Assessment of depression in diabetic patients

Background: Diabetes is one of the most common chronic conditions in the world. The worldwide prevalence of diabetes mellitus (DM) has risen dramatically over the past two decades because of increasing obesity and reduced activity levels. The purpose of this study was to show the association between depression and diabetes. Methods: It was a cross-study. The study included 240 patients who were chosen randomly with no gender bias. A convenient subject of 240 diabetic patients was interviewed. Results: Out of the total 240 diabetic patients, included in this study, the majority of patients, 52.63% in the age group of 60 years had depression with a Hamilton score of >19 while 47.37% of patients in the age of 40 to 50 years had Hamilton score of >19. 84.21% of males had depression with a Hamilton score >19 as compared to females who had a Hamilton score of 15.79%. The patients within the age group of 40-59 have 2.5 times more risk of having depression as compared to the age group of 20 to 39 and patients in the age group >60 years have 4.23 times higher risk of depression as compared to patients in the age group of 20 to 39 years. The association between gender and depression shows that males have a higher rate of depression (78.17%) as compared to females (21.81%) with an odd's ratio of 3.0. Conclusions: Our study showed a high prevalence of depression and anxiety in male patients and the elderly age group. Planning and implementation of screening for mental health issues in the elderly population diagnosed with a lifestyle disease-such as type 2 diabetes mellitus-with existing comorbidities should be recognized as one of the most important goals of the public health system. It seems necessary to involve medical teams in the screening process to verify the symptoms, promptly establish the diagnosis, and initiate the appropriate depression treatment. In diabetic patients, depression remains underdiagnosed and an important aspect of the diabetic specialists would be the awareness of this quite common co-morbidity

Plethysmography system to monitor the jugular venous pulse: A feasibility study

Cerebral venous outflow is investigated in the diagnosis of heart failure through the monitoring of jugular venous pulse, an indicator to assess cardiovascular diseases. The jugular venous pulse is a weak signal stemming from the lying internal jugular vein and often invasive methodolo-gies requiring surgery are mandatory to detect it. Jugular venous pulse can also be extrapolated via the ultrasound technique, but it requires a qualified healthcare operator to perform the exami-nation. In this work, a wireless, user-friendly, wearable device for plethysmography is developed to investigate the possibility of monitoring the jugular venous pulse non-invasively. The proposed device can monitor the jugular venous pulse and the electrocardiogram synchronously. To study the feasibility of using the proposed device to detect physiological variables, several measurements were carried out on healthy subjects by considering three different postures: supine, sitting, and upright. Data acquired in the experiment were properly filtered to highlight the cardiac oscillation and remove the breathing contribution, which causes a considerable shift in the amplitude of signals. To evaluate the proper functioning of the wearable device for plethysmography, a comparison with the ultrasound technique was carried out. As a satisfactory result, the acquired signals resemble the typical jugular venous pulse waveforms found in literature

The Infrared Behavior of Gluon and Ghost Propagators in Landau Gauge QCD

A solvable systematic truncation scheme for the Dyson-Schwinger equations of Euclidean QCD in Landau gauge is presented. It implements the Slavnov-Taylor identities for the three-gluon and ghost-gluon vertices, whereas irreducible four-gluon couplings as well as the gluon-ghost and ghost-ghost scattering kernels are neglected. The infrared behavior of gluon and ghost propagators is obtained analytically: The gluon propagator vanishes for small spacelike momenta whereas the ghost propagator diverges stronger than a massless particle pole. The numerical solutions are compared with recent lattice data for these propagators. The running coupling of the renormalization scheme approaches a fixed point, $\alpha_c \simeq 9.5$, in the infrared.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, Revtex; revised version accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter

Slavnov-Taylor identities in Coulomb gauge Yang-Mills theory

The Slavnov-Taylor identities of Coulomb gauge Yang-Mills theory are derived from the (standard, second order) functional formalism. It is shown how these identities form closed sets from which one can in principle fully determine the Green's functions involving the temporal component of the gauge field without approximation, given appropriate input.Comment: 20 pages, no figure

pi-pi scattering in a QCD based model field theory

A model field theory, in which the interaction between quarks is mediated by dressed vector boson exchange, is used to analyse the pionic sector of QCD. It is shown that this model, which incorporates dynamical chiral symmetry breaking, asymptotic freedom and quark confinement, allows one to calculate $f_\pi$, $m_\pi$, $r_\pi$ and the partial wave amplitudes in $\pi$-$\pi$ scattering and obtain good agreement with the experimental data, with the latter being well described up to energies \mbox{$E\simeq 700$ MeV}.Comment: 23 Pages, 4 figures in PostScript format, PHY-7512-TH-93, REVTEX Available via anonymous ftp in /pub: login anonymou get pipi93.tex Fig1.ps Fig2.ps Fig3.ps Fig4.p

