Characterization of immune response to neurofilament light in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis

PMCID: PMC3856490This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.PMCID: PMC385649

The interpretive approach to religious education : challenging Thompson's interpretation

In a recent book chapter, Matthew Thompson makes some criticisms of my work, including the interpretive approach to religious education and the research and activity of Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit. Against the background of a discussion of religious education in the public sphere, my response challenges Thompson’s account, commenting on his own position in relation to dialogical approaches to religious education. The article rehearses my long held view that the ideal form of religious education in fully state funded schools of a liberal democracy should be ‘secular’ but not ‘secularist’; there should be no implication of an axiomatic secular humanist interpretation of religions

Intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring during scoliosis surgery in patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy

PURPOSE: Little is known about the reliability and value of intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring (IONM) in patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) undergoing scoliosis correction surgery. The aim of this study was to investigate the feasibility of IONM and the cortical excitability in these patients. METHODS: Fifteen patients with DMD and scoliosis and 15 patients with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) underwent scoliosis correction surgery with the use of IONM. IONM consisted of transcranial electrical stimulation motor evoked potential (Tc-MEP) and somatosensory evoked potential (SSEP) monitoring. The highest Tc-MEP amplitudes were collected to test the feasibility. Preoperative compound muscle action potentials (CMAPs) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)-MEPs were recorded to test the cortical excitability. SSEPs were scored as elicitable or not elicitable. RESULTS: Tc-MEP amplitudes were significantly lower in the DMD group for both the gastrocnemius and tibialis anterior muscles. However, the abductor hallucis muscle had similar amplitudes in both the DMD as the AIS group. TMS/CMAP and Tc-MEP/CMAP ratios were similar in the DMD and AIS group (P = 0.126 and P = 0.792 respectively). CONCLUSIONS: Tc-MEP and SSEP monitoring is feasible, particularly when Tc-MEPs are recorded from the abductor hallucis muscle in patients with DMD. Similar TMS/CMAP and Tc-MEP/CMAP ratios show that there were no differences observed in cortical excitability between the groups. IONM seems a feasible and valuable neurophysiological tool to signal possible surgically induced damage to the spinal cord during scoliosis correction surgery in patients with DMD

Forward Analysis and Model Checking for Trace Bounded WSTS

We investigate a subclass of well-structured transition systems (WSTS), the bounded---in the sense of Ginsburg and Spanier (Trans. AMS 1964)---complete deterministic ones, which we claim provide an adequate basis for the study of forward analyses as developed by Finkel and Goubault-Larrecq (Logic. Meth. Comput. Sci. 2012). Indeed, we prove that, unlike other conditions considered previously for the termination of forward analysis, boundedness is decidable. Boundedness turns out to be a valuable restriction for WSTS verification, as we show that it further allows to decide all $\omega$-regular properties on the set of infinite traces of the system

BrainStat: A toolbox for brain-wide statistics and multimodal feature associations

Analysis and interpretation of neuroimaging datasets has become a multidisciplinary endeavor, relying not only on statistical methods, but increasingly on associations with respect to other brain-derived features such as gene expression, histological data, and functional as well as cognitive architectures. Here, we introduce BrainStat - a toolbox for (i) univariate and multivariate linear models in volumetric and surface-based brain imaging datasets, and (ii) multidomain feature association of results with respect to spatial maps of post-mortem gene expression and histology, task-based fMRI meta-analysis, as well as resting-state fMRI motifs across several common surface templates. The combination of statistics and feature associations into a turnkey toolbox streamlines analytical processes and accelerates cross-modal research. The toolbox is implemented in both Python and MATLAB, two widely used programming languages in the neuroimaging and neuroinformatics communities. BrainStat is openly available and complemented by an expandable documentation

Low percentage of clinically relevant pistachio nut and mango co-sensitisation in cashew nut sensitised children

Background: Cashew nut, pistachio nut and mango belong to the Anacardiaceae family and are botanically related. Therefore, cashew nut sensitised children are frequently advised to eliminate cashew nuts and pistachio nuts from their diet. The ‘Improvement of Diagnostic mEthods for ALlergy assessment (IDEAL trial number NTR3572) study showed that cashew nut sensitised children were co-sensitised to pistachio nut in 98% of cases and to mango in 21% of cases. The aim of this follow-up study to IDEAL is to assess the clinical relevance of co-sensitisation to pistachio nut and mango in cashew nut sensitised children. Methods: Children were recruited from the study: ‘Improvement of Diagnostic mEthods for ALlergy assessment (IDEAL trial number NTR3572). Inclusion criterion for the IDEAL study was sensitization to cashew nut as demonstrated by either SPT or sIgE, and a clinical history of reactions to cashew nuts or no previous (known) exposure. Sensitized children who were tolerant to cashew nuts were excluded. Inclusion criterion for this IDEAL follow-up study was co-sensitization to pistachio nut, regardless the result of the DBPCFC with cashew nut. In this follow-up study a double-blind placebo-controlled food challenge with pistachio nut and an open food challenge with mango were performed. Results: Twenty-nine children (mean age of 11.6 years, 62% male) were included. Pistachio nut sensitisation was clinically relevant in only 34% of cashew-sensitised children and only 31% of cashew challenge positive children. None of the children was challenge positive to mango. Conclusion: Although co-sensitisation between cashew nut and pistachio nut was observed in 98%, pistachio nut sensitisation was only clinically relevant in 34% of the children. Therefore, a challenge test with pistachio nut is recommended in children with cashew nut and pistachio nut sensitisation.</p

A simplified primary aldosteronism surgical outcome score is a useful prediction model when target organ damage is unknown – Retrospective cohort study

Background: Cure of hypertension after adrenalectomy for primary aldosteronism is no certainty and therefore preoperative patient counseling is essential. The Primary Aldosteronism Surgical Outcome (PASO) Score is a useful prediction model with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.839. The PASO Score includes ‘Target Organ Damage’ (TOD) (i.e., left ventricular hypertrophy and/or microalbuminuria), which is often unavailable during preoperative counseling and might therefore limit its use in clinical practice. We hypothesized that the PASO score would still be useful if TOD is unknown at time of counseling. Therefore, we aimed to examine the predictive performance of the simplified PASO Score, without taking TOD into account. Materials and methods: In this retrospective cohort study, patients who underwent unilateral adrenalectomy between 2010 and 2016 in 16 medical centers from North America, Europe and Australia were included. TOD was unknown in our database and therefore assigned as absent. Patients were classified as complete, partial or absent clinical success using the PASO consensus criteria. Results: A total of 380 (73.9%) patients were eligible for analysis. Complete, partial and absent clinical success were observed in 29.5%, 55.8% and 14.7% of patients, respectively. The simplified PASO Score had an AUC of 0.730 (95% confidence interval 0.674–0.785) in our total cohort. Conclusion: Without taking TOD into account, the simplified PASO Score had a lower predictive value as compared to the original derivation cohort. Ideally, the complete PASO Score should be used, but when data on TOD are not readily available, the simplified PASO Score is a useful and reasonable alternative