Finding robust brain substrates of mood disorders is an important target for research. The degree to which major depression (MDD) and bipolar disorder (BD) are associated with common and/or distinct ...patterns of volumetric changes is nevertheless unclear. Furthermore, the extant literature is heterogeneous with respect to the nature of these changes. We report a meta-analysis of voxel-based morphometry (VBM) studies in MDD and BD. We identified studies published up to January 2015 that compared grey matter in MDD (50 data sets including 4101 individuals) and BD (36 data sets including 2407 individuals) using whole-brain VBM. We used statistical maps from the studies included where available and reported peak coordinates otherwise. Group comparisons and conjunction analyses identified regions in which the disorders showed common and distinct patterns of volumetric alteration. Both disorders were associated with lower grey-matter volume relative to healthy individuals in a number of areas. Conjunction analysis showed smaller volumes in both disorders in clusters in the dorsomedial and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, including the anterior cingulate cortex and bilateral insula. Group comparisons indicated that findings of smaller grey-matter volumes relative to controls in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and left hippocampus, along with cerebellar, temporal and parietal regions were more substantial in major depression. These results suggest that MDD and BD are characterised by both common and distinct patterns of grey-matter volume changes. This combination of differences and similarities has the potential to inform the development of diagnostic biomarkers for these conditions.
Highlights • Sonography of the suprascapular nerve can serve as a surrogate marker for neuralgic amyotrophy. • Patients with neuralgic amyotrophy showed swelling of the suprascapular nerve on the ...affected side. • This examination algorithm is simple and can substantiate the suspicion of neuralgic amyotrophy.
In machine learning driven surface inspection one often faces the issue that defects to be detected are difficult to make available for training, especially when pixel-wise labeling is required. ...Therefore, supervised approaches are not feasible in many cases. In this paper, this issue is circumvented by injecting synthetized defects into fault-free surface images. In this way, a fully convolutional neural network was trained for pixel-accurate defect detection on decorated plastic parts, reaching a pixel-wise PRC score of 78% compared to 8% that was reached by a state-of-the-art unsupervised anomaly detection method. In addition, it is demonstrated that a similarly good performance can be reached even when the network is trained on only five fault-free parts.
Background. High functional antibody responses, establishment of immunologic memory, and unambiguous efficacy in infants suggest that an initial dose of conjugated pneumococcal polysaccharide (PnC) ...vaccine may be of value in a comprehensive adult immunization strategy. Methods. We compared the immunogenicity and safety of 7-valent PnC vaccine (7vPnC) with that of 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine (PPV) in adults ⩾ 70 years of age who had not been previously vaccinated with a pneumococcal vaccine. One year later, 7vPnC recipients received a booster dose of either 7vPnC (the 7vPnC/7vPnC group) or PPV (the 7vPnC/PPV group), and PPV recipients received a booster dose of 7vPnC (the PPV/7vPnC group). Immune responses were compared for each of the 7 serotypes common to both vaccines. Results. Antipolysaccharide enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay antibody concentrations and opsonophagocytic assay titers to the initial dose of 7vPnC were significantly greater than those to the initial dose of PPV for 6 and 5 of 7 serotypes, respectively (P<.01 and P<.05, respectively). 7vPnC/7vPnC induced antibody responses that were similar to those after the first 7vPnC inoculation, and 7vPnC/PPV induced antibody responses that were similar to or greater than antibody responses after administration of PPV alone; PPV/7vPnC induced significantly lower antibacterial responses, compared with those induced by 7vPnC alone, for all serotypes (Pt;.05). Conclusion. In adults, an initial dose of 7vPnC is likely to elicit higher and potentially more effective levels of antipneumococcal antibodies than is PPV. In contrast with PPV, for which the induction of hyporesponsiveness was observed when used as a priming dose, 7vPnC elicits an immunological state that permits subsequent administration of 7vPnC or PPV to maintain functional antipolysaccharide antibody levels.
