A randomised controlled trial of a code-word enuresis alarm

Objective: To compare a novel code-word alarm with a commercially available wireless alarm for treating enuresis Design: Randomised controlled trial with blinding of study personnel and outcome assessors Setting: A tertiary paediatric centre Patients: Children aged six to eighteen with at least three wet nights per week in the previous 6 months referred by doctors Outcomes: Primary outcome: the proportion who achieved a full response (14 consecutive dry nights) by 16 weeks. Secondary outcomes: change in frequency of wetting, duration of alarm training, percentage of wet nights that the child woke to the alarm, adherence to treatment, adverse events and satisfaction with treatment. Results: Of the 353 participants, 176 were assigned to the code-word alarm and 177 to control. At 16 weeks, 54% (95% CI, 47% to 61%) in the experimental group and 47% (95% CI, 40% to 55%) in the control group had achieved a full response (p=0.22), with 74% and 66% respectively attaining a 50% or more reduction in wetting frequency (p=0.14). The experimental group woke more often than the control group (median percentage of waking 88% versus 77%, p=0.003) and had greater reduction in wet nights (median reduction 10 versus 9 nights per fortnight). Fewer in the experimental group discontinued therapy before achieving a full response (27% versus 37% discontinued, p=0.04). There were no significant differences in relapse rates at 6 months, adverse events or satisfaction between the two alarms. In a post hoc subgroup analysis of children with monosymptomatic enuresis, more in the experimental group achieved a full response (66% versus 52%, p=0.047), with higher median percentage of waking (89% versus 79%, p=0.006) and greater reduction in wet nights (median reduction 12 versus 9 nights per fortnight). Conclusions: Although the code-word alarm increased waking, no difference in full response rates was demonstrated between the two alarms.The study was funded by an NHMRC Project Grant (570761). AT was supported by an NHMRC Program Grant (633003) to the Screening & Test Evaluation Program

Determinants of fertility in rural Ethiopia: the case of Butajira Demographic Surveillance System (DSS)

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Fertility is high in rural Ethiopia. Women in the reproductive age group differed in various characteristics including access to food and encounter to drought which requisite the assessment of determinants of fertility.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Reproductive age women were recruited from a DSS, the Butajira DSS database. A DHS maternity history questionnaire was administered on 9996 participants. Data quality was assured besides ethical clearance. Poisson regression crude and adjusted Incidence Rate Ratio with 95 Confidence Interval were used to identify determinants of fertility.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Delayed marriage, higher education, smaller family, absence of child death experience and living in food-secured households were associated with small number of children. Fertility was significantly higher among women with no child sex preference. However, migration status of women was not statistically significant.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Policy makers should focus on hoisting women secondary school enrollment and age at first marriage. The community should also be made aware on the negative impact of fertility on household economy, environmental degradation and the country's socio-economic development at large.</p

Disgust sensitivity is not associated with health in a rural Bangladeshi sample.

Disgust can be considered a psychological arm of the immune system that acts to prevent exposure to infectious agents. High disgust sensitivity is associated with greater behavioral avoidance of disease vectors and thus may reduce infection risk. A cross-sectional survey in rural Bangladesh provided no strong support for this hypothesis. In many species, the expression of pathogen- and predator-avoidance mechanisms is contingent on early life exposure to predators and pathogens. Using childhood health data collected in the 1990s, we examined if adults with more infectious diseases in childhood showed greater adult disgust sensitivity: no support for this association was found. Explanations for these null finding and possible directions for future research are discussed

Stainable hepatic iron in 341 African American adults at coroner/medical examiner autopsy

