Butyric acid is an important C4 organic acid with broad applications. It is currently produced by chemosynthesis from petroleum-based feedstocks. However, the fermentative production of butyric acid ...from renewable feedstocks has received growing attention because of consumer demand for green products and natural ingredients in foods, pharmaceuticals, animal feed supplements, and cosmetics. In this review, strategies for improving microbial butyric acid production, including strain engineering and novel fermentation process development are discussed and compared regarding product yield, titer, purity and productivity. Future perspectives on strain and process improvements for butyric acid production are also discussed.
Background:
The increasing popularity of distance running has been accompanied by an increase in running-related injuries, such that up to 85% of novice runners incur an injury in a given year. ...Previous studies have used a gait retraining program to successfully lower impact loading, which has been associated with many running ailments. However, softer footfalls may not necessarily prevent running injury.
Purpose:
To examine vertical loading rates before and after a gait retraining program and assess the effectiveness of the program in reducing the occurrence of running-related injury across a 12-month observation period.
Study Design:
Randomized controlled trial; Level of evidence, 1.
Methods:
A total of 320 novice runners from the local running club completed this study. All the participants underwent a baseline running biomechanics evaluation on an instrumented treadmill with their usual running shoes at 8 and 12 km/h. Participants were then randomly assigned to either the gait retraining group or the control group. In the gait retraining group (n = 166), participants received 2 weeks of gait retraining with real-time visual feedback. In the control group (n = 154), participants received treadmill running exercise but without visual feedback on their performance. The training time was identical between the 2 groups. Participants’ running mechanics were reassessed after the training, and their 12-month posttraining injury profiles were tracked by use of an online surveillance platform.
Results:
A significant reduction was found in the vertical loading rates at both testing speeds in the gait retraining group (P < .001, Cohen’s d > 0.99), whereas the loading rates were either similar or slightly increased in the control group after training (P = .001 to 0.461, Cohen’s d = 0.03 to −0.14). At 12-month follow-up, the occurrence of running-related musculoskeletal injury was 16% and 38% in the gait retraining and control groups, respectively. The hazard ratio between gait retraining and control groups was 0.38 (95% CI, 0.25-0.59), indicating a 62% lower injury risk in gait-retrained runners compared with controls.
Conclusion:
A 2-week gait retraining program is effective in lowering impact loading in novice runners. More important, the occurrence of injury is 62% lower after 2 weeks of running gait modification.
Registration:
HKUCTR-1996 (University of Hong Kong Clinical Trials Registry).
BackgroundMTX non-adherence is associated with reduced response, increased healthcare costs to the NHS and reduced quality of life for the patient. Often the prescriber is unable to determine if a ...patient is taking their medication as prescribed. There is a need to measure adherence directly to facilitate more precise and objective measurements of adherence to add to the clinicians tools and help to open up honest discussions and supportive interventions with patients. Our group has previously developed a sensitive biochemical assay for the detection of MTX adherence, MIRA is a feasibility trial designed to assess the feasibility of a randomised controlled trial of MTX biochemical adherence biofeedback. This paper reports on the patients’ perspectives on adherence monitoring.ObjectivesMIRA is a prospective multi-centre randomised controlled trial to examine the feasibility of a fully powered randomised controlled trial to examine if a biochemical adherence guided intervention is superior to standard clinical care in RA patients prescribed MTX.MethodsRA patients prescribed oral MTX for ≥ two years were randomised 1:1 to receive biochemical adherence biofeedback or control. Clinico-demographics, biochemical MTX adherence and DAS-28 and were measured at baseline and three months. Participants in the intervention cohort were telephoned with their biochemical adherence results and adherence was explored. The semi-structured interviews were used to evaluate a sample of patient perspectives about and engagement with the intervention (n=10, visit 4). Ethical approval for MIRA was given by the North West - Haydock Research Ethics Committee (19/NW/0047) and all participants provided written informed consent.Results57 trial participants were recruited, withdrawal rate was 14% and reasons given were intercurrent illness, lost contact, withdrawn consent and one patient died during follow-up leaving full outcome data available for 49 participants. A total of nine semi-structured interviews were recorded and analysed in the qualitative arm of the study. The themes from the interviews were grouped in relation to the core concepts of normalisation process theory, these were: coherence, cognitive participation, collective action, reflexive monitoring. Density mapping of the themes suggested that comprehension of the study purpose might have been limited. However, there were high levels of reflexive monitoring and most of the reflections were of a positive nature. Additionally, the intensity of data relating to cognitive participation and collective action suggest that participants were fully engaged in the trial and were supportive of the intervention and trial process.ConclusionThe results of the MIRA trial have demonstrated that the use of a biochemical adherence blood test with biofeedback is feasible as part of a clinical trial. Qualitative findings suggested that participants reported that they were happy to take part in the trial. In contrast to expectations, participants were happy to have their MTX adherence monitored.REFERENCES:NIL.Acknowledgements:NIL.Disclosure of InterestsNone Declared.
