Development of weCope, a mobile app for illness self-management in schizophrenia

Objective: To describe the development of weCope, a Portuguese mobile app for people with schizophrenia. Methods: The development of weCope followed 4 stages: I-102 people with psychotic disorders completed an online questionnaire; II-a multidisciplinary focus group was conducted among five mental health professionals; III-we developed the app; IV-9 participants used weCope during 8 weeks to assess its efficiency. Results: weCope targets coping with voices, problem solving, goals setting and stress management, and results indicated that: weCope improved symptoms, sense of recovery and personal and social functioning; 59% of the participants were willing to download an application for illness self-management; professionals revealed some concerns about mHealth but enhanced the high importance to develop these apps; usability testing revealed that 89% considered weCope useful for illness self-management. However, the more years with mental illness, the less importance is given to a mobile application for this purpose. Discussion: weCope was developed through a comprehensive development process and may contribute to a subjective perception of the patient’s better well-being and health condition

General purpose medical digital library definition

The need of an approach for the definition of a platform-independent medical digital library, using only 2 open-source tools, will be described. To test the need and the success of such an approach, a library will 3 be created, which can later be used in a larger scale as a general purpose digital medical tool, when comes 4 the need to evaluate an image. 5 As a first test, the library will be used in the development of a tool aimed to aid doctors in otoplasty 6 candidates' evaluation. This tool shall be developed and tested first on a mobile platform, so the potential 7 of the developed library can be tested on the most adverse situation. Also, the resulting library will be 8 license free, making easier the collaboration of others in development and integration with other software, 9 translating in a better spread of the library in medical practice. 10 CCS Concepts 11 • Medical imaging, mobile devices, digital medical tool. 12 Keywords 13 Medical imaging, open-source, image analysis software library, digital medical tool

Low Doses of Ionizing Radiation Promote Tumor Growth and Metastasis by Enhancing Angiogenesis

Radiotherapy is a widely used treatment option in cancer. However, recent evidence suggests that doses of ionizing radiation (IR) delivered inside the tumor target volume, during fractionated radiotherapy, can promote tumor invasion and metastasis. Furthermore, the tissues that surround the tumor area are also exposed to low doses of IR that are lower than those delivered inside the tumor mass, because external radiotherapy is delivered to the tumor through multiple radiation beams, in order to prevent damage of organs at risk. The biological effects of these low doses of IR on the healthy tissue surrounding the tumor area, and in particular on the vasculature remain largely to be determined. We found that doses of IR lower or equal to 0.8 Gy enhance endothelial cell migration without impinging on cell proliferation or survival. Moreover, we show that low-dose IR induces a rapid phosphorylation of several endothelial cell proteins, including the Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) Receptor-2 and induces VEGF production in hypoxia mimicking conditions. By activating the VEGF Receptor-2, low-dose IR enhances endothelial cell migration and prevents endothelial cell death promoted by an anti-angiogenic drug, bevacizumab. In addition, we observed that low-dose IR accelerates embryonic angiogenic sprouting during zebrafish development and promotes adult angiogenesis during zebrafish fin regeneration and in the murine Matrigel assay. Using murine experimental models of leukemia and orthotopic breast cancer, we show that low-dose IR promotes tumor growth and metastasis and that these effects were prevented by the administration of a VEGF receptor-tyrosine kinase inhibitor immediately before IR exposure. These findings demonstrate a new mechanism to the understanding of the potential pro-metastatic effect of IR and may provide a new rationale basis to the improvement of current radiotherapy protocols

A survey of the clinicopathological and molecular characteristics of patients with suspected Lynch syndrome in Latin America

Background: Genetic counselling and testing for Lynch syndrome (LS) have recently been introduced in several Latin America countries. We aimed to characterize the clinical, molecular and mismatch repair (MMR) variants spectrum of patients with suspected LS in Latin America. Methods: Eleven LS hereditary cancer registries and 34 published LS databases were used to identify unrelated families that fulfilled the Amsterdam II (AMSII) criteria and/or the Bethesda guidelines or suggestive of a dominant colorectal (CRC) inheritance syndrome. Results: We performed a thorough investigation of 15 countries and identified 6 countries where germline genetic testing for LS is available and 3 countries where tumor testing is used in the LS diagnosis. The spectrum of pathogenic MMR variants included MLH1 up to 54%, MSH2 up to 43%, MSH6 up to 10%, PMS2 up to 3% and EPCAM up to 0.8%. The Latin America MMR spectrum is broad with a total of 220 different variants which 80% were private and 20% were recurrent. Frequent regions included exons 11 of MLH1 (15%), exon 3 and 7 of MSH2 (17 and 15%, respectively), exon 4 of MSH6 (65%), exons 11 and 13 of PMS2 (31% and 23%, respectively). Sixteen international founder variants in MLH1, MSH2 and MSH6 were identified and 41 (19%) variants have not previously been reported, thus representing novel genetic variants in the MMR genes. The AMSII criteria was the most used clinical criteria to identify pathogenic MMR carriers although microsatellite instability, immunohistochemistry and family history are still the primary methods in several countries where no genetic testing for LS is available yet. Conclusion: The Latin America LS pathogenic MMR variants spectrum included new variants, frequently altered genetic regions and potential founder effects, emphasizing the relevance implementing Lynch syndrome genetic testing and counseling in all of Latin America countries.Radium Hospital Foundation (Oslo, Norway) in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and in writing the manuscript, Helse Sør-Øst (Norway) in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and in writing the manuscript, the French Association Recherche contre le Cancer (ARC) in the analysis, and interpretation of data, the Groupement des Entreprises Françaises dans la Lutte contre le Cancer (Gefluc) in the analysis, and interpretation of data, the Association Nationale de la Recherche et de la Technologie (ANRT, CIFRE PhD fellowship to H.T.) in the analysis, and interpretation of data and by the OpenHealth Institute in the analysis, and interpretation of data. Barretos Cancer Hospital received financial support by FINEP-CT-INFRA (02/2010)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Evidence for a new phase in the Domany-Kinzel cellular automaton.

We consider a generalized version (including anisotropy) of the stochastic one-dimensional cellular automaton studied by Domany and Kinzel. It recovers Wolfram-like deterministic cellular automata as particular cases. The phase diagram presents three (and not two, as previously suggested) phases which were detected through the numerical study of both the order parameter and the sensitivity to initial conditions. The various universality classes are exhibited as well

Mobile application for self-management in Schizophrenia: A pilot study

There is an urgent need to develop more effective interventions for psychotic disorders. Mobile Health solutions can address this emerging problem but needs more research. This study aims to present a new intervention and have some preliminary data about weCOPE. The sample is constituted by nine participants with a mean age of 38 years (±9.701), being 78% men, and with mean clinical follow-up time of 10 years. The intervention lasted eight weeks and was followed by each user's case manager. The data collection was carried out in two moments (before and after the application use), using six evaluation instruments: Recovery Assessment Scale, Empowerment Scale, General Self-Efficacy Scale, Social Support Satisfaction Scale, Personal and Social Performance Scale, and Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. The data collected through these instruments were analyzed later through descriptive and inferential statistics. The majority of the results were significant and indicate that weCOPE may produce an improvement in symptoms (general psychopathology), empowerment, recovery, satisfaction with social support, self-efficacy, and personal and social functioning. Thus, this kind of mobile technologies for schizophrenia self-management may contribute to a subjective perception of the patient's better well-being and health condition.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio