Combined moxibustion/adalimumabin treatment of ankylosing spondylitis, and its influence on related functional indicators

Purpose: To study the clinical efficacy of the combination of du-moxibustion and adalimumab in the treatment of ankylosing spondylitis, as well as its influence on related functional indicators.Methods: From 2019 to 2020, 90 ankylosing spondylitis patients treated in Shandong Traditional Chinese Medicine University Hospital were assessed for eligibility and recruited. They were assigned, based on the order of admission, to receive either conventional treatment (control group) or dumoxibustion plus adalimumab (study group). Clinical treatment efficacy, levels of inflammatory indices, and spinal mobility in the two groups were determined and compared. Numerical Rating Scale (NRS) was employed for pain assessment, while Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Index (BASDAI) was used for disease status evaluation. Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Functional Index (BASFI) was used for assessing functional limitation.Results: Du-moxibustion plus adalimumab was associated with significantly higher treatment efficacy and lower levels of inflammatory factors when compared to conventional treatment (p < 0.05). Comparable NRS scores before treatment and 2 weeks after treatment were observed in the two groups (p > 0.05). The eligible patients given du-moxibustion plus adalimumab showed lower NRS scores, higher BASDAI scores, and lower BASFI scores versus those receiving conventional treatment (p < 0.001).Conclusion: Treatment of ankylosing spondylitis patients with the combination of du-moxibustion and adalimumab mitigates symptoms and clinical indicators of the disease and relieves pain in the patients. Therefore, the combined treatment should be subjected to further clinical trials prior to its use in clinical practice

UbiEar: Bringing location-independent sound awareness to the hard-of-hearing people with smartphones

Non-speech sound-awareness is important to improve the quality of life for the deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) people. DHH people, especially the young, are not always satisfied with their hearing aids. According to the interviews with 60 young hard-of-hearing students, a ubiquitous sound-awareness tool for emergency and social events that works in diverse environments is desired. In this paper, we design UbiEar, a smartphone-based acoustic event sensing and notification system. Core techniques in UbiEar are a light-weight deep convolution neural network to enable location-independent acoustic event recognition on commodity smartphons, and a set of mechanisms for prompt and energy-efficient acoustic sensing. We conducted both controlled experiments and user studies with 86 DHH students and showed that UbiEar can assist the young DHH students in awareness of important acoustic events in their daily life.</jats:p