Impact of aging on the auditory system and related cognitive functions: A narrative review

Age-related hearing loss (ARHL), presbycusis, is a chronic health condition that affects approximately one-third of the world’s population. The peripheral and central hearing alterations associated with age-related hearing loss have a profound impact on perception of verbal and non-verbal auditory stimuli. The high prevalence of hearing loss in the older adults corresponds to the increased frequency of dementia in this population. Therefore, researchers have focused their attention on age-related central effects that occur independent of the peripheral hearing loss as well as central effects of peripheral hearing loss and its association with cognitive decline and dementia. Here we review the current evidence for the age-related changes of the peripheral and central auditory system and the relationship between hearing loss and pathological cognitive decline and dementia. Furthermore, there is a paucity of evidence on the relationship between ARHL and established biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease, as the most common cause of dementia. Such studies are critical to be able to consider any causal relationship between dementia and ARHL. While this narrative review will examine the pathophysiological alterations in both the peripheral and central auditory system and its clinical implications, the question remains unanswered whether hearing loss causes cognitive impairment or vice versa

Polymorphism of ompH gene of Pasteurella multocida serotype A strains isolated in Iran

ΔΕΝ ΥΠΑΡΧΕΙ ΠΕΡΙΛΗΨΗOne of the most frequent causes of respiratory infection and death in sheep and goats is Pasteurella multocida. In humans, it has been associated with diseases of the respiratory tracts, arthritis, osteomyelitis and meningitis. Outer membrane protein H (OmpH) has a role in immunogenicity and pathogenicity of P. multocida. The aim of this study was to characterize the genetic diversity of ompH gene of a panel of P. multocida serotype A strains isolated in sheep. Forty P. multocida serotype A strains isolated in previous study were selected and analyzed by restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) of a species-specific PCR assay. RFLP amplified fragment produced five different cleavage patterns. On the basis of combinations resulting from ompH gene digestion, the 40 P. multocida isolates were classified in six RFLP type. It seems that isolates with variants genetic profile represent different pathogenecity. New vaccine formulation should consider multivariants of P. multocida in order to confer a wider protection

Mapping Connections between Neighborhoods in Response to Community-Based Social Needs

Geographic proximity might not be the only factor influencing the connections between neighborhoods within the same city. Most likely, the community's needs and behaviors play a role in facilitating or hindering any connections between these urban areas. Accordingly, relationships between communities may differ or be similar based on their respective characteristics. This paper aims to demonstrate that communities are close based on the needs they share, regardless of their ethnicity or geographic location. In this study, a time series analysis of neighborhoods' needs is explored to gain a deeper understanding of the communities' network. The study takes into account the co-occurrence of complaints/reports from residents regarding the same issue. The dataset was retrieved from the Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI) and the 311 system that describe the features of neighborhoods regarding non-emergency issues. Subsequently, the connection between neighborhoods in the City of Boston was analyzed using a mixture of PCA, K-means, association rule mining, and a network creation tool. Moreover, clustering coefficients and degrees of centrality were used as significant factors in identifying the members of groups and marking crucial nodes in the network. A series of graphs were generated to show how the neighborhoods are linked based on their socioeconomic concerns. The results prove that even geographically disconnected neighborhoods within Boston have similar social needs, despite their distance from one another. Furthermore, it revealed that some neighborhoods can act as linking bridges for other neighborhoods, while others may be isolated within the network graph. This study has increased awareness of urban aspects. The authorities may consider other dimensions than the traditional ones regarding neighborhood development and addressing problems. Finally, it helps to identify common characteristics between neighborhoods, which facilitates the policy making process

Date-Driven Approach for Identifying State of Hemodialysis Fistulas: Entropy-Complexity and Formal Concept Analysis

The paper explores mathematical methods that differentiate regular and chaotic time series, specifically for identifying pathological fistulas. It proposes a noise-resistant method for classifying responding rows of normally and pathologically functioning fistulas. This approach is grounded in the hypothesis that laminar blood flow signifies normal function, while turbulent flow indicates pathology. The study explores two distinct methods for distinguishing chaotic from regular time series. The first method involves mapping the time series onto the entropy-complexity plane and subsequently comparing it to established clusters. The second method, introduced by the authors, constructs a concepts-objects graph using formal concept analysis. Both of these methods exhibit high efficiency in determining the state of the fistula.Comment: Accepted in AIST-2023 conference. Yerevan, Armeni

Bilingualism Is Associated with a Delayed Onset of Dementia but Not with a Lower Risk of Developing it: a Systematic Review with Meta-Analyses.

