Peer coaching through mHealth targeting physical activity in people with Parkinson disease: feasibility study

BACKGROUND: Long-term engagement in exercise and physical activity mitigates the progression of disability and increases quality of life in people with Parkinson disease (PD). Despite this, the vast majority of individuals with PD are sedentary. There is a critical need for a feasible, safe, acceptable, and effective method to assist those with PD to engage in active lifestyles. Peer coaching through mobile health (mHealth) may be a viable approach. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to develop a PD-specific peer coach training program and a remote peer-mentored walking program using mHealth technology with the goal of increasing physical activity in persons with PD. We set out to examine the feasibility, safety, and acceptability of the programs along with preliminary evidence of individual-level changes in walking activity, self-efficacy, and disability in the peer mentees. METHODS: A peer coach training program and a remote peer-mentored walking program using mHealth was developed and tested in 10 individuals with PD. We matched physically active persons with PD (peer coaches) with sedentary persons with PD (peer mentees), resulting in 5 dyads. Using both Web-based and in-person delivery methods, we trained the peer coaches in basic knowledge of PD, exercise, active listening, and motivational interviewing. Peer coaches and mentees wore FitBit Zip activity trackers and participated in daily walking over 8 weeks. Peer dyads interacted daily via the FitBit friends mobile app and weekly via telephone calls. Feasibility was determined by examining recruitment, participation, and retention rates. Safety was assessed by monitoring adverse events during the study period. Acceptability was assessed via satisfaction surveys. Individual-level changes in physical activity were examined relative to clinically important differences. RESULTS: Four out of the 5 peer pairs used the FitBit activity tracker and friends function without difficulty. A total of 4 of the 5 pairs completed the 8 weekly phone conversations. There were no adverse events over the course of the study. All peer coaches were "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with the training program, and all participants were "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with the peer-mentored walking program. All participants would recommend this program to others with PD. Increases in average steps per day exceeding the clinically important difference occurred in 4 out of the 5 mentees. CONCLUSIONS: Remote peer coaching using mHealth is feasible, safe, and acceptable for persons with PD. Peer coaching using mHealth technology may be a viable method to increase physical activity in individuals with PD. Larger controlled trials are necessary to examine the effectiveness of this approach.This study is supported by Boston Roybal Center for Active Lifestyle Interventions (RALI Boston), Grant #P30 AG048785, and the American Parkinson Disease Association, Massachusetts chapter. The authors would like to thank Nicole Sullivan, SOT, for her assistance with data management and data collection and Nick Wendel, DPT, for his assistance with data collection. Additionally, the authors would like to thank the participants in this study for their time, effort, and insights. (P30 AG048785 - Boston Roybal Center for Active Lifestyle Interventions (RALI Boston); American Parkinson Disease Association, Massachusetts chapter)Accepted manuscrip

A new clinical tool for assessing numerical abilities in neurological diseases: numerical activities of daily living

The aim of this study was to build an instrument, the numerical activities of daily living (NADL), designed to identify the specific impairments in numerical functions that may cause problems in everyday life. These impairments go beyond what can be inferred from the available scales evaluating activities of daily living in general, and are not adequately captured by measures of the general deterioration of cognitive functions as assessed by standard clinical instruments like the MMSE and MoCA. We assessed a control group (n = 148) and a patient group affected by a wide variety of neurological conditions (n = 175), with NADL along with IADL, MMSE, and MoCA. The NADL battery was found to have satisfactory construct validity and reliability, across a wide age range. This enabled us to calculate appropriate criteria for impairment that took into account age and education. It was found that neurological patients tended to overestimate their abilities as compared to the judgment made by their caregivers, assessed with objective tests of numerical abilities

Processing of semantic and grammatical gender in Spanish speakers with aphasia

Published online: 30 May 2021.Background: Previous studies have argued that there are two types of linguistic gender: grammatical gender, which is arbitrarily assigned to nouns, and semantic gender, which depends on the gender of the referent. Aim: We explore the hypothesis that these two types of gender entail distinct cognitive processes by investigating the performance of people with aphasia at the level of sentence processing. Methods and Procedure: Nine people with aphasia (seven with fluent aphasia) and a control group of thirteen age-matched healthy participants took part in a constrained completion choice task. The participants had to complete sentences in a way that made the last word gender congruent. The subjects of the sentences had either Semantic gender (enfermera, nurse; indicating the gender of the referent), Grammatical gender (silla, chair), or Opaque-Grammatical gender (tomate, tomato). Results: People with aphasia performed more poorly in all gender conditions than healthy controls. They also were less accurate in both the Grammatical and Opaque-Grammatical conditions than in the Semantic gender condition. Conclusion: We propose that because semantic gender provides more salient information, it is processed faster than grammatical gender.MC was supported by the postdoctoral Ramón y Cajal fellowship (RYC-2013-14013), Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI, National Research Agency), and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER, European Regional Development Fund) under projects PSI2017-87784-R and RED2018- 102615-T

Self-reported access to health care, communicable diseases, violence and perception of legal status among online transgender identifying sex workers in the UK.

OBJECTIVES: Transgender-identifying sex workers (TGISWs) are among the most vulnerable groups but are rarely the focus of health research. Here we evaluated perceived barriers to healthcare access, risky sexual behaviours and exposure to violence in the United Kingdom (UK), based on a survey of all workers on BirchPlace, the main transgender sex commerce website in the UK. STUDY DESIGN: The study design used in the study is an opt-in text-message 12-item questionnaire. METHODS: Telephone contacts were harvested from BirchPlace's website (n = 592 unique and active numbers). The questionnaire was distributed with Qualtrics software, resulting in 53 responses. RESULTS: Our survey revealed significant reported barriers to healthcare access, exposure to risky sexual behaviours and to physical violence. Many transgender sex workers reportedly did not receive a sexual screening, and 28% engaged in condomless penetrative sex within the preceding six months, and 68% engaged in condomless oral sex. 17% responded that they felt unable to access health care they believed medically necessary. Half of the participants suggested their quality of life would be improved by law reform. CONCLUSIONS: TGISWs report experiencing a high level of risky sexual behaviour, physical violence and inadequate healthcare access. Despite a National Health System, additional outreach may be needed to ensure access to services by this population.ECD

Targetfinder.org: a resource for systematic discovery of transcription factor target genes

Targetfinder.org (http://targetfinder.org/) provides a web-based resource for finding genes that show a similar expression pattern to a group of user-selected genes. It is based on a large-scale gene expression compendium (>1200 experiments, >13 000 genes). The primary application of Targetfinder.org is to expand a list of known transcription factor targets by new candidate target genes. The user submits a group of genes (the ‘seed’), and as a result the web site provides a list of other genes ranked by similarity of their expression to the expression of the seed genes. Additionally, the web site provides information on a recovery/cross-validation test to check for consistency of the provided seed and the quality of the ranking. Furthermore, the web site allows to analyse affinities of a selected transcription factor to the promoter regions of the top-ranked genes in order to select the best new candidate target genes for further experimental analysis

Gender‐Equitable Parental Decision Making and Intimate Partner Violence Perpetration in Bangladesh

Objective This article examines the relationship between the exposure of men as children to gender‐equitable parental decision making and the potential for subsequent later life engagement in intimate partner violence (IPV) in Bangladesh. Background Although researchers have recently begun to explore multilevel influences on IPV perpetration, no studies have examined how decision making between parents at home and within the community relates to IPV perpetration in low-income settings. Drawing on a theoretical framework of gendered social learning, gender-equitable parental decision making may be an important protective factor against IPV. Method This study uses a random probability sample of 1,499 married men in Bangladesh. The main outcome is physical IPV perpetration in adulthood, whereas two exposure variables measure the equity of parental decision making in the man's childhood home and his current community. A series of two-level negative binomial models, controlling for pertinent individual- and community-level factors, are estimated. Results Exposure in childhood to more equitable decision making between parents is negatively associated with a man's physical IPV perpetration in adulthood. Gender‐equitable parental decision making within one's current community is not significantly associated with IPV. Conclusion Boys who grow up exposed to more equitable decision making between parents in the home may be less likely to engage in physical IPV perpetration as an adult

Causal role of the posterior parietal cortex for two-digit mental subtraction and addition: A repetitive TMS study

Although parietal areas of the left hemisphere are known to be involved in simple mental calculation, the possible role of the homologue areas of the right hemisphere in mental complex calculation remains debated. In the present study, we tested the causal role of the posterior parietal cortex of both hemispheres in two-digit mental addition and subtraction by means of neuronavigated repetitive TMS (rTMS), investigating possible hemispheric asymmetries in specific parietal areas. In particular, we performed two rTMS experiments, which differed only for the target sites stimulated, on independent samples of participants. rTMS was delivered over the horizontal and ventral portions of the intraparietal sulcus (HIPS and VIPS, respectively) of each hemisphere in Experiment 1, and over the angular and supramarginal gyri (ANG and SMG, respectively) of each hemisphere in Experiment 2. First, we found that each cerebral area of the posterior parietal cortex is involved to some degree in the two-digit addition and subtraction. Second, in Experiment 1, we found a stronger pattern of hemispheric asymmetry for the involvement of HIPS in addition compared to subtraction. In particular, results showed a greater involvement of the right HIPS than the left one for addition. Moreover, we found less asymmetry for the VIPS. Taken together, these results suggest that two-digit mental addition is more strongly associated with the use of a spatial mapping compared to subtraction. In support of this view, in Experiment 2, a greater role of left and right ANG was found for addition needed in verbal processing of numbers and in visuospatial attention processes, respectively. We also revealed a greater involvement of the bilateral SMG in two-digit mental subtraction, in response to greater working memory load required to solve this latter operation compared to addition

TransFind—predicting transcriptional regulators for gene sets

The analysis of putative transcription factor binding sites in promoter regions of coregulated genes allows to infer the transcription factors that underlie observed changes in gene expression. While such analyses constitute a central component of the in-silico characterization of transcriptional regulatory networks, there is still a lack of simple-to-use web servers able to combine state-of-the-art prediction methods with phylogenetic analysis and appropriate multiple testing corrected statistics, which returns the results within a short time. Having these aims in mind we developed TransFind, which is freely available at http://transfind.sys-bio.net/