Seizure prediction : ready for a new era

Acknowledgements: The authors acknowledge colleagues in the international seizure prediction group for valuable discussions. L.K. acknowledges funding support from the National Health and Medical Research Council (APP1130468) and the James S. McDonnell Foundation (220020419) and acknowledges the contribution of Dean R. Freestone at the University of Melbourne, Australia, to the creation of Fig. 3.Peer reviewe

Free-living amoebae and their associated bacteria in Austrian cooling towers: a 1-year routine screening

Free-living amoebae (FLA) are widely spread in the environment and known to cause rare but often serious infections. Besides this, FLA may serve as vehicles for bacterial pathogens. In particular, Legionella pneumophila is known to replicate within FLA thereby also gaining enhanced infectivity. Cooling towers have been the source of outbreaks of Legionnaires' disease in the past and are thus usually screened for legionellae on a routine basis, not considering, however, FLA and their vehicle function. The aim of this study was to incorporate a screening system for host amoebae into a Legionella routine screening. A new real-time PCR-based screening system for various groups of FLA was established. Three cooling towers were screened every 2 weeks over the period of 1 year for FLA and Legionella spp., by culture and molecular methods in parallel. Altogether, 83.3 % of the cooling tower samples were positive for FLA, Acanthamoeba being the dominating genus. Interestingly, 69.7 % of the cooling tower samples were not suitable for the standard Legionella screening due to their high organic burden. In the remaining samples, positivity for Legionella spp. was 25 % by culture, but overall positivity was 50 % by molecular methods. Several amoebal isolates revealed intracellular bacteria.TRP 209-B20(VLID)308958

A review of the literature in applied and specialised kinesiology

Introduction: Kinesiology is a diagnostic, therapeutic complementary therapy utilising subtle change in manual muscle testing results to evaluate the body's energetic balance and select healing modalities. Anecdotal evidence suggests kinesiology is helpful, therefore we wished to critically review the literature. Aims: (1) To ascertain if diagnostic accuracy including inter-examiner reliability has been established. (2) To review whether there is evidence for its therapeutic effectiveness. (3) To critically assess the quality of relevant studies. Methods: Electronic databases were searched. Diagnostic accuracy studies were analysed and scored for methodological quality and quality of reporting using the quality assessment tool for studies of diagnostic accuracy included in systematic reviews (QUADAS) and the Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Studies (STARD). Clinical studies were analysed for methodological quality using the JADAD scale and for quality of reporting using the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT). Results: 22 original relevant studies were identified. Their methodology was poor. Items reported on QUADAS scored 1-11 out of a possible 14, STARD scores were between 6-13 out of 25, JADAD scores were all 0 out of 5 and CONSORT 4-6 out of 22. Consequently, we were unable to answer any of our research questions. Conclusion: There is insufficient evidence for diagnostic accuracy within kinesiology, the validity of muscle response and the effectiveness of kinesiology for any condition. The standards of reporting were low. We recommend a pragmatic study of the effectiveness of kinesiology as the most appropriate initial step to determine whether kinesiology has any clinical valu