BACKGROUND: Results of previous autopsy studies indicate that increased hepatic iron stores or hepatic iron overload is common in African Americans dying in hospitals, but there are no reports of hepatic iron content in other cohorts of African Americans. METHODS: We investigated the prevalence of heavy liver iron deposition in African American adults. Using established histochemical criteria, we graded Perls' acid ferrocyanide-reactive iron in the hepatocytes and Kupffer cells of 341 consecutive African American adults who were autopsied in the coroner/medical examiner office. Heavy staining was defined as grade 3 or 4 hepatocyte iron or grade 3 Kupffer cell iron. RESULTS: There were 254 men and 85 women (mean age ± 1 SD: 44 ± 13 y vs. 48 ± 14 y, respectively; p = 0.0255); gender was unstated or unknown in two subjects. Approximately one-third of subjects died of natural causes. Heavy staining was observed in 10.2% of men and 4.7% of women. 23 subjects had heavy hepatocyte staining only, six had heavy Kupffer cell staining only, and one had a mixed pattern of heavy staining. 15 subjects had histories of chronic alcoholism; three had heavy staining confined to hepatocytes. We analyzed the relationships of three continuous variables (age at death in years, hepatocyte iron grade, Kupffer cell iron grade) and two categorical variables (sex, cause of death (natural and non-natural causes)) in all 341 subjects using a correlation matrix with Bonferroni correction. This revealed two positive correlations: hepatocyte with Kupffer cell iron grades (p < 0.01), and male sex with hepatocyte iron grade (p < 0.05). We also analyzed the relationship of steatosis, inflammation, and fibrosis/cirrhosis in 30 subjects with heavy iron staining using a correlation matrix with Bonferroni correction. There were significant positive correlations of steatosis with inflammation (r = 0.5641; p < 0.01), and of inflammation with fibrosis/cirrhosis (r = 0.6124; p < 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: The present results confirm and extend previous observations that heavy liver iron staining is relatively common in African Americans. The pertinence of these observations to genetic and acquired causes of iron overload in African Americans is discussed

A systematic review of the data, methods and environmental covariates used to map Aedes-borne arbovirus transmission risk

BACKGROUND: Aedes (Stegomyia)-borne diseases are an expanding global threat, but gaps in surveillance make comprehensive and comparable risk assessments challenging. Geostatistical models combine data from multiple locations and use links with environmental and socioeconomic factors to make predictive risk maps. Here we systematically review past approaches to map risk for different Aedes-borne arboviruses from local to global scales, identifying differences and similarities in the data types, covariates, and modelling approaches used. METHODS: We searched on-line databases for predictive risk mapping studies for dengue, Zika, chikungunya, and yellow fever with no geographical or date restrictions. We included studies that needed to parameterise or fit their model to real-world epidemiological data and make predictions to new spatial locations of some measure of population-level risk of viral transmission (e.g. incidence, occurrence, suitability, etc.). RESULTS: We found a growing number of arbovirus risk mapping studies across all endemic regions and arboviral diseases, with a total of 176 papers published 2002-2022 with the largest increases shortly following major epidemics. Three dominant use cases emerged: (i) global maps to identify limits of transmission, estimate burden and assess impacts of future global change, (ii) regional models used to predict the spread of major epidemics between countries and (iii) national and sub-national models that use local datasets to better understand transmission dynamics to improve outbreak detection and response. Temperature and rainfall were the most popular choice of covariates (included in 50% and 40% of studies respectively) but variables such as human mobility are increasingly being included. Surprisingly, few studies (22%, 31/144) robustly tested combinations of covariates from different domains (e.g. climatic, sociodemographic, ecological, etc.) and only 49% of studies assessed predictive performance via out-of-sample validation procedures. CONCLUSIONS: Here we show that approaches to map risk for different arboviruses have diversified in response to changing use cases, epidemiology and data availability. We identify key differences in mapping approaches between different arboviral diseases, discuss future research needs and outline specific recommendations for future arbovirus mapping

Fluids in cosmology

We review the role of fluids in cosmology by first introducing them in General Relativity and then by applying them to a FRW Universe's model. We describe how relativistic and non-relativistic components evolve in the background dynamics. We also introduce scalar fields to show that they are able to yield an inflationary dynamics at very early times (inflation) and late times (quintessence). Then, we proceed to study the thermodynamical properties of the fluids and, lastly, its perturbed kinematics. We make emphasis in the constrictions of parameters by recent cosmological probes.Comment: 34 pages, 4 figures, version accepted as invited review to the book "Computational and Experimental Fluid Mechanics with Applications to Physics, Engineering and the Environment". Version 2: typos corrected and references expande

