Feasibility of a mobile-based system for unsupervised monitoring in Parkinson’s disease

© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Mobile health (mHealth) has emerged as a potential solution to providing valuable ecological information about the severity and burden of Parkinson's disease (PD) symptoms in real-life conditions. Objective: The objective of our study was to explore the feasibility and usability of an mHealth system for continuous and objective real-life measures of patients' health and functional mobility, in unsupervised settings. Methods: Patients with a clinical diagnosis of PD, who were able to walk unassisted, and had an Android smartphone were included. Patients were asked to answer a daily survey, to perform three weekly active tests, and to perform a monthly in-person clinical assessment. Feasibility and usability were explored as primary and secondary outcomes. An exploratory analysis was performed to investigate the correlation between data from the mKinetikos app and clinical assessments. Results: Seventeen participants (85%) completed the study. Sixteen participants (94.1%) showed a medium-to-high level of compliance with the mKinetikos system. A 6-point drop in the total score of the Post-Study System Usability Questionnaire was observed. Conclusions: Our results support the feasibility of the mKinetikos system for continuous and objective real-life measures of a patient's health and functional mobility. The observed correlations of mKinetikos metrics with clinical data seem to suggest that this mHealth solution is a promising tool to support clinical decisions.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Antiviral properties of flame retardant bacterial nanocellulose modified with mordenite

[Excerpt] Bacterial nanocellulose (BNC) is a 100 % cellulose nano-nonwoven textile synthesized by bacteria, comprising impressive mechanical properties. Cellulosic materials require flame retardant finishing, thus to reduce flammability of BNC a zeolite mordenite (MOR) was incorporated in its nano structure, without any additives.The authors acknowledge the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), FEDER funds by means of Portugal 2020 Competitive Factors Operational Program (POCI) and the project UID/CTM/00264/2021 of Centre for Textile Science and Technology (2C2T). PTDC/CTM-TEX/28295/2017, PTDC/CTM-TEX/1213/2020, and ARCHKNIT POCI-01-0247- FEDER-039733, funded by FCT, FEDER, COMPETE, and MCTES. Liliana Melro and Rui D. V. Fernandes acknowledge their PhD grants 2020.04919.BD and SFRH/BD/145269/2019

Validation of quantitative gait analysis systems for Parkinson’s disease for use in supervised and unsupervised environments

© The Author(s). 2021 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.Background: Gait impairments are among the most common and impactful symptoms of Parkinson’s disease (PD). Recent technological advances aim to quantify these impairments using low-cost wearable systems for use in either supervised clinical consultations or long-term unsupervised monitoring of gait in ecological environments. However, very few of these wearable systems have been validated comparatively to a criterion of established validity. Objective: We developed two movement analysis solutions (3D full-body kinematics based on inertial sensors, and a smartphone application) in which validity was assessed versus the optoelectronic criterion in a population of PD patients. Methods: Nineteen subjects with PD (7 female) participated in the study (age: 62 ± 12.27 years; disease duration: 6.39 ± 3.70 years; HY: 2 ± 0.23). Each participant underwent a gait analysis whilst barefoot, at a self-selected speed, for a distance of 3 times 10 m in a straight line, assessed simultaneously with all three systems. Results: Our results show excellent agreement between either solution and the optoelectronic criterion. Both systems differentiate between PD patients and healthy controls, and between PD patients in ON or OFF medication states (normal difference distributions pooled from published research in PD patients in ON and OFF states that included an age-matched healthy control group). Fair to high waveform similarity and mean absolute errors below the mean relative orientation accuracy of the equipment were found when comparing the angular kinematics between the full-body inertial sensor-based system and the optoelectronic criterion. Conclusions: We conclude that the presented solutions produce accurate results and can capture clinically relevant parameters using commodity wearable sensors or a simple smartphone. This validation will hopefully enable the adoption of these systems for supervised and unsupervised gait analysis in clinical practice and clinical trials.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Antiviral properties of flame retardant bacterial nanocellulose modified with mordenite

