2,232 research outputs found
Taekwondo training speeds up the development of balance and sensory functions in young adolescents
Objectives: This study aimed (1) to identify the developmental status of balance and sensory functions in young adolescents as compared to adults and, (2) to explore the effect of Taekwondo (TKD) training on the development of balance and sensory systems in young adolescents. Design: Cross-sectional controlled trial. Methods: Sixty-six participants including 42 adolescents (21 TKD practitioners, 21 non-TKD practitioners) and 24 adults were tested. The sway velocity of centre of gravity was recorded during standing on the non-dominant leg on a Smart Equitest ® system. The somatosensory, vestibular and visual ratios were also measured with the machine. Results: Adult participants swayed slower than both TKD and non-TKD adolescent groups during single leg stance with eyes open (p=0.007 and p< 0.001, respectively). The TKD adolescent group, in turn, swayed slower than the non-TKD adolescent group (p< 0.001). Adult participants had better visual ratio than both TKD and non-TKD adolescents (p=0.001 and p< 0.001, respectively) while there was no difference between the TKD and non-TKD adolescents (p=0.164). For the vestibular ratio, there was no significant difference between adult participants and TKD adolescents (p=0.432). Adolescents who did not practice TKD showed significantly lower vestibular ratio than TKD adolescents and adults (p=0.003 and p<0.001, respectively). In addition, there was no significant difference in the somatosensory ratio among the 3 participant groups (p=0.711). Conclusions: Participation in TKD appears to speed up the development of postural control and vestibular function in adolescents. Clinicians might advocate TKD exercise as a therapeutic intervention for young people with balance or vestibular dysfunctions. © 2011 Sports Medicine Australia.postprin
Association of More Negative Attitude towards Commencing Insulin with Lower Glycosylated Hemoglobin (HbA1c) Level: A survey on Insulin-naïve Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Chinese Patients
Aims: This study examined the correlation between socio-demographic and clinical characteristics; and attitudes towards commencing insulin in Chinese primary care patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (DM). Method: A cross-sectional survey was conducted on 303 insulin-naïve Type 2 DM patients recruited from 15 primary care clinics across Hong Kong using the Chinese Attitudes to Starting Insulin Questionnaire (Ch-ASIQ). Subject selection criteria were patients on maximal oral anti-diabetes treatment who needed to commence insulin therapy. Linear regression was used to identify correlations between age, sex, educational level, occupation, body mass index, diabetes disease duration, laboratory test indicating disease control and biochemical markers including glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) level , low density lipoprotein level and estimated glomeruli filtration rate, and presence of diabetic complications with the four sub-scales (self-image and stigmatization; factors promoting self-efficacy; fear of pain or needles; time and family support ) and the overall Ch-ASIQ score. Results: The most prevalent negative attitude was ‘fear of needle injections’ (70.1%). The most common positive attitude was ‘I can manage the skill of injecting insulin’ (67.5%). The mean Ch-ASIQ score of 2.50 (S.D.=0.38) was equal to the mid-score, which signified an overall ambivalent attitude among the study population. Women scored significantly higher in the fear of pain or needles subscale (p=0.011) and had an overall more negative attitude towards commencing insulin (p=0.016). Subjects with lower HbA1c levels also had a significantly lower Ch-ASIQ sum score (p=0.048) indicating a more negative attitude towards commencing insulin. Conclusion: In Chinese primary care patients with Type 2 DM, the need to commence insulin was associated with a number of negative emotions, which lead to a lower motivation to accept treatment. Perception of need as indicated by HbA1c level may be an important influencing factor determining a patient’s overall attitude towards starting insulin. Fortunately, in our setting, the injection technique does not appear to be a major barrier. However, needle fears are common, especially amongst women. Target interventions to acknowledge and help them to overcome their fears are essential before insulin treatment is commenced.published_or_final_versio
Prevalence of undiagnosed airflow obstruction among people with a history of smoking in a primary care setting
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to define the prevalence of undiagnosed airflow obstruction (AO) among subjects with a history of smoking but no previous diagnosis of chronic lung disease. The finding of AO likely represents diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Patients: People aged ≥30 years with a history of smoking who attended public outpatient clinics for primary care services were included in this study. Methods: A cross-sectional survey in five clinics in Hong Kong using the Breathlessness, Cough, and Sputum Scale, the Lung Function Questionnaire, and office spirometry was conducted. Results: In total, 731 subjects (response rate =97.9%) completed the questionnaires and spirometry tests. Most of the subjects were men (92.5%) in the older age group (mean age =62.2 years; standard deviation =11.7). Of the 731 subjects, 107 had AO, giving a prevalence of 14.6% (95% confidence interval =12.1–17.2); 45 subjects with AO underwent a postbronchodilator test. By classifying the severity of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease using the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease, 27 (60%) were considered to be in mild category and 18 (40%) in moderate category. None of them belonged to the severe or very severe category. The total score of Lung Function Questionnaire showed that majority of the subjects with AO also had chronic cough, wheezing attack, or breathlessness, although most did not show any acute respiratory symptoms in accordance with the Breathlessness, Cough, and Sputum Scale. Diagnosis of AO was positively associated with the number of years of smoking (odds ratio =1.044, P=0.035) and being normal or underweight (odds ratio =1.605, P=0.046). It was negatively associated with a history of hypertension (odds ratio =0.491, P=0.003). Conclusion: One-seventh of smokers have undiagnosed AO. Spirometry screening of smokers should be considered in order to diagnose AO at an early stage, with an emphasis on smoking cessation.published_or_final_versio
Primary hyperaldosteronism among Chinese hypertensive patients: how are we doing in a local district in Hong Kong
OBJECTIVES: To estimate the point prevalence of primary hyperaldosteronism in a government out-patient setting and to compare associated patient characteristics with those having essential hypertension. DESIGN: Case series with external comparison. SETTING: A single public hospital (Caritas Medical Centre) and all five associated general out-patient clinics in Sham Shui Po district in Hong Kong. PATIENTS: All patients with confirmed primary hyperaldosteronism and randomly selected patients with essential hypertension from a medical specialist clinic and general out-patient clinics, retrieved from a computer database for the period January 2007 to December 2008. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Estimated point prevalence of primary hyperaldosteronism among hypertensive patients treated in the public sector of Sham Shui Po district. Patient age when hypertension was diagnosed, number of antihypertensive drugs used for treatment, and the presence of target organ damage in the patients with primary hyperaldosteronism and those with essential hypertension were compared. RESULTS: Among the 46 012 patients receiving antihypertensive treatment, 49 were confirmed to have primary hyperaldosteronism. The estimated point prevalence of primary hyperaldosteronism among these hypertensive patients was 0.106% only, which was far smaller than figures from other countries. When compared with the 147 patients with essential hypertension by multivariate analysis, those with primary hyperaldosteronism were: (1) associated with longer durations of hypertension (odds ratio=1.14; 95% confidence interval, 1.06-1.24) despite being younger at the time of study, (2) likely to be taking three or more antihypertensive drugs (odds ratio=2.51; 95% confidence interval, 1.59-3.95), and (3) more likely to have left ventricular hypertrophy (odds ratio=5.01; 95% confidence interval, 1.83-13.69). All primary hyperaldosteronism patients studied presented with hypokalaemia. The need for antihypertensive drugs was markedly reduced after adrenalectomy for adrenal adenoma. CONCLUSIONS: Primary hyperaldosteronism, which is potentially a surgically curable cause of hypertension, appeared to be underdiagnosed in our locality. Screening by aldosterone-renin ratio of high-risk individuals may help improve patient outcomes.published_or_final_versio
Development and Validation of the Chinese Attitudes to Starting Insulin Questionnaire (Ch-ASIQ) for Primary Care Patients with Type 2 Diabetes
Objectives: To develop and evaluate the psychometric properties of a Chinese questionnaire which assesses the barriers and enablers to commencing insulin in primary care patients with poorly controlled Type 2 diabetes. Research Design and Method: Questionnaire items were identified using literature review. Content validation was performed and items were further refined using an expert panel. Following translation, back translation and cognitive debriefing, the translated Chinese questionnaire was piloted on target patients. Exploratory factor analysis and item-scale correlations were performed to test the construct validity of the subscales and items. Internal reliability was tested by Cronbach's alpha. Results: Twenty-seven identified items underwent content validation, translation and cognitive debriefing. The translated questionnaire was piloted on 303 insulin naïve (never taken insulin) Type 2 diabetes patients recruited from 10 government-funded primary care clinics across Hong Kong. Sufficient variability in the dataset for factor analysis was confirmed by Bartlett's Test of Sphericity (P 0.4 and Eigenvalues >1. Total variance for the 10 factors was 66.22%. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure was 0.725. Cronbach's alpha coefficients for the first four factors were ≥0.6 identifying four subscales to which 13 items correlated. Remaining sub-scales and items with poor internal reliability were deleted. The final 13-item instrument had a four scale structure addressing: 'Self-image and stigmatization'; 'Factors promoting self-efficacy; 'Fear of pain or needles'; and 'Time and family support'. Conclusion: The Chinese Attitudes to Starting Insulin Questionnaire (Ch-ASIQ) appears to be a reliable and valid measure for assessing barriers to starting insulin. This short instrument is easy to administer and may be used by healthcare providers and researchers as an assessment tool for Chinese diabetic primary care patients, including the elderly, who are unwilling to start insulin. © 2013 Fu et al.published_or_final_versio
On Exceptional Times for generalized Fleming-Viot Processes with Mutations
If is a standard Fleming-Viot process with constant mutation rate
(in the infinitely many sites model) then it is well known that for each
the measure is purely atomic with infinitely many atoms. However,
Schmuland proved that there is a critical value for the mutation rate under
which almost surely there are exceptional times at which is a
finite sum of weighted Dirac masses. In the present work we discuss the
existence of such exceptional times for the generalized Fleming-Viot processes.
In the case of Beta-Fleming-Viot processes with index we
show that - irrespectively of the mutation rate and - the number of
atoms is almost surely always infinite. The proof combines a Pitman-Yor type
representation with a disintegration formula, Lamperti's transformation for
self-similar processes and covering results for Poisson point processes
Quantitative estimation of muscle shear elastic modulus of the upper trapezius with supersonic shear imaging during arm positioning
2012-2013 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalVersion of RecordPublishe
Elastic modulus of muscle and tendon with shear wave ultrasound elastography : variations with different technical settings
Author name used in this publication: Brian Chin Wing KotVersion of RecordPublishe
Emergence of scale-free close-knit friendship structure in online social networks
Despite the structural properties of online social networks have attracted
much attention, the properties of the close-knit friendship structures remain
an important question. Here, we mainly focus on how these mesoscale structures
are affected by the local and global structural properties. Analyzing the data
of four large-scale online social networks reveals several common structural
properties. It is found that not only the local structures given by the
indegree, outdegree, and reciprocal degree distributions follow a similar
scaling behavior, the mesoscale structures represented by the distributions of
close-knit friendship structures also exhibit a similar scaling law. The degree
correlation is very weak over a wide range of the degrees. We propose a simple
directed network model that captures the observed properties. The model
incorporates two mechanisms: reciprocation and preferential attachment. Through
rate equation analysis of our model, the local-scale and mesoscale structural
properties are derived. In the local-scale, the same scaling behavior of
indegree and outdegree distributions stems from indegree and outdegree of nodes
both growing as the same function of the introduction time, and the reciprocal
degree distribution also shows the same power-law due to the linear
relationship between the reciprocal degree and in/outdegree of nodes. In the
mesoscale, the distributions of four closed triples representing close-knit
friendship structures are found to exhibit identical power-laws, a behavior
attributed to the negligible degree correlations. Intriguingly, all the
power-law exponents of the distributions in the local-scale and mesoscale
depend only on one global parameter -- the mean in/outdegree, while both the
mean in/outdegree and the reciprocity together determine the ratio of the
reciprocal degree of a node to its in/outdegree.Comment: 48 pages, 34 figure
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