Addition of hip exercises to treatment of patellofemoral pain syndrome: A meta-analysis

AIM: To determine if the addition of hip-strengthening exercises decreases pain and improves function in patients with patellofemoral pain syndrome. METHODS: The authors completed a systematic review searching eight databases (i.e. , PubMed, Cochrane, CINHAL, MEDLINE, SportsDiscus, EMBASE, APTA Hooked on Evidence, and PEDro). Two independent reviewers screened and excluded studies if they did not meet the following inclusion criteria: subjects had a primary diagnosis of patellofemoral pain syndrome (PFPS), intervention group included hip-strengthening exercises, control group included a traditional physical therapy intervention, study included outcome measures of pain and/or function, study used a randomized controlled trial design, PEDro score was ≥ 7, and study was published in a peer-reviewed journal. Primary outcome measures were subjective scales of pain and function. These measures were converted to standardized mean difference [effect size (ES)], and a random-effects model was used to calculate the overall ES. RESULTS: Two hundred eighty-three studies were screened for inclusion in our meta-analysis. Nine studies were deemed suitable for data extraction and analysis. A total of 426 subjects were used in the nine studies. Overall, there was a significant positive effect of hip-strengthening exercises on measures of pain and function in subjects with PFPS (ES = 0.94, P = 0.00004). None of the individual studies had a negative ES, with study ES ranging from 0.35 to 2.59. Because of the high degree of between-study variance (I 2 = 76%; Q = 34.0, P \u3c 0.001), subgroup meta-analyses and meta-regressions were performed. None of the potential moderator variables that were investigated (e.g. , outcome type, hip region targeted, duration of treatment) could explain a significant amount of the between-study variance in ES (P ≥ 0.23). CONCLUSION: Overall, the addition of hip-strengthening exercises to traditional physical therapy produced greater improvements in measures of pain and function

Stellar intensity interferometry: Experimental steps toward long-baseline observations

Experiments are in progress to prepare for intensity interferometry with arrays of air Cherenkov telescopes. At the Bonneville Seabase site, near Salt Lake City, a testbed observatory has been set up with two 3-m air Cherenkov telescopes on a 23-m baseline. Cameras are being constructed, with control electronics for either off- or online analysis of the data. At the Lund Observatory (Sweden), in Technion (Israel) and at the University of Utah (USA), laboratory intensity interferometers simulating stellar observations have been set up and experiments are in progress, using various analog and digital correlators, reaching 1.4 ns time resolution, to analyze signals from pairs of laboratory telescopes.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figur

Implementing an Effective Community-Based Advisory Board (CAB) at New Haven Farms

New Haven has the second highest poverty and food insecurity rate in Connecticut. New Haven Farms (NHF) has been operating in the New Haven area since 2012, with a mission of using health promotion and community development programs to combat obesity, diabetes, and other diet-related diseases. NHF hopes to re-establish a community advisory board (CAB) to integrate community members into the organization to inform program development and strategy. The objectives of this study were as follows: Describe best practices for building an effective CAB within a community-based nonprofit organization, make relevant recommendations for restructuring the CAB, make recommendations for using community based best practices within a nonprofit.https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/ysph_pbchrr/1020/thumbnail.jp

Patient-Reported Disability Measures Do Not Correlate with Electrodiagnostic Severity in Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

BACKGROUND: Electrophysiologic studies including electromyography and nerve conduction studies play a role in the evaluation of carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS), despite evidence that these studies do not correlate with CTS-specific symptom scores. There is a lack of evidence comparing electrophysiologic data with general measures of function. METHODS: Fifty patients presenting for CTS treatment over an 8-month period were analyzed retrospectively. All patients completed surveys including the Quick Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder, and Hand questionnaire (DASH) and the Medical Outcomes Study 12-Item Short-Form Survey [(physical component summary 12, mental component summary (MCS-12)]. Electromyography and nerve conduction studies were performed on all patients and compared with outcome scores. RESULTS: Analysis demonstrated no relationship between DASH or MCS-12 and electrodiagnostic severity. No significant correlations were noted between DASH or MCS-12 and median motor or sensory latency. There was a moderate-weak correlation (rho = 0.34) between more severe electrophysiologic grade and better function based on physical component summary 12. CONCLUSIONS: Electrodiagnostic severity grades do not correlate with patient-reported disability, including the DASH and MCS-12 surveys. There is a counterintuitive correlation between more-severe electrodiagnostic findings and decreased physical disability. These findings indicate that disability may not correlate with electrodiagnostic severity of median neuropathy in CTS

