In our outpatient practice, we are increasingly seeing men aged 35 to 45 years who have permanent low normal testosterone levels. Aim We set out to investigate whether there is an association between ...permanent low normal testosterone levels and lower urinary tract symptoms in young men. Patients and Methods For the period from January 2013 to December 2015 at the Andrology office at Hospital "St. Sofia", we examined 73 men aged 35 to 45 years with normal or elevated body mass index, permanent low normal testosterone level and micturition disorders. In order to compare the results we obtained, at the very beginning of the study, we selected a control group of 20 healthy men of the same age. Results We obtained, although within reference ranges, significantly lower values for total testosterone in the 73 men with micturition disorders we studied, compared with those in the control group without micturition disorders. Conclusions 1. Our study shows that in some men at a young age, some deviation in normal testosteronе secretion occurs, with a concomitant decrease in maximum urine flow, which is remarkably different from the same indicator in their peers with a high normal testosterone level. 2. We identify permanent low normal testosterone, overweight, and obesity as predictors of initial lower urinary tract symptoms in young men. 3. According to our study, the altered E2/T ratio is also relevant to the initial onset of lower urinary tract symptoms in young men.
Food insecurity is associated with obesity among adults. During pregnancy, food insecurity increases obesity risk among mothers and infants. This study investigated the association of food security ...with pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI), gestational weight gain (GWG) adequacy to date, and the relative reinforcing value (RRV) of food during pregnancy.
This secondary data analysis examined 258 pregnant women (mean gestational age = 21.21 ± 10.21 weeks) surveyed on pre-pregnancy weight, height, pregnancy due date and GWG to date, current diagnoses related to eating and pregnancy, and demographics. The survey also assessed current food security and RRV of meals, snacks, cognitive activities, and active activities. BMI was calculated from pre-pregnancy height and weight (kg/m2). Gestational weight gain adequacy to date was derived from the Institute of Medicine guidelines. Multivariable linear regression models were used to examine the relation of food security with pre-pregnancy BMI and RRVs of foods/activities. The relation between food security and GWG adequacy to date was examined using multinomial regression models.
Lower food security was related to both greater pre-pregnancy BMI (β = 0.60, p < .001) and greater RRV of snack foods (β = 3.46, p < .05), after controlling for covariates. Lower food security was also related to GWG to date below recommended levels (OR = 1.25, p < .05).
Food insecurity is related to higher relative food reinforcement during pregnancy, and greater pre-pregnancy weight status. Future research should replicate and extend these findings by assessing them longitudinally to better evaluate the directions of these relationships.
The prevalence of obesity in IBD patients is a major research topic, showing a considerable variation in an incidence between 5 and 30%. The aim of the present study was to make an anthropometric ...assessment of obesity among IBD patients. Materials and methods: 50 IBD patients were studied. For each patient, data on age, gender, abdominal circumference, weight and BMI, smoking habits, and relevant comorbidities were collected. Obesity was diagnosed with a BMI > 30 kg/m2. The data were processed statistically using variation, dispersion, correlation and comparative analyses. Results: The percentage of men and women was even, with an average age of 43.26, a minimum age of 18, and a maximum age of 75. No difference in the age of onset was found between US and CD patients. The majority of the studied patients are genetically burdened with diabetes mellitus and hypertensive disease. The disease appears in younger patients having IBD and obesity. In conclusion, our study can lay the foundation of some further research. Because of the epidemiological increase of IBD in the developed countries, the pathogenetic role and influence on the disease outcome played by a diet should not be underestimated and should be further investigated. Planning new clinical trials aiming the evaluation of the clinical, laboratory and endoscopic parameters at baseline and after the changes in BMI may be useful, as this topic is still very poorly studied.
Abstract Stroke is among the leading causes of long-term disabilities leaving an increasing number of people with cognitive, affective and motor impairments depending on assistance in their daily ...life. While function after stroke can significantly improve in the first weeks and months, further recovery is often slow or non-existent in the more severe cases encompassing 30–50% of all stroke victims. The neurobiological mechanisms underlying recovery in those patients are incompletely understood. However, recent studies demonstrated the brain's remarkable capacity for functional and structural plasticity and recovery even in severe chronic stroke. As all established rehabilitation strategies require some remaining motor function, there is currently no standardized and accepted treatment for patients with complete chronic muscle paralysis. The development of brain–machine interfaces (BMIs) that translate brain activity into control signals of computers or external devices provides two new strategies to overcome stroke-related motor paralysis. First, BMIs can establish continuous high-dimensional brain-control of robotic devices or functional electric stimulation (FES) to assist in daily life activities ( assistive BMI). Second, BMIs could facilitate neuroplasticity, thus enhancing motor learning and motor recovery ( rehabilitative BMI). Advances in sensor technology, development of non-invasive and implantable wireless BMI-systems and their combination with brain stimulation, along with evidence for BMI systems' clinical efficacy suggest that BMI-related strategies will play an increasing role in neurorehabilitation of stroke.
