Pharmacological interventions for sleepiness and sleep disturbances caused by shift work

BACKGROUND: Shift work results in sleep-wake disturbances, which cause sleepiness during night shifts and reduce sleep length and quality in daytime sleep after the night shift. In its serious form it is also called shift work sleep disorder. Various pharmacological products are used to ameliorate symptoms of sleepiness or poor sleep length and quality. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the effects of pharmacological interventions to reduce sleepiness or to improve alertness at work and decrease sleep disturbances whilst of work, or both, in workers undertaking shift work. METHODS: Search methods: We searched CENTRAL, MEDLINE, EMBASE, PubMed and PsycINFO up to 20 September 2013 and ClinicalTrials.gov up to July 2013. We also screened reference lists of included trials and relevant reviews. Selection criteria: We included all eligible randomised controlled trials (RCTs), including cross-over RCTs, of pharmacological products among workers who were engaged in shift work (including night shifts) in their present jobs and who may or may not have had sleep problems. Primary outcomes were sleep length and sleep quality while of work, alertness and sleepiness, or fatigue at work. Data collection and analysis: Two authors independently selected studies, extracted data and assessed risk of bias in included trials. We performed meta-analyses where appropriate. MAIN RESULTS: We included 15 randomised placebo-controlled trials with 718 participants. Nine trials evaluated the effect of melatonin and two the effect of hypnotics for improving sleep problems. One trial assessed the effect of modafinil, two of armodafinil and one examined cafeine plus naps to decrease sleepiness or to increase alertness

Lapsen yksilöllisyyden huomioiminen esi- ja alkuopetuksen nivelvaiheessa

Tiivistelmä. Tutkimuksen tavoitteena on selvittää, millaisia eroja esi- ja alkuopetuksen välillä on yksilöllisyyden huomioimisessa. Vertailemme esi- ja perusopetuksen opetussuunnitelmia keskenään, tavoitteena löytää eroavaisuuksia pedagogisissa käytänteissä lapsen yksilöllisyyden huomioimisen suhteen. Tarkastelemme myös millä keinoilla opettaja voi tukea lapsen yksilöllisyyttä lapsen siirtyessä esiopetuksesta alkuopetuksen pariin. Kandidaatintutkielmamme on kuvaileva, integroiva kirjallisuuskatsaus. Tämän tyyppinen kirjallisuuskatsaus on aineistolähtöistä ja ilmiön kokonaisvaltaista tarkastelua. Olemme hankkineet tutkielmaamme varten kotimaisia ja kansainvälisiä lähteitä, hyödyntäen eri tietokantoja. Tutkielmamme noudattaessa laadulliselle tutkimukselle tyypillisiä piirteitä, osa aineiston analyysi- ja tulkintaprosessista tapahtui jo aineistonhankinnan yhteydessä. Kriittinen aineistontulkinta rakentui läpi tutkielman keskustellessamme kirjallisuudesta ja niiden sisällöistä. Tutkimuksemme myötä saimme selville opetussuunnitelmien eroavan yksilöllisyyttä käsittävässä pedagogiikassa. Tutkimuksen tulosten mukaan opettaja voi huomioida lasten yksilöllisyyttä esi- ja alkuopetuksen nivelvaiheen aikana esimerkiksi oman pedagogisen toimintansa kautta, pienryhmäpedagogiikan avulla, opetusta eriyttämällä ja yhteistyöllä vanhempien kanssa. Tutkimuksen kautta saadut keinot tukea lasten yksilöllisyyttä ovat kirjallisuuden kautta saatuja, mutta koemme, että keinoja yksilöllisyyden tukemiseksi voi olla vielä enemmän. Tutkimuksen luotettavuutta korostaa kahden tutkijan tekemä kriittinen katsaus tuoreeseen lähdekirjallisuuteen tutkittavasta ilmiöstä. Toivomme, että tutkimuksemme avulla pystytään vastaamaan arkipäivässä esiintyviin kysymyksiin yksilöllisyydestä. Rajallisen tutkimuksen myötä tiedostamme, että tutkimuksen tuloksia ei voida kuitenkaan suoraan yleistää. Aihetta olisi tärkeää tutkia laajemmin

Pharmacological interventions for sleepiness and sleep disturbances caused by shift work

BACKGROUND: Shift work results in sleep-wake disturbances, which cause sleepiness during night shifts and reduce sleep length and quality in daytime sleep after the night shift. In its serious form it is also called shift work sleep disorder. Various pharmacological products are used to ameliorate symptoms of sleepiness or poor sleep length and quality. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the effects of pharmacological interventions to reduce sleepiness or to improve alertness at work and decrease sleep disturbances whilst of work, or both, in workers undertaking shift work. METHODS: Search methods: We searched CENTRAL, MEDLINE, EMBASE, PubMed and PsycINFO up to 20 September 2013 and ClinicalTrials.gov up to July 2013. We also screened reference lists of included trials and relevant reviews. Selection criteria: We included all eligible randomised controlled trials (RCTs), including cross-over RCTs, of pharmacological products among workers who were engaged in shift work (including night shifts) in their present jobs and who may or may not have had sleep problems. Primary outcomes were sleep length and sleep quality while of work, alertness and sleepiness, or fatigue at work. Data collection and analysis: Two authors independently selected studies, extracted data and assessed risk of bias in included trials. We performed meta-analyses where appropriate. MAIN RESULTS: We included 15 randomised placebo-controlled trials with 718 participants. Nine trials evaluated the effect of melatonin and two the effect of hypnotics for improving sleep problems. One trial assessed the effect of modafinil, two of armodafinil and one examined cafeine plus naps to decrease sleepiness or to increase alertness