PURPOSE:This study aimed to compare manometric biofeedback with pelvic floor exercises for the treatment of fecal incontinence in a randomized controlled trial controlling for nonspecific treatment ...effects.
METHODS:After excluding patients who were adequately treated with medication, education, and behavioral strategies (21%), 108 patients (83 females; average age, 59.6 years) underwent either pelvic floor exercises alone (n = 63) or manometric biofeedback plus pelvic floor exercises (n = 45). Patients in both groups were taught behavioral strategies to avoid incontinence.
RESULTS:At three-month follow-up, biofeedback patients had significantly greater reductions on the Fecal Incontinence Severity Index (P = 0.01) and fewer days with fecal incontinence (P = 0.083). Biofeedback training increased anal canal squeeze pressure more than pelvic floor exercises did (P = 0.014) and with less abdominal tension during squeeze (P = 0.001). Three months after training 76% of patients treated with biofeedback vs. 41% patients treated with pelvic floor exercises (chi-squared = 12.5, P < 0.001) reported adequate relief. Before treatment, the groups did not differ on demographic, physiologic, or psychologic variables, symptom severity, duration of illness, quality-of-life impact, or expectation of benefit. At 12-month follow-up, biofeedback patients continued to show significantly greater reduction in Fecal Incontinence Severity Index scores (F = 4.83, P = 0.03), and more patients continued to report adequate relief (chi-squared = 3.64, P = 0.056).
CONCLUSION:This investigation provides definitive support for the efficacy of biofeedback. Biofeedback training resulted in greater reductions in fecal incontinence severity and days with fecal incontinence. Biofeedback was also more effective than pelvic floor exercises alone in producing adequate relief of fecal incontinence symptoms in patients for whom conservative medical management had failed.
Everyday vision requires robustness to a myriad of environmental factors that degrade stimuli. Foreground clutter can occlude objects of interest, and complex lighting and shadows can decrease the ...contrast of items. How does the brain recognize visual objects despite these low-quality inputs? On the basis of predictions from a model of object recognition that contains excitatory feedback, we hypothesized that recurrent processing would promote robust recognition when objects were degraded by strengthening bottom–up signals that were weakened because of occlusion and contrast reduction. To test this hypothesis, we used backward masking to interrupt the processing of partially occluded and contrast reduced images during a categorization experiment. As predicted by the model, we found significant interactions between the mask and occlusion and the mask and contrast, such that the recognition of heavily degraded stimuli was differentially impaired by masking. The model provided a close fit of these results in an isomorphic version of the experiment with identical stimuli. The model also provided an intuitive explanation of the interactions between the mask and degradations, indicating that masking interfered specifically with the extensive recurrent processing necessary to amplify and resolve highly degraded inputs, whereas less degraded inputs did not require much amplification and could be rapidly resolved, making them less susceptible to masking. Together, the results of the experiment and the accompanying model simulations illustrate the limits of feedforward vision and suggest that object recognition is better characterized as a highly interactive, dynamic process that depends on the coordination of multiple brain areas.
Various biofeedback stimulation techniques for managing sleep bruxism (SB) have recently emerged; however, the effect of the successive application of vibratory feedback stimulation has not been ...clarified. This study aimed to elucidate the effect of vibration feedback stimulation via an oral appliance (OA) on SB.
This prospective, single-arm, open-label intervention study included 20 participants diagnosed with “definite” SB who wore a specially designed OA for 98 nights at home. A force-based SB detection system triggered a vibrator attached to the OA. Vibratory stimulation was withheld during the first 3-week adaptation period (weeks 1–3), applied during the 9-week stimulation period (weeks 4–12), and withheld again during the post-stimulation period (weeks 13–14). The number and duration of SB events per hour of sleep were calculated based on piezoelectric signals recorded with the OA-based vibration feedback device and compared between weeks 3 and 4, 8, 12, and 14 and between weeks 12 and 14 using the Friedman test (post-hoc test with Bonferroni correction).
The duration of SB events significantly decreased after vibratory stimulation (weeks 3 versus 4, 8, and 12: P < 0.001, P = 0.026, and P = 0.033, respectively) and then significantly increased upon cessation of vibratory stimulation after the stimulation period (weeks 12 versus 14: P < 0.001).
Contingent vibratory stimulation through an OA-based vibration feedback device may suppress SB-related masticatory muscle activity continuously for 9 weeks and may be an effective alternative for managing SB.