CrossFit is recognized as one of the fastest-growing high-intensity functional training modes in the world. The study aimed to compare the effects of the CrossFit training program and traditional gym ...training on anthropometric measurements in healthy, active men. The study sample consisted of 50 participants who were divided into two groups, 22 participants who practiced the CrossFit training program (CFT group; 28.64±2.04 years; body height 181.74±6.96 cm; body mass: 72.75±5.53 kg), and 28 participants who applied traditional gym training (GT group; 26.89±2.99 years; body height: 184.52±7.80 cm; body mass: 74.86±8.48 kg). A total of ten anthropometric measurements (Body height, Body mass, BMI, Subscapular, Abdominal and Triceps skinfolds, Chest, Forearm, Upper arm, and Thigh circumferences) were monitored before and after twelve weeks. The Shapiro-Wilk test was used to test the normality of distribution. The multivariate analysis covariance (MANCOVA) and analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) were used to analyze the data. The results of this study indicated that there were statistically significant differences between groups in the Circumference of the upper arm (p=0.02), Thigh circumference (p=0.00), Chest circumference (p=0.03), and Subscapular skinfold (p=0.00). The findings of this study demonstrated that healthy, active males who participated in the 12-week CrossFit training program improved their anthropometric measurements more than those who trained in the traditional gym training.
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•PM2.5 was associated with higher risk of incident OWOB.•PM2.5 was associated with increased odds of being in larger BMI growth trajectories.•PM2.5 was associated with increased odds ...of being in persistent OWOB trajectory.•Constituents including SO42−, BC and OM are particularly relevant for these effects.
The association of specific PM2.5 chemical constituents with childhood overweight or obesity (OWOB) remain unclear. Furthermore, the long-term impacts of PM2.5 exposure on the trajectory of children's body mass index (BMI) have not been explored.
We conducted a longitudinal study among 1,450,830 Chinese children aged 6–19 years from Beijing and Zhongshan in China during 2005–2018 to examine the associations of PM2.5 and its chemical constituents with incident OWOB risk. We extracted PM2.5 mass and five main component exposure from Tracking Air Pollution in China (TAP) dataset. Cox proportional hazards models were applied to quantify exposure–response associations. We further performed principal component analysis (PCA) to handle the multi-collinearity and used quantile g-computation (QGC) approach to analyze the impacts of exposure mixtures. Additionally, we selected 125,863 children with at least 8 physical examination measurements and combined group-based trajectory models (GBTM) with multinomial logistic regression models to explore the impacts of exposure to PM2.5 mass and five constituents on BMI and BMI Z-score trajectories during 6–19 years.
We observed each interquartile range increment in PM2.5 exposure was significantly associated with a 5.1 % increase in the risk of incident OWOB (95 % confidence Interval CI: 1.036–1.066). We also found black carbon, sulfate, organic matter, often linked to fossil combustion, had comparable or larger estimates of the effect (HR = 1.139–1.153) than PM2.5. Furthermore, Exposure to PM2.5 mass, sulfate, nitrate, ammonium, organic matter and black carbon was significantly associated with an increased odds of being in a larger BMI trajectory and being assigned to persistent OWOB trajectory.
Our findings provide evidence that the constituents mainly from fossil fuel combustion may have a perceptible influence on increased OWOB risk associated with PM2.5 exposure in China. Moreover, long-term exposure to PM2.5 contributes to an increased odds of being in a lager BMI and a persistent OWOB trajectories.
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•Ethyl paraben (EtP) concentrations above the LOD were found in 88% of the placentas.•Child BMI z-scores were inversely associated with placental EtP exposure.•Placental EtP was ...associated with cord blood γ-glutamyltransferase (GGT) activity.•Cord blood glucose showed an inverse relationship with placental EtP.•Placental EtP was associated with methylation of cg08612779 annotated to GGT7.
Parabens are used as antimicrobial preservatives in personal care products. Few studies have dealt with adverse health outcomes, transplacental transfer, and obesogenic effects of prenatal exposure to parabens. We examined the association between placental paraben levels and cord blood metabolic biomarkers, considering modulating effects of maternal pre-pregnancy BMI and underlying epigenetic mechanisms, and investigated longitudinal effects of in utero paraben exposure on early childhood trajectories of BMI z-scores.