Some studies have linked bilingualism with a later onset of dementia, Alzheimer's disease (AD), and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Not all studies have observed such relationships, however. Differences in study outcomes may be due to methodological limitations and the presence of confounding factors within studies such as immigration status and level of education. We conducted the first systematic review with meta-analysis combining cross-sectional studies to explore if bilingualism might delay symptom onset and diagnosis of dementia, AD, and MCI. Primary outcomes included the age of symptom onset, the age at diagnosis of MCI or dementia, and the risk of developing MCI or dementia. A secondary outcome included the degree of disease severity at dementia diagnosis. There was no difference in the age of MCI diagnosis between monolinguals and bilinguals [mean difference: 3.2; 95% confidence intervals (CI): -3.4, 9.7]. Bilinguals vs. monolinguals reported experiencing AD symptoms 4.7 years (95% CI: 3.3, 6.1) later. Bilinguals vs. monolinguals were diagnosed with dementia 3.3 years (95% CI: 1.7, 4.9) later. Here, 95% prediction intervals showed a large dispersion of effect sizes (-1.9 to 8.5). We investigated this dispersion with a subgroup meta-analysis comparing studies that had recruited participants with dementia to studies that had recruited participants with AD on the age of dementia and AD diagnosis between mono- and bilinguals. Results showed that bilinguals vs. monolinguals were 1.9 years (95% CI: -0.9, 4.7) and 4.2 (95% CI: 2.0, 6.4) older than monolinguals at the time of dementia and AD diagnosis, respectively. The mean difference between the two subgroups was not significant. There was no significant risk reduction (odds ratio: 0.89; 95% CI: 0.68-1.16) in developing dementia among bilinguals vs. monolinguals. Also, there was no significant difference (Hedges' g = 0.05; 95% CI: -0.13, 0.24) in disease severity at dementia diagnosis between bilinguals and monolinguals, despite bilinguals being significantly older. The majority of studies had adjusted for level of education suggesting that education might not have played a role in the observed delay in dementia among bilinguals vs. monolinguals. Although findings indicated that bilingualism was on average related to a delayed onset of dementia, the magnitude of this relationship varied across different settings. This variation may be due to unexplained heterogeneity and different sources of bias in the included studies. Registration: PROSPERO CRD42015019100

Auditory electrophysiological assessments of Alzheimer\u27s disease and preclinical stages: Protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis

© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2020. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ. Introduction Investigating auditory functions in populations at risk of developing Alzheimer\u27s disease (AD) using auditory neurophysiological measurements can potentially identify a crucial and sensitive diagnostic window of opportunity in preclinical AD. Auditory electrophysiological assessments have gained interest as possible tools for early diagnosis of AD. This paper outlines the protocol that will be used to systematically review the published literature currently available on auditory electrophysiological assessments that have been used to assess the auditory functions of adults over the age of 60 years diagnosed with AD or its preclinical stages. Methods and analysis All full-length peer-reviewed publications of original data that use auditory electrophysiological assessments in AD and its preclinical stages (subjective cognitive decline (SCD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI)) will be considered in this review. The search will be performed on major electronic databases (Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid Embase, PsycINFO, PubMed, Scopus and CINAHL Plus) using keywords alone or in combination with Medical Subject Headings divided into two domains; (i) auditory tests and (ii) AD. The database search will be conducted on the 7 th of May 2019. Data analysis will be completed and reported in the full review. A random effects meta-analysis will also be conducted using the Comprehensive Meta-Analysis software, V.3. This review will describe which auditory electrophysiological tests have been found to be useful in assessing the auditory function in cognitively impaired adults (MCI and AD) or adults with serious complaints about their cognition (SCD). This review will also identify and describe which auditory electrophysiological test demonstrates the most sensitivity in differentiating people at different stages of cognitive decline. Ethics and dissemination This systematic review focusses on analysing already available literature. Therefore, there will be no requirement for ethical approval. The systematic review findings will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publication as well as relevant media platforms, for example, conferences. Systematic review registration PROSPERO CRD42019133553

Understanding the relationship between age-related hearing loss and Alzheimer\u27s disease: A narrative review

Evidence suggests that hearing loss (HL), even at mild levels, increases the long-term risk of cognitive decline and incident dementia. Hearing loss is one of the modifiable risk factors for dementia, with approximately 4 million of the 50 million cases of dementia worldwide possibly attributed to untreated HL. This paper describes four possible mechanisms that have been suggested for the relationship between age-related hearing loss (ARHL) and Alzheimer\u27s disease (AD), which is the most common form of dementia. The first mechanism suggests mitochondrial dysfunction and altered signal pathways due to aging as a possible link between ARHL and AD. The second mechanism proposes that sensory degradation in hearing impaired people could explain the relationship between ARHL and AD. The occupation of cognitive resource (third) mechanism indicates that the association between ARHL and AD is a result of increased cognitive processing that is required to compensate for the degraded sensory input. The fourth mechanism is an expansion of the third mechanism, i.e., the function and structure interaction involves both cognitive resource occupation (neural activity) and AD pathology as the link between ARHL and AD. Exploring the specific mechanisms that provide the link between ARHL and AD has the potential to lead to innovative ideas for the diagnosis, prevention, and/or treatment of AD. This paper also provides insight into the current evidence for the use of hearing treatments as a possible treatment/prevention for AD, and if auditory assessments could provide an avenue for early detection of cognitive impairment associated with AD

Predicting the Readmission of Heart Failure Patients through Data Analytics

Reducing the costs and improving the quality of treatment in hospital systems as well as demands for better treatment from patients in order to keep them away from readmissions are two main issues healthcare systems have faced. In order to solve such challenges, predicting the occurrence of re-hospitalisation with data mining techniques would be so worthwhile. In this study, we are seeking to predict the occurrence of re-hospitalisation of the heart failure patients in two time-horizons (1-month and 3-month) via deployment of classification algorithms (i.e. decision trees, artificial neural networks, support vector machines and logistic regression). Two criterions (as main criterions) such as AUC (area under curve) and ACC (accuracy) have been calculated and assessed for classifying the prediction-power of the models in each time-horizon (outcome/target). We also have calculated some other criterions such as recall, precision and F1-Score. Then, we identified the importance and contribution of the variables for each outcome. Therefore, the variables whose contribution/importance changes over time are differentiated. It is noteworthy to say that this study is done under the scrutiny of an expert cardiologist. Trained nurses and expert cardiologist monitored the dataset every day, which was a hard and valuable measure to conduct. Finally, the dataset does not have missing values and noises. This research can be the basis for prospective medical studies and projects. © 2019 World Scientific Publishing Co