Comparison of two peptide radiotracers for prostate carcinoma targeting

OBJECTIVES: Scintigraphy is generally not the first choice treatment for prostate cancer, although successful studies using bombesin analog radiopeptides have been performed. Recently, a novel peptide obtained using a phage display library demonstrated an affinity for prostate tumor cells. The aim of this study was to compare the use of a bombesin analog to that of a phage display library peptide (DUP-1) radiolabeled with technetium-99m for the treatment of prostate carcinoma. The peptides were first conjugated to S-acetyl-MAG3 with a 6-carbon spacer, namely aminohexanoic acid. METHODS: The technetium-99m labeling required a sodium tartrate buffer. Radiochemical evaluation was performed using ITLC and was confirmed by high-performance liquid chromatography. The coefficient partition was determined, and in vitro studies were performed using human prostate tumor cells. Biodistribution was evaluated in healthy animals at various time points and also in mice bearing tumors. RESULTS: The radiochemical purity of both radiotracers was greater than 95%. The DUP-1 tracer was more hydrophilic (log P = -2.41) than the bombesin tracer (log P = -0.39). The biodistribution evaluation confirmed this hydrophilicity by revealing the greater kidney uptake of DUP-1. The bombesin concentration in the pancreas was greater than that of DUP-1 due to specific gastrin-releasing peptide receptors. Bombesin internalization occurred for 78.32% of the total binding in tumor cells. The DUP-1 tracer showed very low binding to tumor cells during the in vitro evaluation, although tumor uptake for both tracers was similar. The tumors were primarily blocked by DUP1 and the bombesin radiotracer primarily targeted the pancreas. CONCLUSION: Further studies with the radiolabeled DUP-1 peptide are recommended. With further structural changes, this molecule could become an efficient alternative tracer for prostate tumor diagnosis

Automated tracing of myelinated axons and detection of the nodes of Ranvier in serial images of peripheral nerves

The development of realistic neuroanatomical models of peripheral nerves for simulation purposes requires the reconstruction of the morphology of the myelinated fibres in the nerve, including their nodes of Ranvier. Currently, this information has to be extracted by semimanual procedures, which severely limit the scalability of the experiments. In this contribution, we propose a supervised machine learning approach for the detailed reconstruction of the geometry of fibres inside a peripheral nerve based on its high-resolution serial section images. Learning from sparse expert annotations, the algorithm traces myelinated axons, even across the nodes of Ranvier. The latter are detected automatically. The approach is based on classifying the myelinated membranes in a supervised fashion, closing the membrane gaps by solving an assignment problem, and classifying the closed gaps for the nodes of Ranvier detection. The algorithm has been validated on two very different datasets: (i) rat vagus nerve subvolume, SBFSEM microscope, 200 × 200 × 200 nm resolution, (ii) rat sensory branch subvolume, confocal microscope, 384 × 384 × 800 nm resolution. For the first dataset, the algorithm correctly reconstructed 88% of the axons (241 out of 273) and achieved 92% accuracy on the task of Ranvier node detection. For the second dataset, the gap closing algorithm correctly closed 96.2% of the gaps, and 55% of axons were reconstructed correctly through the whole volume. On both datasets, training the algorithm on a small data subset and applying it to the full dataset takes a fraction of the time required by the currently used semiautomated protocols. Our software, raw data and ground truth annotations are available at http://hci.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de/Benchmarks/. The development version of the code can be found at https://github.com/RWalecki/ATMA

The truth-telling motor cortex: Response competition in M1 discloses deceptive behaviour

Neural circuits associated with response conflict are active during deception. Here we use transcranial magnetic stimulation to examine for the first time whether competing responses in primary motor cortex can be used to detect lies. Participants used their little finger or thumb to respond either truthfully or deceitfully regarding facial familiarity. Motor-evoked-potentials (MEPs) from muscles associated with both digits tracked the development of each motor plan. When preparing to deceive, the MEP of the non-responding digit (i.e. the plan corresponding to the truth) exceeds the MEP of the responding digit (i.e. the lie), whereas a mirror-reversed pattern occurs when telling the truth. This give away response conflict interacts with the time of stimulation during a speeded reaction period. Lies can even activate digit-specific cortical representations when only verbal responses are made. Our findings support neurobiological models which blend cognitive decision-making with motor programming, and suggest a novel index for discriminating between honest and intentionally false facial recognition

Synchronized brain activity during rehearsal and short-term memory disruption by irrelevant speech is affected by recall mode

EEG coherence as a measure of synchronization of brain activity was used to investigate effects of irrelevant speech. In a delayed serial recall paradigm 21 healthy participants retained verbal items over a 10-s delay with and without interfering irrelevant speech. Recall after the delay was varied in two modes (spoken vs. written). Behavioral data showed the classic irrelevant speech effect and a superiority of written over spoken recall mode. Coherence, however, was more sensitive to processing characteristics and showed interactions between the irrelevant speech effect and recall mode during the rehearsal delay in theta (4–7.5 Hz), alpha (8–12 Hz), beta (13–20 Hz), and gamma (35–47 Hz) frequency bands. For gamma, a rehearsal-related decrease of the duration of high coherence due to presentation of irrelevant speech was found in a left-lateralized fronto-central and centro-temporal network only in spoken but not in written recall. In theta, coherence at predominantly fronto-parietal electrode combinations was indicative for memory demands and varied with individual working memory capacity assessed by digit span. Alpha coherence revealed similar results and patterns as theta coherence. In beta, a left-hemispheric network showed longer high synchronizations due to irrelevant speech only in written recall mode. EEG results suggest that mode of recall is critical for processing already during the retention period of a delayed serial recall task. Moreover, the finding that different networks are engaged with different recall modes shows that the disrupting effect of irrelevant speech is not a unitary mechanism