The pattern of structural brain alterations associated with major depressive disorder (MDD) remains unresolved. This is in part due to small sample sizes of neuroimaging studies resulting in limited ...statistical power, disease heterogeneity and the complex interactions between clinical characteristics and brain morphology. To address this, we meta-analyzed three-dimensional brain magnetic resonance imaging data from 1728 MDD patients and 7199 controls from 15 research samples worldwide, to identify subcortical brain volumes that robustly discriminate MDD patients from healthy controls. Relative to controls, patients had significantly lower hippocampal volumes (Cohen's d=-0.14, % difference=-1.24). This effect was driven by patients with recurrent MDD (Cohen's d=-0.17, % difference=-1.44), and we detected no differences between first episode patients and controls. Age of onset ⩽21 was associated with a smaller hippocampus (Cohen's d=-0.20, % difference=-1.85) and a trend toward smaller amygdala (Cohen's d=-0.11, % difference=-1.23) and larger lateral ventricles (Cohen's d=0.12, % difference=5.11). Symptom severity at study inclusion was not associated with any regional brain volumes. Sample characteristics such as mean age, proportion of antidepressant users and proportion of remitted patients, and methodological characteristics did not significantly moderate alterations in brain volumes in MDD. Samples with a higher proportion of antipsychotic medication users showed larger caudate volumes in MDD patients compared with controls. This currently largest worldwide effort to identify subcortical brain alterations showed robust smaller hippocampal volumes in MDD patients, moderated by age of onset and first episode versus recurrent episode status.
Group living in sharks is a widespread phenomenon but relatively little is known about the composition and organization of these groups. In binary choice field experiments juvenile lemon sharks were ...attracted to conspecifics presumably to form groups. Experiments investigating size assortment preferences indicated that lemon sharks aged 2–3 years (but not 0–1 years) preferred to spend more time with a group of size-matched individuals than unmatched ones. Furthermore, in species association tests lemon sharks spent significantly more time associating with conspecifics than with a sympatric heterospecific, the nurse shark,
Ginglymostoma cirratum. These findings enhance our knowledge of group-joining decisions in sharks indicating that active mechanisms can play a role in the formation and composition of shark groups.
OBJECTIVES: Determine the relationship between a broad array of structure and process elements of nursing home care and (a) resident infection and (b) hospitalization for infection.
DESIGN: Baseline ...data were collected from September 1992 through March 1995, and residents were followed for 2 years; facility data were collected at the midpoint of follow‐up.
SETTING: A stratified random sample of 59 nursing homes across Maryland.
PARTICIPANTS: Two thousand fifteen new admissions aged 65 and older.
MEASUREMENTS: Facility‐level data were collected from interviews with facility administrators, directors of nursing, and activity directors; record ion; and direct observation. Main outcome measures included infection (written diagnosis, a course of antibiotic therapy, or radiographic confirmation of pneumonia) and hospitalization for infection (indicated on medical records).
RESULTS: The 2‐year rate of infection was 1.20 episodes per 100 resident days, and the hospitalization rate for infection was 0.17 admissions per 100 resident days. Except for registered nurse (RN) turnover, which related to both infection and hospitalization, different variables related to each outcome. High rates of incident infection were associated with more Medicare recipients, high levels of physical/occupational therapist staffing, high licensed practical nurse staffing, low nurses' aide staffing, high intensity of medical and therapeutic services, dementia training, staff privacy, and low levels of psychotropic medication use. High rates of hospitalization for infection were associated with for‐profit ownership, chain affiliation, poor environmental quality, lack of resident privacy, lack of administrative emphasis on staff satisfaction, and low family/friend visitation rates. Adjustment for resident sex, age, race, education, marital status, number of morbid diagnoses, functional status, and Resource Utilization Group, Version III score did not alter the relationship between the structure and process of care and outcomes.
CONCLUSIONS: The association between RN turnover and both outcomes underscores the relationship between nursing leadership and quality of care in these settings. The relationship between hospitalization for infection and for‐profit ownership and chain affiliation could reflect policies not to treat acute illnesses in house. The link between social factors of care (environmental quality, prioritizing staff satisfaction, resident privacy, and facility visitation) and hospitalization indicates that a nonmedical model of care may not jeopardize, and may in fact benefit, health‐related outcomes. All of these facility characteristics may be modifiable, may affect healthcare costs, and may hold promise for other, less‐medical, forms of residential long‐term care.
The electrophoretic separation of lipoproteins on polyacrylamide gels enables the quantification of nonatherogenic and atherogenic plasma lipoproteins including small dense low density lipoprotein ...(sdLDL) particles, which represent the atherogenic lipoprotein subpopulations in plasma. This methodology could help distinguish between nonatherogenic hyperlipidemia, normolipidemia with an atherogenic lipoprotein profile, non-atherogenic normolipidemia, and atherogenic hyperlipidemia. According to our pilot research of a normolipidemic population, the atherogenic lipoprotein profile might be present in about 6% of normolipidemic young healthy individuals. Therefore, if confirmed by other studies, it will be necessary to consider a different diagnostic approach and risk stratification for patients with atherogenic normolipidemia (as well as non-atherogenic hypercholesterolemia).
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