NMD and microRNA expression profiling of the HPCX1 locus reveal MAGEC1 as a candidate prostate cancer predisposition gene

Conclusions: Further functional studies are needed to fully understand the possible contribution of these miRNAs and MAGEC1 start codon variant to PC

Intraoperative complications in kidney tumor surgery: critical grading for the European Association of Urology intraoperative adverse incident classification

IntroductionThe European Association of Urology committee in 2020 suggested a new classification, intraoperative adverse incident classification (EAUiaiC), to grade intraoperative adverse events (IAE) in urology.AimsWe applied and validated EAUiaiC, for kidney tumor surgery.Patients and methodsA retrospective multicenter study was conducted based on chart review. The study group comprised 749 radical nephrectomies (RN) and 531 partial nephrectomies (PN) performed in 12 hospitals in Finland during 2016–2017. All IAEs were centrally graded for EAUiaiC. The classification was adapted to kidney tumor surgery by the inclusion of global bleeding as a transfusion of ≥3 units of blood (Grade 2) or as ≥5 units (Grade 3), and also by the exclusion of preemptive conversions.ResultsA total of 110 IAEs were recorded in 13.8% of patients undergoing RN, and 40 IAEs in 6.4% of patients with PN. Overall, bleeding injuries in major vessels, unspecified origin and parenchymal organs accounted for 29.3, 24.0, and 16.0% of all IEAs, respectively. Bowel (n = 10) and ureter (n = 3) injuries were rare. There was no intraoperative mortality. IAEs were associated with increased tumor size, tumor extent, age, comorbidity scores, surgical approach and indication, postoperative Clavien–Dindo (CD) complications and longer stay in hospital. 48% of conversions were reactive with more CD-complications after reactive than preemptive conversion (43 vs. 25%).ConclusionsThe associations between IAEs and preoperative variables and postoperative outcome indicate good construct validity for EAUiaiC. Bleeding is the most important IAE in kidney tumor surgery and the inclusion of transfusions could provide increased objectivity.</p

Data Imputation in EEG Signals for Brainprint Identification

Electroencephalograms (EEG) signals have very low signal-to-noise ratio, thus can be easily affected and changes over milliseconds. Normally, trials with excessive body movements or other types of artefacts with amplitude more than 100 µV should be discarded to reduce the noise stains. Scrapping the affected features is not advisable. Therefore, missing values imputation is essential to avoid incomplete data that may deteriorate the computational modelling performance. Hence, this paper proposes a similarity matching method to replace the missing values in the EEG trials. The main idea of the missing values imputation is based on the similarity measure between the trials. The trials with the highest similarity is taken to replace the missing values for the related EEG channels. Statistical evaluation and classification evaluation are used to evaluate the reliability of the proposed similarity matching method. The mean, variance and standard deviation are used for statistical evaluation. For the classification evaluation, the dataset is classified for brainprint identification by using the Incremental Fuzzy-Rough Nearest Neighbour (IncFRNN). The statistical evaluation proved that the proposed similarity matching imputation method is promising when the missing values are not come from the same channels. The classification results achieved the excellent performance with 98.19% in accuracy and 0.998 in AUC

CRP gene variation affects early development of Alzheimer's disease-related plaques

Introduction We used the Tampere Autopsy Study (TASTY) series (n = 603, age 0-97 yrs), representing an unselected population outside institutions, to investigate the pathogenic involvement of inflammation in Alzheimer's disease-related lesions. Methods We studied senile plaque (SP), neurofibrillary tangles (NFT) and SP phenotype associations with 6 reported haplotype tagging single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the CRP gene. CRP and Aβ immunohistochemistry was assessed using brain tissue microarrays. Results In multivariate analyses (age- and APOE-adjusted), non-neuritic SP were associated with the high-CRP TA-genotype (3.0% prevalence) of rs3091244 and CA-genotype (10.8%) of rs3093075 compared to common genotypes. Conversely, the low-CRP C allele (39.3%) of rs2794521 reduced the risk of harbouring early non-neuritic SP, compared to the TT genotype. CRP haplotype TAGCC (high) associated with non-neuritic SP, whereas haplotype CCGCC offered protection. TT genotypes (high) of rs3091244 and rs1130864 were associated with CRP staining. There were no associations between SNPs or haplotypes and NFT. CRP staining of the hippocampal CA1/2 region correlated with Aβ staining. Conclusions CRP gene variation affects early SP development in prodromal Alzheimer's disease, independent of APOE genotype.BioMed Central Open acces

Hydrostaticity and hidden order: effects of experimental conditions on the temperature-pressure phase diagram of URu2Si2

The pressure-dependence of the hidden order phase transition of URu2Si2 is shown to depend sensitively upon the quality of hydrostatic pressure conditions during electrical resistivity measurements. Hysteresis in pressure is demonstrated for two choices of pressure medium: the commonly-used mixture of 1:1 Fluorinert FC70/FC77 and pure FC75. In contrast, no hysteresis is observed when the pressure medium is a 1:1 mixture of n-pentane/isoamyl alcohol, as it remains hydrostatic over the entire studied pressure range. Possible ramifications for the interpretation of the temperature-pressure phase diagram of URu2Si2 are discussed.Comment: 9 pgs, 2 figs, accepted by High Pressure Researc