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

A review of the linear sufficiency and linear prediction sufficiency in the linear model with new observations

Peer reviewe

Complications and reoperations related to tension band wiring and plate osteosynthesis of olecranon fractures

BackgroundOlecranon fractures are common and usually treated operatively either by tension band wiring (TBW) or plate fixation (PF). The aim of this study was to assess early complications and reoperations and their predictive factors related to those operative methods.MethodsA retrospective analysis of all patients with an operatively treated olecranon fracture between 2007 and 2017 at Turku University hospital was performed. Reoperations, postoperative complications, and potential risk factors for these were recorded.ResultsA total of 434 patients (387 TBW and 47 PF) were identified. There was no statistically significant difference in the rate of early complications (49% vs. 62%, P = .262) or reoperations (38% vs. 53%, P = .079) between patients treated with TBW and PF. In the TBW group, the intramedullary placement of Kirschner (K)-wires predisposed patients to complications compared to transcortical placement of the K-wires according to multivariate analysis (odds ratio [OR] 1.94, P = .026). Younger age was associated with the frequency of reoperations, the odds decreasing 24% for every 10 years of age (P P = .002). Also, excellent postoperative reduction was associated with higher reoperation rate than good or fair reduction (OR 0.48, P = .033).ConclusionThere is a high risk of early complications and reoperations associated to both TBW and PF. Transcortical positioning of K-wires may reduce the rate of complications in TBW.Level of EvidenceLevel III; Retrospective Cohort Comparison; Treatment Study</p

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

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

Peer reviewe

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

Social Control in Transnational Families: Somali Women and Dignity in Johannesburg

Transnational mobility often separates families and distances individuals from the kinship and social structures by which they organized their lives prior to migration. Myriad forms of insecurity have been the impetus for Somali movement into the diaspora, with people fleeing the realities of conflict that have marked Somalia for decades while physically dividing families as individuals settle in different countries around the world. Mobility has altered the dynamics of households, families, and communities post-migration, reshaping social constructions as individuals move on without the familial support that sustained them in Somalia. While outcomes of these hardships are variable and often uneven in different settlement spaces, migration can offer new opportunities for people to pursue avenues from which they were previously excluded, such as by assuming roles and responsibilities their relatives once filled. These changes precipitate shifting identities and are challenging for women who find themselves self-reliant in the diaspora, particularly in the absence of (supportive) husbands and close kin.Drawing on ethnographic research in Johannesburg’s Somali community, this chapter explores the assumption that migration provides an opening for women to challenge subordinating gender norms. Settlement often grants women greater freedom to make choices in their lives, such as in employment and personal relationships, and yet they remain constrained by networks that limit their autonomy. Even with transnational migration and protracted separation, women are family representatives who must uphold cultural notions of respectability despite realities that position them as guardians and family providers. Women remain under the watchful eye of their extended families through expansive networks and the ease of modern communication, which facilitate a new form of social control as women’s behavior is carefully monitored and reported to relatives afar. These actualities raise questions about the degree to which transnational movement is a liberating force for women or rather a reconfiguration of social control. I argue that despite women’s changing position in their households and families, they remain limited by social control within their extended families and communities