ATEP Directors\u27 and Atcs\u27 Perceptions of the Psychosocial Intervention and Referral Competencies

Recent data clearly indicates that Certified Athletic Trainers (ATC) desire and may benefit from additional sport psychology training. It has been posited that psychological rehabilitation is just as, if not more, important than the physical rehabilitation process (Wiese, Weiss & Yukelson, 1991). Stiller-Ostrowski and Ostrowski (2008) support this by stating that psychosocial aspects of rehabilitation have been identified as an area of focus due to ATCs feeling underprepared. The current study was designed to extend from previous research by examining Athletic Training Education Program (ATEP) directors\u27 and ATCs\u27 perceptions of the Psychosocial Intervention and Referral competencies. Specifically, both groups will rate the Psychosocial Intervention and Referral competencies on importance, criticality, and preparedness, as well as rank the NATA Educational Competencies on these same variables. Participants included 88 randomly selected ATCs and 53 undergraduate ATEP directors from both genders, all race/ethnicity groups, and all NATA districts (geographic regions). Both groups completed the Athletic Training Educational Competency Questionnaire (ATECQ) online at http://www.surveymonkey.com. After a 5-week data collection time period, results were analyzed using one-tailed independent T-tests with an alpha level of 0.01 and an effect size of 0.50. Significant results were not found within the importance, criticality, or preparedness variables. However, it was noted that ATEP directors reported two psychosocial competencies to be more important compared to ATCs. In addition, ATCs and ATEP directors ranked the importance, criticality, and preparedness factors of the Psychosocial Intervention and Referral content area below 50% of the other content areas. Moreover, both groups ranked the acute care of injuries and illnesses, orthopedic clinical examination and diagnosis, and risk management and injury prevention as the most important, critical, and prepared. Overall, ATCs and ATEP directors do not consider the psychosocial aspects in athletic training as important or critical as the other content areas. Therefore, it is less likely that time is spent preparing students in this area. It is suggested that educational opportunities need to be made more available to ATCs and ATEP directors. More importantly, complete rehabilitation of the athlete will not occur until ATCs begin to treat the psychological aspects of injury

ATEP Directors\u27 and Atcs\u27 Perceptions of the Psychosocial Intervention and Referral Competencies

Recent data clearly indicates that Certified Athletic Trainers (ATC) desire and may benefit from additional sport psychology training. It has been posited that psychological rehabilitation is just as, if not more, important than the physical rehabilitation process (Wiese, Weiss & Yukelson, 1991). Stiller-Ostrowski and Ostrowski (2008) support this by stating that psychosocial aspects of rehabilitation have been identified as an area of focus due to ATCs feeling underprepared. The current study was designed to extend from previous research by examining Athletic Training Education Program (ATEP) directors\u27 and ATCs\u27 perceptions of the Psychosocial Intervention and Referral competencies. Specifically, both groups will rate the Psychosocial Intervention and Referral competencies on importance, criticality, and preparedness, as well as rank the NATA Educational Competencies on these same variables. Participants included 88 randomly selected ATCs and 53 undergraduate ATEP directors from both genders, all race/ethnicity groups, and all NATA districts (geographic regions). Both groups completed the Athletic Training Educational Competency Questionnaire (ATECQ) online at http://www.surveymonkey.com. After a 5-week data collection time period, results were analyzed using one-tailed independent T-tests with an alpha level of 0.01 and an effect size of 0.50. Significant results were not found within the importance, criticality, or preparedness variables. However, it was noted that ATEP directors reported two psychosocial competencies to be more important compared to ATCs. In addition, ATCs and ATEP directors ranked the importance, criticality, and preparedness factors of the Psychosocial Intervention and Referral content area below 50% of the other content areas. Moreover, both groups ranked the acute care of injuries and illnesses, orthopedic clinical examination and diagnosis, and risk management and injury prevention as the most important, critical, and prepared. Overall, ATCs and ATEP directors do not consider the psychosocial aspects in athletic training as important or critical as the other content areas. Therefore, it is less likely that time is spent preparing students in this area. It is suggested that educational opportunities need to be made more available to ATCs and ATEP directors. More importantly, complete rehabilitation of the athlete will not occur until ATCs begin to treat the psychological aspects of injury

