis of berg adder bite was made. Berg adder bites are uncommon and therefore not usually considered in the differential diagnosis of a patient presenting with an unexplained clinical picture. A timeous poison information helpline consultation is recommended in this situation

The rapidly pulsating sdO star, SDSS J160043.6+074802.9

A spectroscopic analysis of SDSS J160043.6+074802.9, a binary system containing a pulsating subdwarf-O (sdO) star with a late-type companion, yields Teff = 70 000 +/- 5000 K and log g = 5.25 +/- 0.30, together with a most likely type of K3V for the secondary star. We compare our results with atmospheric parameters derived by Fontaine et al. (2008) and in the context of existing evolution models for sdO stars. New and more extensive photometry is also presented which recovers most, but not all, frequencies found in an earlier paper. It therefore seems probable that some pulsation modes have variable amplitudes. A non-adiabatic pulsation analysis of uniform metallicity sdO models show those having log g > 5.3 to be more likely to be unstable and capable of driving pulsation in the observed frequency range.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS, 2009 September

Dichloroacetate prevents cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity without compromising cisplatin anticancer properties

Cisplatin is an effective anticancer drug; however, cisplatin use often leads to nephrotoxicity, which limits its clinical effectiveness. In this study, we determined the effect of dichloroacetate, a novel anticancer agent, in a mouse model of cisplatin-induced AKI. Pretreatment with dichloroacetate significantly attenuated the cisplatin-induced increase in BUN and serum creatinine levels, renal tubular apoptosis, and oxidative stress. Additionally, pretreatment with dichloroacetate accelerated tubular regeneration after cisplatin-induced renal damage. Whole transcriptome sequencing revealed that dichloroacetate prevented mitochondrial dysfunction and preserved the energy-generating capacity of the kidneys by preventing the cisplatin-induced downregulation of fatty acid and glucose oxidation, and of genes involved in the Krebs cycle and oxidative phosphorylation. Notably, dichloroacetate did not interfere with the anticancer activity of cisplatin in vivo. These data provide strong evidence that dichloroacetate preserves renal function when used in conjunction with cisplatin

Study protocol: differential effects of diet and physical activity based interventions in pregnancy on maternal and fetal outcomes--individual patient data (IPD) meta-analysis and health economic evaluation.

© 2014 Ruifrok et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.BACKGROUND: Pregnant women who gain excess weight are at risk of complications during pregnancy and in the long term. Interventions based on diet and physical activity minimise gestational weight gain with varied effect on clinical outcomes. The effect of interventions on varied groups of women based on body mass index, age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, parity, and underlying medical conditions is not clear. Our individual patient data (IPD) meta-analysis of randomised trials will assess the differential effect of diet- and physical activity-based interventions on maternal weight gain and pregnancy outcomes in clinically relevant subgroups of women. METHODS/DESIGN: Randomised trials on diet and physical activity in pregnancy will be identified by searching the following databases: MEDLINE, EMBASE, BIOSIS, LILACS, Pascal, Science Citation Index, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects, and Health Technology Assessment Database. Primary researchers of the identified trials are invited to join the International Weight Management in Pregnancy Collaborative Network and share their individual patient data. We will reanalyse each study separately and confirm the findings with the original authors. Then, for each intervention type and outcome, we will perform as appropriate either a one-step or a two-step IPD meta-analysis to obtain summary estimates of effects and 95% confidence intervals, for all women combined and for each subgroup of interest. The primary outcomes are gestational weight gain and composite adverse maternal and fetal outcomes. The difference in effects between subgroups will be estimated and between-study heterogeneity suitably quantified and explored. The potential for publication bias and availability bias in the IPD obtained will be investigated. We will conduct a model-based economic evaluation to assess the cost effectiveness of the interventions to manage weight gain in pregnancy and undertake a value of information analysis to inform future research. SYSTEMATIC REVIEW REGISTRATION: PROSPERO 2013: CRD42013003804.This study was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) HTA (Health Technology Assessment) UK programme 12/01

The production of nominal and verbal inflection in an agglutinative language: evidence from Hungarian

The contrast between regular and irregular inflectional morphology has been useful in investigating the functional and neural architecture of language. However, most studies have examined the regular/irregular distinction in non-agglutinative Indo-European languages (primarily English) with relatively simple morphology. Additionally, the majority of research has focused on verbal rather than nominal inflectional morphology. The present study attempts to address these gaps by introducing both plural and past tense production tasks in Hungarian, an agglutinative non-Indo-European language with complex morphology. Here we report results on these tasks from healthy Hungarian native-speaking adults, in whom we examine regular and irregular nominal and verbal inflection in a within-subjects design. Regular and irregular nouns and verbs were stem on frequency, word length and phonological structure, and both accuracy and response times were acquired. The results revealed that the regular/irregular contrast yields similar patterns in Hungarian, for both nominal and verbal inflection, as in previous studies of non-agglutinative Indo-European languages: the production of irregular inflected forms was both less accurate and slower than of regular forms, both for plural and past-tense inflection. The results replicate and extend previous findings to an agglutinative language with complex morphology. Together with previous studies, the evidence suggests that the regular/irregular distinction yields a basic behavioral pattern that holds across language families and linguistic typologies. Finally, the study sets the stage for further research examining the neurocognitive substrates of regular and irregular morphology in an agglutinative non-Indo-European language

Antidepressant activity of anti-cytokine treatment: a systematic review and meta-analysis of clinical trials of chronic inflammatory conditions.

Inflammatory cytokines are commonly elevated in acute depression and are associated with resistance to monoaminergic treatment. To examine the potential role of cytokines in the pathogenesis and treatment of depression, we carried out a systematic review and meta-analysis of antidepressant activity of anti-cytokine treatment using clinical trials of chronic inflammatory conditions where depressive symptoms were measured as a secondary outcome. Systematic search of the PubMed, EMBASE, PsycINFO and Cochrane databases, search of reference lists and conference abstracts, followed by study selection process yielded 20 clinical trials. Random effect meta-analysis of seven randomised controlled trials (RCTs) involving 2370 participants showed a significant antidepressant effect of anti-cytokine treatment compared with placebo (standardised mean difference (SMD)=0.40, 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.22-0.59). Anti-tumour necrosis factor drugs were most commonly studied (five RCTs); SMD=0.33 (95% CI; 0.06-0.60). Separate meta-analyses of two RCTs of adjunctive treatment with anti-cytokine therapy and eight non-randomised and/or non-placebo studies yielded similar small-to-medium effect estimates favouring anti-cytokine therapy; SMD=0.19 (95% CI, 0.00-0.37) and 0.51 (95% CI, 0.34-0.67), respectively. Adalimumab, etanercept, infliximab and tocilizumab all showed statistically significant improvements in depressive symptoms. Meta-regression exploring predictors of response found that the antidepressant effect was associated with baseline symptom severity (P=0.018) but not with improvement in primary physical illness, sex, age or study duration. The findings indicate a potentially causal role for cytokines in depression and that cytokine modulators may be novel drugs for depression in chronically inflamed subjects. The field now requires RCTs of cytokine modulators using depression as the primary outcome in subjects with high inflammation who are free of other physical illnesses.GMK is supported by a Clinical Lecturer Starter Grant from the Academy of Medical Sciences, UK (grant no. 80354) and a Gosling Fellowship from the Royal College of Psychiatrists, UK (2015). GMK also received funding support from the Wellcome Trust 094790/Z/10/Z). PBJ acknowledges grant sup port from the Wellcome Trust (095844/Z/11/Z & 088869/Z/09/Z) and NIHR (RP-PG-0606-1335, Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre and CLAHRC East of England). RD has received grants from the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health (grants R01 NS073939; R01 NS074999).This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Nature Publishing Group via http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/mp.2016.16