Human social genomics Cole, Steven W
PLoS genetics,
08/2014, Letnik:
10, Številka:
8
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
A growing literature in human social genomics has begun to analyze how everyday life circumstances influence human gene expression. Social-environmental conditions such as urbanity, low socioeconomic ...status, social isolation, social threat, and low or unstable social status have been found to associate with differential expression of hundreds of gene transcripts in leukocytes and diseased tissues such as metastatic cancers. In leukocytes, diverse types of social adversity evoke a common conserved transcriptional response to adversity (CTRA) characterized by increased expression of proinflammatory genes and decreased expression of genes involved in innate antiviral responses and antibody synthesis. Mechanistic analyses have mapped the neural "social signal transduction" pathways that stimulate CTRA gene expression in response to social threat and may contribute to social gradients in health. Research has also begun to analyze the functional genomics of optimal health and thriving. Two emerging opportunities now stand to revolutionize our understanding of the everyday life of the human genome: network genomics analyses examining how systems-level capabilities emerge from groups of individual socially sensitive genomes and near-real-time transcriptional biofeedback to empirically optimize individual well-being in the context of the unique genetic, geographic, historical, developmental, and social contexts that jointly shape the transcriptional realization of our innate human genomic potential for thriving.
Intervention of robotic devices in the field of physical gait therapy can help in providing repetitive, systematic, and economically viable training sessions. Interactive or assist-as-needed (AAN) ...gait training encourages patient voluntary participation in the robotic gait training process which may aid in rapid motor function recovery. In this paper, a lightweight robotic gait training orthosis with two actuated and four passive degrees of freedom (DOFs) is proposed. The actuated DOFs were powered by pneumatic muscle actuators. An AAN gait training paradigm based on adaptive impedance control was developed to provide interactive robotic gait training. The proposed adaptive impedance control scheme adapts the robotic assistance according to the disability level and voluntary participation of human subjects. The robotic orthosis was operated in two gait training modes, namely, inactive mode and active mode, to evaluate the performance of the proposed control scheme. The adaptive impedance control scheme was evaluated on ten neurologically intact subjects. The experimental results demonstrate that an increase in voluntary participation of human subjects resulted in a decrease of the robotic assistance and vice versa. Further clinical evaluations with neurologically impaired subjects are required to establish the therapeutic efficacy of the adaptive-impedance-control-based AAN gait training strategy.
Background
Headache disorder is not only a common complaint but also a global burden. Pharmacotherapeutic and non-pharmacotherapeutic approaches have been developed for its treatment and prophylaxis. ...The present study included a systematic review of psychological treatments for primary headache disorder accessible in Korea.
Methods
We included English and Korean articles from EMBASE, MEDLINE, Cochrane library database, SCOPUS, ScienceDirect, Web of Science, CINAHL, PsycArticles and Korean database, KoreaMed and KMBASE which studied primary headache and medication-overuse headache. The primary efficacy measure was the number of headache days per month, while secondary efficacy measures were the number of headache attacks per week, headache index, treatment response rate, and migraine disability assessment. The meta-analysis was performed using R 3.5.1. to obtain pooled mean difference and pooled relative risk with 95% confidence interval (CI) for continuous data and dichotomous data, respectively.
Results
From 12,773 identified articles, 27 randomized clinical trials were identified. Primary outcome showed significant superiority of psychological treatments (pooled mean difference = − 0.70, 95% CI − 1.22, − 0.18). For the secondary outcomes, the number of headache attacks (pooled mean difference = − 1.15, 95% CI − 1.63, − 0.67), the headache index (pooled mean difference = − 0.92, 95% CI − 1.40 to − 0.44) and the treatment response rate (pooled relative risk = 3.13, 95% CI 2.24, 4.37) demonstrated significant improvements in the psychological treatment group over the control group.
Conclusion
Psychological treatments for primary headache disorder reduced headache frequency and the headache index. Future research using standardized outcome measures and strategies for reducing bias is needed.
Variations in biofeedback coding schemes for postural control, in recent research, have shown significant differences in performance outcomes due to variations in coding schemes. However, the ...application of vibrotactile biofeedback coding schemes to gait symmetry training is not well explored. In this paper, we devised various vibrotactile biofeedback modes and identified their efficacy during gait symmetry training of individuals suffering from hemiparesis due to stroke. These modes are composed of variations in vibration type (on-time or intensity), and relation type (proportional or inversely-proportional) with the error in symmetry ratio. Eight individuals with stroke participated in walking trials. From dependent t-tests on the collected data, we found improved achievement of temporal gait symmetry while utilizing all the provided biofeedback modes compared to no biofeedback (P <; 0.001). Furthermore, two-way repeated measures ANOVA revealed statistically significant difference in symmetry ratio for main effect of vibration type (P-value = 0.016, partial eta squared = 0.585). The participants performed better with modes of biofeedback with varying vibration on-times. Furthermore, participants showed better performance when the biofeedback varied proportionally with the error. These findings suggest that biofeedback coding schemes may have a significant effect on the performance of gait training.
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