An Infrapatellar Fat Pad Tear in a High School Football Player: A Case Report

Objective: To present a clinical case exploring the occurrence and management of a tear to the infrapatellar fat pad IFP of a high school football player. Background: Acute tears to the IFP are rare. Typically, the IFP becomes impinged (i.e., Hoffa’s disease) through a fall, direct knee trauma, or surgical complications, and requires conservative treatment. Treatment: A 15-year-old high school football player reported to the athletic training clinical complaining of right knee discomfort and the inability to fully flex the knee. The patient stated that during a field goal attempt he missed the ball and hyperextended his right knee. Hoffa’s disease and impingement of the IFP have been well documented, but these injuries have a different mechanism of injury. Uniqueness: More common injuries to the IFP occur because of microtraumas (i.e., Hoffa’s disease) or direct trauma to the knee (i.e., IFP impingement) in older populations. For this patient, the mechanism of injury was non-contact and minimal swelling, and no visual deformity or discoloration were present to suggest an injury. Additionally, the patient was able to complete functional movements with complaining only of “weird tightness” in the knee during extension. Conclusion: Due to the similarity of multiple knee pathologies, unknown mechanisms of injury need to be considered when evaluating the knee structure. Further examination is needed to determine demographic data and the probability of a non-contact injury is to the IFP, especially in pediatric patients

Differentiating Self-Reported Imagery Abilities with Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Motor imagery (MI), a top-down knowledge-driven process involving the deliberate cognitive simulation or rehearsal of an action without engaging in overt physical movements, shares the same neural networks as movement execution improving motor learning and enhancing performance of motor tasks. The capacity to form images is not universal, and is a variable, moderating factor of neural activity impacting intervention effectiveness and distinguishing between individual imagery abilities. Measuring imagery abilities through self-report measures (i.e., MIQ-3 and VMIQ-2) is common, but the importance of behavioral and neuroimaging techniques have also been highlighted. Despite the robustness of these questionnaires, few studies have investigated their biological validity. This is surprising given that these questionnaires are frequently used to determine participants’ imager abilities and adopting them in the neuroscience literature for screening purposes. Therefore, two studies were conducted to help extend present MI theories by examining the convergent validity of self-report questionnaires through fMRI. In the first study, 17 females aged 18-30 screened by the MIQ-3 as having good imagery abilities were recruited to examine the construct validity of the MIQ-3. Following an fMRI simulation session, participants were scanned to determine the neural networks active during KI, IVI, and EVI of the arm rotation task of the MIQ-3. Results revealed common and distinct brain activity providing initial biological validation for the imagery abilities delineated in the MIQ-3. For study two, an additional 17 participants aged 18-30 were screened as having poor imagery abilities. The task and procedure were identical to the previous study. As expected, both good and poor imagers had peak activations in the inferior parietal lobule and motor-related areas. Inter-group comparisons revealed that good imagers had greater activation in the frontal, parietal and premotor areas. By contrast, poor imagers recruited a wider neural network (i.e., middle frontal gyrus and subcortical areas). Overall, both studies provide central evidence for common and divergent neural networks of imagery abilities defined in the sport sciences. Future research should expand this body of literature to other tasks and male participants as well as investigate imagery abilities used to create cognitive and affective image content

Are Surgeons Behind the Scientific Eight Ball: Delayed Acquisition of the NIH K08 Mentored Career Development Award

Background: Surgery residents complete their research training early in residency. Non-surgical trainees typically have research incorporated toward the last two years of their fellowship, conferring an advantage to apply for grants with recent research experience and preliminary data. Methods: The NIH RePORTER database was queried for K08 awardees trained in medicine, pediatrics, and surgery from 2013 to 2017. 406 K08 recipients were identified and time from completion of clinical training to achieving a K08 award was measured. Data were compared using ANOVA and expressed as mean. P < 0.05 was considered significant. Results: Surgeons took longer to obtain a K08 than those trained in internal medicine (surgery = 3.7 years, internal medicine = 2.58 years p < 0.0001)). All K08 recipients without a PhD took longer to obtain a K08 than recipients with a PhD (MD = 3.50 years and MD/PhD = 2.42 years (p=<0.0001). Conclusions: Surgeons take longer to achieve a K08 award than clinicians trained in internal medicine, possibly due to an inherent disadvantage in training structure

SRPK1 maintains acute myeloid leukemia through effects on isoform usage of epigenetic regulators including BRD4.

We recently identified the splicing kinase gene SRPK1 as a genetic vulnerability of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Here, we show that genetic or pharmacological inhibition of SRPK1 leads to cell cycle arrest, leukemic cell differentiation and prolonged survival of mice transplanted with MLL-rearranged AML. RNA-seq analysis demonstrates that SRPK1 inhibition leads to altered isoform levels of many genes including several with established roles in leukemogenesis such as MYB, BRD4 and MED24. We focus on BRD4 as its main isoforms have distinct molecular properties and find that SRPK1 inhibition produces a significant switch from the short to the long isoform at the mRNA and protein levels. This was associated with BRD4 eviction from genomic loci involved in leukemogenesis including BCL2 and MYC. We go on to show that this switch mediates at least part of the anti-leukemic effects of SRPK1 inhibition. Our findings reveal that SRPK1 represents a plausible new therapeutic target against AML

Molecular mechanisms of cell death: recommendations of the Nomenclature Committee on Cell Death 2018.

Over the past decade, the Nomenclature Committee on Cell Death (NCCD) has formulated guidelines for the definition and interpretation of cell death from morphological, biochemical, and functional perspectives. Since the field continues to expand and novel mechanisms that orchestrate multiple cell death pathways are unveiled, we propose an updated classification of cell death subroutines focusing on mechanistic and essential (as opposed to correlative and dispensable) aspects of the process. As we provide molecularly oriented definitions of terms including intrinsic apoptosis, extrinsic apoptosis, mitochondrial permeability transition (MPT)-driven necrosis, necroptosis, ferroptosis, pyroptosis, parthanatos, entotic cell death, NETotic cell death, lysosome-dependent cell death, autophagy-dependent cell death, immunogenic cell death, cellular senescence, and mitotic catastrophe, we discuss the utility of neologisms that refer to highly specialized instances of these processes. The mission of the NCCD is to provide a widely accepted nomenclature on cell death in support of the continued development of the field

Genomic landscape and chronological reconstruction of driver events in multiple myeloma

The multiple myeloma (MM) genome is heterogeneous and evolves through preclinical and post-diagnosis phases. Here we report a catalog and hierarchy of driver lesions using sequences from 67 MM genomes serially collected from 30 patients together with public exome datasets. Bayesian clustering defines at least 7 genomic subgroups with distinct sets of co-operating events. Focusing on whole genome sequencing data, complex structural events emerge as major drivers, including chromothripsis and a novel replication-based mechanism of templated insertions, which typically occur early. Hyperdiploidy also occurs early, with individual trisomies often acquired in different chronological windows during evolution, and with a preferred order of acquisition. Conversely, positively selected point mutations, whole genome duplication and chromoplexy events occur in later disease phases. Thus, initiating driver events, drawn from a limited repertoire of structural and numerical chromosomal changes, shape preferred trajectories of evolution that are biologically relevant but heterogeneous across patients

Lenalidomide after Stem-Cell Transplantation for Multiple Myeloma

Data are lacking on whether lenalidomide maintenance therapy prolongs the time to disease progression after autologous hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation in patients with multiple myeloma

The genetic architecture of the human cerebral cortex

The cerebral cortex underlies our complex cognitive capabilities, yet little is known about the specific genetic loci that influence human cortical structure. To identify genetic variants that affect cortical structure, we conducted a genome-wide association meta-analysis of brain magnetic resonance imaging data from 51,665 individuals. We analyzed the surface area and average thickness of the whole cortex and 34 regions with known functional specializations. We identified 199 significant loci and found significant enrichment for loci influencing total surface area within regulatory elements that are active during prenatal cortical development, supporting the radial unit hypothesis. Loci that affect regional surface area cluster near genes in Wnt signaling pathways, which influence progenitor expansion and areal identity. Variation in cortical structure is genetically correlated with cognitive function, Parkinson's disease, insomnia, depression, neuroticism, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder