Inter-limb jump asymmetries and their association with sport-specific performance in young male and female swimmers

This study aimed to examine inter-limb jump asymmetries and their association with sport-specific performance in young swimmers. Thirty-eight (male, n = 19; female, n = 19) regional/national level young swimmers (age: 12.3 ± 1.2 years; height: 159.6 ± 8.2 cm; body mass: 52.5 ± 9.2 kg) participated in this study. Inter-limb asymmetries were assessed for single-leg countermovement jump (SLCMJ) and single-leg standing long jump (SLSLJ). Sport-specific performance was evaluated using front crawl (i.e., 50 m and 25 m) and front crawl kick (i.e., 50 m and 25 m). The kappa coefficient revealed a “slight” level of agreement (Κ = 0.156, 0.184, and 0.197 for female, male, and all, respectively) between the direction of asymmetry for SLCMJ and SLSLJ, indicating that asymmetries rarely favored the same limb during both tests. A paired sample t-test showed a significant difference (p = 0.025) between asymmetry scores obtained in SLCMJ and SLSLJ. No significant difference was found in asymmetry scores between males and females (p = 0.099 to 0.977). Additionally, no association between asymmetry scores and sport-specific performance was observed (p > 0.05). Our findings highlight the independent nature of inter-limb asymmetries derived from SLCMJ and SLSLJ among young male and female swimmers. Further, our results suggest no association between jumping asymmetries and sport-specific performance

Relationship between site of oesophageal cancer and areca chewing and smoking in Taiwan

Among 309 male patients, those who had heavily consumed betel and tobacco were more likely than nonchewers (OR = 2. 91; 95% CI = 1.36-6.25) and nonsmokers (OR = 2.49; 95% CI = 1.02-6.08) to develop cancer in the upper and middle third of the oesophagus, respectively; the effects of alcohol did not dominate in any third

Syntactic processing as a marker for cognitive impairment in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Despite recent interest in cognitive changes in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), investigations of language function looking at the level of word, sentence and discourse processing are relatively scarce. Data were obtained from 26 patients with sporadic ALS and 26 healthy controls matched for age, education, gender, anxiety, depression and executive function performance. Standardized language tasks included confrontation naming, semantic access, and syntactic comprehension. Quantitative production analysis (QPA) was used to analyse connected speech samples of the Cookie Theft picture description task. Results showed that the ALS patients were impaired on standardized measures of grammatical comprehension and action/verb semantics. At the level of discourse, ALS patients were impaired on measures of syntactic complexity and fluency; however, the latter could be better explained by disease related factors. Discriminant analysis revealed that syntactic measures differentiated ALS patients from controls. In conclusion, patients with ALS exhibit deficits in receptive and expressive language on tasks of comprehension and connected speech production, respectively. Our findings suggest that syntactic processing deficits seem to be the predominant feature of language impairment in ALS and that these deficits can be detected by relatively simple language tests

Cerebellar Integrity in the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis - Frontotemporal Dementia Continuum

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) are multisystem neurodegenerative disorders that manifest overlapping cognitive, neuropsychiatric and motor features. The cerebellum has long been known to be crucial for intact motor function although emerging evidence over the past decade has attributed cognitive and neuropsychiatric processes to this structure. The current study set out i) to establish the integrity of cerebellar subregions in the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis-behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia spectrum (ALS-bvFTD) and ii) determine whether specific cerebellar atrophy regions are associated with cognitive, neuropsychiatric and motor symptoms in the patients. Seventy-eight patients diagnosed with ALS, ALS-bvFTD, behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), most without C9ORF72 gene abnormalities, and healthy controls were investigated. Participants underwent cognitive, neuropsychiatric and functional evaluation as well as structural imaging using voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to examine the grey matter subregions of the cerebellar lobules, vermis and crus. VBM analyses revealed: i) significant grey matter atrophy in the cerebellum across the whole ALS-bvFTD continuum; ii) atrophy predominantly of the superior cerebellum and crus in bvFTD patients, atrophy of the inferior cerebellum and vermis in ALS patients, while ALS-bvFTD patients had both patterns of atrophy. Post-hoc covariance analyses revealed that cognitive and neuropsychiatric symptoms were particularly associated with atrophy of the crus and superior lobule, while motor symptoms were more associated with atrophy of the inferior lobules. Taken together, these findings indicate an important role of the cerebellum in the ALS-bvFTD disease spectrum, with all three clinical phenotypes demonstrating specific patterns of subregional atrophy that associated with different symptomology

Does improving maternal knowledge of vaccines impact infant immunization rates? A community-based randomized-controlled trial in Karachi, Pakistan

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In Pakistan, only 59-73% of children 12-23 months of age are fully immunized. This randomized, controlled trial was conducted to assess the impact of a low-literacy immunization promotion educational intervention for mothers living in low-income communities of Karachi on infant immunization completion rates.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Three hundred and sixty-six mother-infant pairs, with infants aged <b>≤ </b>6 weeks, were enrolled and randomized into either the intervention or control arm between August - November 2008. The intervention, administered by trained community health workers, consisted of three targeted pictorial messages regarding vaccines. The control group received general health promotion messages based on Pakistan's Lady Health Worker program curriculum. Assessment of DPT/Hepatitis B vaccine completion (3 doses) was conducted 4-months after enrollment. A Poisson regression model was used to estimate effect of the intervention. The multivariable Poisson regression model included maternal education, paternal occupation, ownership of home, cooking fuel used at home, place of residence, the child's immunization status at enrollment, and mother's perception about the impact of immunization on child's health.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Baseline characteristics among the two groups were similar. At 4 month assessment, among 179 mother-infant pairs in the intervention group, 129 (72.1%) had received all 3 doses of DPT/Hepatitis B vaccine, whereas in the control group 92/178 (51.7%) had received all 3 doses. Multivariable analysis revealed a significant improvement of 39% (adjusted RR = 1.39; 95% CI: 1.06-1.81) in DPT-3/Hepatitis B completion rates in the intervention group.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>A simple educational intervention designed for low-literate populations, improved DPT-3/Hepatitis B vaccine completion rates by 39%. These findings have important implications for improving routine immunization rates in Pakistan.</p

Altered patterns of cortical activation in ALS patients during attention and cognitive response inhibition tasks

Since amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) can be accompanied by executive dysfunction, it is hypothesised that ALS patients will have impaired performance on tests of cognitive inhibition. We predicted that ALS patients would show patterns of abnormal activation in extramotor regions when performing tests requiring the inhibition of prepotent responses (the Stroop effect) and the inhibition of prior negatively primed responses (the negative priming effect) when compared to healthy controls. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to measure activation during a sparse sequence block design paradigm investigating the Stroop and negative priming effects in 14 ALS patients and 8 healthy age- and IQ-matched controls. Behavioural measures of performance were collected. Both groups’ reaction times (RTs) reflected the Stroop effect during scanning. The ALS and control groups did not differ significantly for any of the behavioural measures but did show significant differences in cerebral activation during both tasks. The ALS group showed increased activation predominantly in the left middle temporal gyrus (BA 20/21), left superior temporal gyrus (BA 22) and left anterior cingulate gyrus (BA 32). Neither group’s RT data showed clear evidence of a negative priming effect. However the ALS group showed decreased activation, relative to controls, particularly in the left cingulate gyrus (BA 23/24), left precentral gyrus (BA 4/6) and left medial frontal gyrus (BA 6). Greater cerebral activation in the ALS group accompanying the performance of the Stroop effect and areas of decreased activation during the negative priming comparison suggest altered inhibitory processing in ALS, consistent with other evidence of executive dysfunction in ALS. The current findings require further exploration in a larger study