Coordinated analysis of age, sex, and education effects on change in MMSE scores

Objectives. We describe and compare the expected performance trajectories of older adults on the Mini-Mental Status Examination (MMSE) across six independent studies from four countries in the context of a collaborative network of longitudinal studies of aging. A coordinated analysis approach is used to compare patterns of change conditional on sample composition differences related to age, sex, and education. Such coordination accelerates evaluation of particular hypotheses. In particular, we focus on the effect of educational attainment on cognitive decline.Method. Regular and Tobit mixed models were fit to MMSE scores from each study separately. The effects of age, sex, and education were examined based on more than one centering point.Results. Findings were relatively consistent across studies. On average, MMSE scores were lower for older individuals and declined over time. Education predicted MMSE score, but, with two exceptions, was not associated with decline in MMSE over time.Conclusion. A straightforward association between educational attainment and rate of cognitive decline was not supported. Thoughtful consideration is needed when synthesizing evidence across studies, as methodologies adopted and sample characteristics, such as educational attainment, invariably differ. © 2012 The Author

Dynamical chiral symmetry breaking and confinement with an infrared-vanishing gluon propagator?

We study a model Dyson-Schwinger equation for the quark propagator closed using an {\it Ansatz} for the gluon propagator of the form \mbox{$D(q) \sim q^2/[(q^2)^2 + b^4]$} and two {\it Ans\"{a}tze} for the quark-gluon vertex: the minimal Ball-Chiu and the modified form suggested by Curtis and Pennington. Using the quark condensate as an order parameter, we find that there is a critical value of $b=b_c$ such that the model does not support dynamical chiral symmetry breaking for $b>b_c$. We discuss and apply a confinement test which suggests that, for all values of $b$, the quark propagator in the model {\bf is not} confining. Together these results suggest that this Ansatz for the gluon propagator is inadequate as a model since it does not yield the expected behaviour of QCD.Comment: 21 Pages including 4 PostScript figures uuencoded at the end of the file. Replacement: slight changes of wording and emphasis. ADP-93-215/T133, ANL-PHY-7599-TH-93, FSU-SCRI-93-108, REVTEX 3.

Infrared Behaviour of the Gluon Propagator: Confining or Confined?

The possible infrared behaviour of the gluon propagator is studied analytically, using the Schwinger-Dyson equations, in both the axial and the Landau gauge. The possibility of a gluon propagator less singular than $1/k^{2}$ when $k^{2} \rightarrow 0$ is investigated and found to be inconsistent, despite claims to the contrary, whereas an infrared enhanced one is consistent. The implications for confinement are discussed.Comment: 20 pages, latex, 2 figure

Model gluon propagator and pion and rho-meson observables

A one parameter, model confined-gluon propagator is employed in a phenomenological application of the Dyson-Schwinger and Bethe-Salpeter equations to the calculation of a range of $\pi$- and $\rho$-meson observables. Good agreement is obtained with the data. The calculated quark propagator does not have a singularity on the real-$p^2$ axis. A mass formula for the pion, involving only the vacuum, dressed quark propagator, is presented and shown to provide an accurate estimate of the mass obtained via a direct solution of the Bethe-Salpeter equation.Comment: 17 Pages, no figures, REVTE

Dyson-Schwinger Equations and the Application to Hadronic Physics

We review the current status of nonperturbative studies of gauge field theory using the Dyson-Schwinger equation formalism and its application to hadronic physics. We begin with an introduction to the formalism and a discussion of renormalisation in this approach. We then review the current status of studies of Abelian gauge theories [e.g., strong coupling quantum electrodynamics] before turning our attention to the non-Abelian gauge theory of the strong interaction, quantum chromodynamics. We discuss confinement, dynamical chiral symmetry breaking and the application and contribution of these techniques to our understanding of the strong interactions.Comment: 110 pages, LaTeX. Replaced only to facilitate retrieval. Also available at /u/ftp/pub/Review.uu via anonymnous-ft