The Distances of the Magellanic Clouds

The present status of our knowledge of the distances to the Magellanic Clouds is evaluated from a post-Hipparcos perspective. After a brief summary of the effects of structure, reddening, age and metallicity, the primary distance indicators for the Large Magellanic Cloud are reviewed: The SN 1987A ring, Cepheids, RR Lyraes, Mira variables, and Eclipsing Binaries. Distances derived via these methods are weighted and combined to produce final "best" estimates for the Magellanic Clouds distance moduli.Comment: Invited review article to appear in ``Post Hipparcos Cosmic Candles'', F. Caputo & A. Heck (Eds.), Kluwer Academic Publ., Dordrecht, in pres

Polycation-π Interactions Are a Driving Force for Molecular Recognition by an Intrinsically Disordered Oncoprotein Family

Molecular recognition by intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) commonly involves specific localized contacts and target-induced disorder to order transitions. However, some IDPs remain disordered in the bound state, a phenomenon coined "fuzziness", often characterized by IDP polyvalency, sequence-insensitivity and a dynamic ensemble of disordered bound-state conformations. Besides the above general features, specific biophysical models for fuzzy interactions are mostly lacking. The transcriptional activation domain of the Ewing's Sarcoma oncoprotein family (EAD) is an IDP that exhibits many features of fuzziness, with multiple EAD aromatic side chains driving molecular recognition. Considering the prevalent role of cation-π interactions at various protein-protein interfaces, we hypothesized that EAD-target binding involves polycation- π contacts between a disordered EAD and basic residues on the target. Herein we evaluated the polycation-π hypothesis via functional and theoretical interrogation of EAD variants. The experimental effects of a range of EAD sequence variations, including aromatic number, aromatic density and charge perturbations, all support the cation-π model. Moreover, the activity trends observed are well captured by a coarse-grained EAD chain model and a corresponding analytical model based on interaction between EAD aromatics and surface cations of a generic globular target. EAD-target binding, in the context of pathological Ewing's Sarcoma oncoproteins, is thus seen to be driven by a balance between EAD conformational entropy and favorable EAD-target cation-π contacts. Such a highly versatile mode of molecular recognition offers a general conceptual framework for promiscuous target recognition by polyvalent IDPs. © 2013 Song et al

Wind-Powered Wheel Locomotion, Initiated by Leaping Somersaults, in Larvae of the Southeastern Beach Tiger Beetle (Cicindela dorsalis media)

Rapid movement is challenging for elongate, soft-bodied animals with short or no legs. Leaping is known for only a few animals with this “worm-like” morphology. Wheel locomotion, in which the animal's entire body rolls forward along a central axis, has been reported for only a handful of animals worldwide. Here we present the first documented case of wind-powered wheel locomotion, in larvae of the coastal tiger beetle Cicindela dorsalis media. When removed from their shallow burrows, larvae easily can be induced to enter a behavioral sequence that starts with leaping; while airborne, larvae loop their body into a rotating wheel and usually either “hit the ground rolling” or leap again. The direction larvae wheel is closely related to the direction in which winds are blowing; thus, all our larvae wheeled up-slope, as winds at our study site consistently blew from sea to land. Stronger winds increased both the proportion of larvae wheeling, and the distance traveled, exceeding 60 m in some cases. In addition, the proportion of larvae that wheel and the distance traveled by wheeling larvae are significantly greater on smooth sandy beaches than on beach surfaces made rough and irregular by pedestrian, equestrian, and vehicular traffic. Like other coastal species of tiger beetles, C. dorsalis media has suffered major declines in recent years that are clearly correlated with increased human impacts. The present study suggests that the negative effects of beach traffic may be indirect, preventing larvae from escaping from predators using wheel locomotion by disrupting the flat, hard surface necessary for efficient wheeling