Placental concentrations of four parabens methyl (MeP), ethyl (EtP), propyl (PrP), and butyl (BuP) were measured by ultra-performance liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry in 229 placentas of the ENVIRONAGE birth cohort. The association with cord blood metabolic biomarkers glucose, insulin, γ-glutamyltransferase (GGT), high-density and low-density lipoprotein (HDL and LDL) was analyzed in multiple regression models with two different sets of, a priori selected potential confounders, additionally stratified for different maternal BMI groups and assessed by causal mediation analysis. The association between placental paraben concentration and differential DNA methylation of CpGs annotated to GGT and longitudinal measurements of BMI z-scores were investigated with adjusted linear mixed models.
The geometric means of placental MeP, EtP, PrP, and BuP levels above the limit of detection (LOD) were 4.42, 1.32, 1.51, and 0.35 ng/g respectively, with only EtP showing sufficient (88%) measurements above LOD for further analyses. An interquartile ratio (IQR) increase in placental EtP was associated with an increase of 12.61 % (95% CI: 1.80 24.57) in the geometric mean of cord GGT activity, and with a decrease of −3.64 % (95% CI: −6.80 to −0.39) in the geometric mean of cord glucose. Placental EtP levels were significantly associated with hypermethylation of cg08612779 annotated to GGT7 after correcting for multiple testing (ß = 0.0017, p = 0.049). An interquartile ratio (IQR) increment in placental EtP was associated with a decrease in longitudinal BMI z-score of 0.27 points (95% CI: −0.46 to −0.088).
Prenatal EtP exposure may affect early childhood BMI. The association of placental EtP with cord blood GGT and glucose levels provides a starting point for further research on mechanisms of paraben-related metabolic processes in utero.
The closed-loop control of rehabilitative technologies by neural commands has shown a great potential to improve motor recovery in patients suffering from paralysis. Brain-machine interfaces (BMI) ...can be used as a natural control method for such technologies. BMI provides a continuous association between the brain activity and peripheral stimulation, with the potential to induce plastic changes in the nervous system. Paraplegic patients, and especially the ones with incomplete injuries, constitute a potential target population to be rehabilitated with brain-controlled robotic systems, as they may improve their gait function after the reinforcement of their spared intact neural pathways. This paper proposes a closed-loop BMI system to control an ambulatory exoskeleton-without any weight or balance support-for gait rehabilitation of incomplete spinal cord injury (SCI) patients. The integrated system was validated with three healthy subjects, and its viability in a clinical scenario was tested with four SCI patients. Using a cue-guided paradigm, the electroencephalographic signals of the subjects were used to decode their gait intention and to trigger the movements of the exoskeleton. We designed a protocol with a special emphasis on safety, as patients with poor balance were required to stand and walk. We continuously monitored their fatigue and exertion level, and conducted usability and user-satisfaction tests after the experiments. The results show that, for the three healthy subjects, 84.44 ± 14.56% of the trials were correctly decoded. Three out of four patients performed at least one successful BMI session, with an average performance of 77.6 1 ± 14.72%. The shared control strategy implemented (i.e., the exoskeleton could only move during specific periods of time) was effective in preventing unexpected movements during periods in which patients were asked to relax. On average, 55.22 ± 16.69% and 40.45 ± 16.98% of the trials (for healthy subjects and patients, respectively) would have suffered from unexpected activations (i.e., false positives) without the proposed control strategy. All the patients showed low exertion and fatigue levels during the performance of the experiments. This paper constitutes a proof-of-concept study to validate the feasibility of a BMI to control an ambulatory exoskeleton by patients with incomplete paraplegia (i.e., patients with good prognosis for gait rehabilitation).
Direct estimation of body weight through noncontact methods is crucial for applications such as health monitoring, surveillance, and robot-assisted casualty rescue. Existing methods for body weight ...estimation from images are often affected by various factors, such as camera distance, human orientation, and body posture, etc., which ignore the fact that bodies typically inhabit 3D space. To address the problem, we propose an approach for estimating body weight based on virtual anthropometric measurements and deep features instead of estimating by reasoning pixels. Specifically, we develop a three-branch framework that includes face feature extraction, body feature extraction as well as deep feature extraction, and maps all features with a regressor. The developed method adds 3D shape reconstruction to explicitly reason about virtual anthropometric measurements. To enable this, our model is trained to robustly compute anthropometric measurements in various orientations and postures. Furthermore, we evaluate our method on a public dataset and Image-VM-BMI, a new dataset of 4740 images, including BMI labels and virtual anthropometric measurement labels with paired 3D reconstruction. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms pixel-based analysis approaches on BMI estimation.
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