Current COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the requirement of antiviral properties in a plethora of textile applications. These include textiles used in home areas prone to fire such as kitchens, windows and electronic panel areas, but also in the automotive industry such interior textiles and hood insulation pad covers. Therefore, this work describes the characterization of a fully sustainable textile: bacterial nanocellulose, functionalized to achieve an impressive flame retardancy

Women\u27s experiences on the path to a career in game development

This chapter seeks to identify whether there is a dominant, presupposed career pipeline to a career in game development and then looks for women and women’s experiences at each stage of that pipeline. It concludes that a dominant pipeline does exist and that this pathway both disadvantages women who attempt it and marginalizes other pathways. Along the way women deal with obstacles that can delegitimize their choices and experiences and/or make the assumed pathway inhospitable. This chapter relies on published literature as well as data from the 2014 and 2015 Developer Satisfaction Surveys (DSS) conducted by the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) in partnership with the authors

Motor, cognitive and mobility deficits in 1000 geriatric patients : protocol of a quantitative observational study before and after routine clinical geriatric treatment – the ComOn-study

© The Author(s). 2020 Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Background: Motor and cognitive deficits and consequently mobility problems are common in geriatric patients. The currently available methods for diagnosis and for the evaluation of treatment in this vulnerable cohort are limited. The aims of the ComOn (COgnitive and Motor interactions in the Older populatioN) study are (i) to define quantitative markers with clinical relevance for motor and cognitive deficits, (ii) to investigate the interaction between both motor and cognitive deficits and (iii) to assess health status as well as treatment outcome of 1000 geriatric inpatients in hospitals of Kiel (Germany), Brescia (Italy), Porto (Portugal), Curitiba (Brazil) and Bochum (Germany). Methods: This is a prospective, explorative observational multi-center study. In addition to the comprehensive geriatric assessment, quantitative measures of reduced mobility and motor and cognitive deficits are performed before and after a two week's inpatient stay. Components of the assessment are mobile technology-based assessments of gait, balance and transfer performance, neuropsychological tests, frailty, sarcopenia, autonomic dysfunction and sensation, and questionnaires to assess behavioral deficits, activities of daily living, quality of life, fear of falling and dysphagia. Structural MRI and an unsupervised 24/7 home assessment of mobility are performed in a subgroup of participants. The study will also investigate the minimal clinically relevant change of the investigated parameters. Discussion: This study will help form a better understanding of symptoms and their complex interactions and treatment effects in a large geriatric cohort.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Revisiting caregiving issues and psychological distress in relatives of anorexia nervosa patients

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Reporting and methodological quality of clinical trials on exercise therapy for Parkinson's disease

© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Background: Exercise therapy is becoming extremely relevant as a new efficacious intervention in multiple medical fields. Although several clinical trials have reported benefits of exercise therapy for Parkinson's disease (PD), recommendations and prescriptions for its use in clinical practice remain limited. Objectives: To evaluate the methodological quality and publication rate of clinical trials on exercise therapy for PD. Methods: We analyzed all clinical trials assessing exercise therapy for PD registered in the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform and the ClinicalTrials.gov registries, from 2000 to 2017. We evaluated the methodological quality of trials using the Cochrane Risk of Bias criteria. Results: A total of 236 clinical trials were identified. Only 70 (29.7%) trials reported their findings, and 61 (25.8%) had results published in scientific journals. Most trials had an unclear risk of bias concerning incomplete and selective outcome reporting and lacked data on the randomization process, allocation concealment, blinding of participants and personnel, and outcomes assessors. Aerobic capacity was the most frequent type of exercise intervention. Conclusions: Although a large number of trials on exercise are registered in international portals, the quality of reporting remains suboptimal and only a quarter of trials have their results published in scientific journals. These two factors, in addition to the heterogeneity of the interventions tested and the unsatisfactory reported methodological quality of most trials, compromise the interpretation of study results. Therefore, higher quality clinical trials reports are needed to establish exercise as part of the PD armamentarium.UID/BIM/50005/2019, project funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)/ Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior (MCTES) through Fundos do Orçamento de Estado.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio