Automatic Retinal Vascularity Identification and Artery/Vein Classification Using Near-Infrared Reflectance Retinographies

The conference was held in Porto, Portugal, February 27 – March 1, 2017.©2019 This version of the article has been accepted for publication, after peer review and is subject to Springer Nature’s AM terms of use, but is not the Version of Record and does not reflect post-acceptance improvements, or any corrections. The Version of Record is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12209-6_13[Absctract]: The retinal microcirculation structure is commonly used as an important source of information in many medical specialities for the diagnosis of relevant diseases such as, for reference, hypertension, arteriosclerosis, or diabetes. Also, the evaluation of the cerebrovascular and cardiovascular disease progression could be performed through the identification of abnormal signs in the retinal vasculature architecture. Given that these alterations affect differently the artery and vein vascularities, a precise characterization of both blood vessel types is also crucial for the diagnosis and treatment of a significant variety of retinal and systemic pathologies. In this work, we present a fully automatic method for the retinal vessel identification and classification in arteries and veins using Optical Coherence Tomography scans. In our analysis, we used a dataset composed by 30 near-infrared reflectance retinography images from different patients, which were used to test and validate the proposed method. In particular, a total of 597 vessel segments were manually labelled by an expert clinician, being used as groundtruth for the validation process. As result, this methodology achieved a satisfactory performance in the complex issue of the retinal vessel tree identification and classification.This work is supported by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Government of Spain and FEDER funds of the European Union through the PI14/02161 and the DTS15/00153 research projects and by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Government of Spain through the DPI2015-69948-R research project. Also, this work has received financial support from the European Union (European Regional Development Fund - ERDF) and the Xunta de Galicia, Centro singular de investigación de Galicia accreditation 2016-2019, Ref. ED431G/01; and Grupos de Referencia Competitiva, Ref. ED431C 2016-047.Xunta de Galicia; ED431G/01Xunta de Galicia; ED431C 2016-04

Post translational changes to α-synuclein control iron and dopamine trafficking : a concept for neuron vulnerability in Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease is a multifactorial neurodegenerative disorder, the aetiology of which remains elusive. The primary clinical feature of progressively impaired motor control is caused by a loss of midbrain substantia nigra dopamine neurons that have a high α-synuclein (α-syn) and iron content. α-Syn is a neuronal protein that is highly modified post-translationally and central to the Lewy body neuropathology of the disease. This review provides an overview of findings on the role post translational modifications to α-syn have in membrane binding and intracellular vesicle trafficking. Furthermore, we propose a concept in which acetylation and phosphorylation of α-syn modulate endocytic import of iron and vesicle transport of dopamine during normal physiology. Disregulated phosphorylation and oxidation of α-syn mediate iron and dopamine dependent oxidative stress through impaired cellular location and increase propensity for α-syn aggregation. The proposition highlights a connection between α-syn, iron and dopamine, three pathological components associated with disease progression in sporadic Parkinson's disease

Promotion of physical activity interventions for community dwelling older adults: A systematic review of reviews

Objectives While there is strong evidence that regular participation in physical activity (PA) brings numerous health benefits to older adults, and interventions to effectively promote PA are being developed and tested, the characteristics and components of the most effective interventions remain unclear. This systematically conducted review of systematic reviews evaluated the effects and characteristics of PA promotion interventions aimed at community dwelling people over 50 years old. Methods Major databases were searched for reviews from January 1990 to May 2015. TIDieR guidelines aided data extraction and the ROBIS tool was used to assess the risk of bias. Primary outcomes were objective and self-reported levels of PA. Indicators of psychological wellbeing and participation rates were secondary outcomes. Results Of 1284 records identified, 19 reviews met inclusion criteria and eight included meta-analyses. Interventions typically incorporated behaviour change techniques (BCTs) and were delivered as face-to-face, remote, group, individual or as combined interventions. Despite their heterogeneity, interventions often resulted in sustained improvements in PA over the study period, typically at 12 months, and led to improvements in general wellbeing. However, ways to ensure effective maintenance beyond one year are unclear. Certain intervention components were more clearly associated with positive effects (e.g. tailoring promotion strategy with combination of cognitive and behavioural elements, low to moderate intensity activity recommended). We found no evidence that certain other intervention characteristics were superior in achieving positive outcomes (e.g. mode of delivery, setting, professional background of the intervention provider, type of PA recommended). Conclusion The evidence suggests that interventions to promote PA among older adults are generally effective but there is uncertainty around the most beneficial intervention components. There are indications that purely cognitive strategies and BCTs might be less suitable for older adults than motivators more meaningful to them, including social and environmental support, and enjoyment coming from being physically active. A whole system-oriented approach is required that is tailored to meet the needs of older adults and aligned with social, individual and environmental factors