Cardiovascular Risk Profile in Health Cadres in Jatinangor, West Java

Background: Cardiovascular disease has very high morbidity and mortality, therefore, prevention of this disease becomes a national priority in the health programs. Health cadres, as an agent in community primary prevention, should have a good health condition. This study aimed to describe the cardiovascular risk profile in health cadresin Jatinangor, West Java.Methods: This was a cross-sectional study, conducted in Cilayung Village, Jatinangor, in September 2018. Consecutive sampling was performed on 20 health cadres aged 25 - 64 years old who did not have previous cardiovascular events such as coronary heart disease or stroke. Clinical data were collected consisting of blood pressure, body mass index (BMI), random blood glucose, history of diabetes mellitus, physical activity and active smoking habits. Cardiovascular risk was assessed using Jakarta cardiovascular scores and European Relative Risk Score.Results: Only 17 of 20 health cadres fulfilled the inclusion criteria with a systolic and diastolic blood pressure of 133.5±27.8 mmHg and 81.1±14.8 mmHg, respectively, and BMI of 27.4±5.3 kg/m2.The risk of cardiovascular disease in healthy cadres was at low (47.1%), moderate (41.2%) and high risk (11.7%). The average of the European Relative Risk score was 1.88±0.9. BMI >30 has a 40% high risk of cardiovascular disease.Conclusions: Most of the health cadres in Jatinangor, West Java have a low and moderate risk of cardiovascular disease, even though there is a small percentage that is at a high risk. The awareness for prevention and management programs for risk factors needs to be raised among health cadres. .

A pilot study for augmenting atomoxetine with methylphenidate: safety of concomitant therapy in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>This study examined augmenting atomoxetine with extended-release methylphenidate in children whose attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) previously failed to respond adequately to stimulant medication.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Children with ADHD and prior stimulant treatment (<it>N </it>= 25) received atomoxetine (1.2 mg/kg/day) plus placebo. After 4 weeks, patients who were responders (<it>n </it>= 4) were continued on atomoxetine/placebo while remaining patients were randomly assigned to either methylphenidate (ATX/MPH) (1.1 mg/kg/day) or placebo augmentation (ATX/PB) for another 6 weeks. Patients and sites were blind to timing of active augmentation. Safety measures included vital signs, weight, and adverse events. Efficacy was assessed by ADHD rating scales.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Categorical increases in vital signs occurred for 5 patients (3 patients in ATX/MPH, 2 patients in ATX/PBO). Sixteen percent discontinued the study due to AE, but no difference between augmentation groups. Atomoxetine treatment was efficacious on outcome measures (<it>P </it>≤ .001), but methylphenidate did not enhance response.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Methylphenidate appears to be safely combined with atomoxetine, but conclusions limited by small sample. With atomoxetine treatment, 43% of patients achieved normalization on ADHD ratings.</p

Dynamic Emotional and Neural Responses to Music Depend on Performance Expression and Listener Experience

Apart from its natural relevance to cognition, music provides a window into the intimate relationships between production, perception, experience, and emotion. Here, emotional responses and neural activity were observed as they evolved together with stimulus parameters over several minutes. Participants listened to a skilled music performance that included the natural fluctuations in timing and sound intensity that musicians use to evoke emotional responses. A mechanical performance of the same piece served as a control. Before and after fMRI scanning, participants reported real-time emotional responses on a 2-dimensional rating scale (arousal and valence) as they listened to each performance. During fMRI scanning, participants listened without reporting emotional responses. Limbic and paralimbic brain areas responded to the expressive dynamics of human music performance, and both emotion and reward related activations during music listening were dependent upon musical training. Moreover, dynamic changes in timing predicted ratings of emotional arousal, as well as real-time changes in neural activity. BOLD signal changes correlated with expressive timing fluctuations in cortical and subcortical motor areas consistent with pulse perception, and in a network consistent with the human mirror neuron system. These findings show that expressive music performance evokes emotion and reward related neural activations, and that music's affective impact on the brains of listeners is altered by musical training. Our observations are consistent with the idea that music performance evokes an emotional response through a form of empathy that is based, at least in part, on the perception of movement and on violations of pulse-based temporal expectancies

Early sensitivity and acquisition of prosodic patterns at the lexical level

International audienc

Emotional prosody in congenital amusia: Impaired and spared processes

International audienceCongenital amusia is a lifelong deficit of music processing, in particular of pitch processing. Most research investigating this neurodevelopmental disorder has focused on music perception, but pitch also has a critical role for intentional and emotional prosody in speech. Two previous studies investigating amusics’ emotional prosody recognition have shown either some deficit or no deficit (compared to controls). However, these previous studies have used only long sentence stimuli, which allow for limited control over acoustic content. Here, we tested amusic individuals for emotional prosody perception in sentences and vowels. For each type of material, participants performed an emotion categorization task, followed by intensity ratings of the recognized emotion. Compared to controls, amusic individuals had similar recognition of emotion in sentences, but poorer performance in vowels, especially when distinguishing sad and neutral stimuli. These lower performances in amusics were linked with difficulties in processing pitch and spectro-temporal parameters of the vowel stimuli. For emotion intensity, neither sentence nor vowel ratings differed between participant groups, suggesting preserved implicit processing of emotional prosody in amusia. These findings can be integrated into previous data showing preserved implicit processing of pitch and emotion in amusia alongside deficits in explicit recognition tasks. They are thus further supporting the hypothesis of impaired conscious analysis of pitch and timbre in this neurodevelopmental disorder.CRNL, 95 Bd Pinel 69675 Bron Cedex, France Declarations of interest: non