Outcome measures of disease activity for rare autoimmune rheumatic diseases

Systemic lupus erythematosus, scleroderma, myositis and Sjögren's syndrome are rare, complex, multi-systemic rheumatic diseases associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Thorough assessments of disease activity are required to guide clinical management and assess response to new therapies in clinical trials. This article reviews the commonly used outcome measures to assess this group of diseases and discusses the limitations of their use

Outcome measures of disease activity in inflammatory arthritis

The most common types of chronic inflammatory arthritis are rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis. In order to assess the activity of these diseases and tailor therapy, several outcome measures have been developed. They include composite scores based on clinical findings, biochemical markers and patient questionnaires. This article discusses the most commonly used outcome measures and looks at their limitations in quantifying the complex clinical features of different types of inflammatory arthritis, focusing in particular on rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis

Assessing the Policy Landscape for Salt Reduction in South-East Asian and Latin American Countries – An Initiative Towards Developing an Easily Accessible, Integrated, Searchable Online Repository

BACKGROUND: High dietary salt intake is an avoidable cause of hypertension and associated cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). Thus, salt reduction is recommended as one of the most cost-effective interventions for CVD prevention and for achieving the World Health Organization’s (WHO) 25% reduction in premature non-communicable disease (NCD) mortality by 2025. However, current and comprehensive information about national salt reduction policies and related actions across different regions are difficult to access and impede progress and monitoring. OBJECTIVES: As an initial step to developing an online repository of salt reduction policies and related actions, and to track nation-wise progress towards the WHO’s 25 by 25 goal, we aimed to identify and assess salt reduction policies and actions in select countries from two of the top five most populous regions of the world- the South-East Asia and Latin America. METHODS: We conducted a literature review to identify national and regional salt reduction policies in the selected South-East Asian and Latin American countries, from January 1990–August 2020, available in English and Spanish. We also contacted selected WHO country offices (South-East Asian region) or relevant national authorities (Latin America) to gain access to unpublished documents. RESULTS: In both regions, we found only a few dedicated stand-alone salt reduction policies: Bhutan, Sri-Lanka and Thailand from South East Asia and Costa Rica from Latin America. Available polices were either embedded in other national health/nutritional policy documents/overall NCD policies or were unpublished and had to be accessed via personal communication. CONCLUSIONS: Salt reduction policies are limited and often embedded with other policies which may impede their implementation and utility for tracking national and international progress towards the global salt reduction target associated with the 25 by 25 goal. Developing an online repository could help countries address this gap and assist researchers/policymakers to monitor national progress towards achieving the salt reduction target

Planting sustainable seeds in young minds: the need to teach planetary health to children.

No abstract available

Closed crack imaging using time reversal method based on fundamental and second harmonic scattering

A recent variant of time reversal imaging is employed for reconstructing images of a closed crack, based on both the fundamental and the second harmonic components of the longitudinal scattered field due to an incident longitudinal wave. The scattered field data are generated by a finite element model that includes unilateral contact with Coulomb friction between the crack faces to account for the Contact Acoustic Nonlinearity. The closure state of the crack is controlled by specifying a pre-stress between the crack faces. The knowledge of the scattered field at the fundamental (incident) frequency and the second harmonic frequency for multiple incident angles provides the required inputs for the imaging algorithm. It is shown that the image reconstructed from the fundamental harmonic closely matches the image that is obtained from scattering data in the absence of contact, although contact between the crack faces reduces the amplitude of the scattered field in the former case. The fundamental harmonic image is shown to provide very accurate estimates of crack length for low to moderate levels of pre-stress. The second harmonic image is also shown to provide acceptable estimates of crack length and the image is shown to correlate with the source location of second harmonic along the crack, which becomes increasingly localized near the crack tips for decreasing levels of pre-stress. The influence of the number of sensors on the image quality is also discussed in order to identify the minimum sensors number requirement. Finally, multiple frequency imaging is performed over a fixed bandwidth to assess the potential improvement of the imaging algorithm when considering broadband information

Cleavage Requirements for Activation of Factor V by Factor Xa

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/65728/1/j.1432-1033.1997.00012.x.pd