Strength training can be enjoyable and beneficial for adults with cerebral palsy

Purpose:?To explore the positive and negative perceptions of participating in a strength- training programme for adults with cerebral palsy.

Method:?Ten adults aged over 40 years with cerebral palsy participated in a group-based 10-week progressive resistance strength-training programme in a community gymnasium. After the programme, each participant was interviewed using an in-depth semi-structured format and the results coded thematically.

Results:?Participants perceived that their strength, and ability to perform everyday activities had improved. However, the main benefit for participants was enjoyment and social interaction. The only negative perceptions related to fatigue, short-term muscle soreness and a feeling that they had not improved as much as they had expected.

Conclusions:?Enjoyment, a factor that can promote adherence and sustainability, was a key benefit of this strength-training programme for adults with cerebral palsy that led to perceptions of increased strength and physical functioning. These findings suggest that exercise programmes for adults with cerebral palsy should be conducted in a group in the community, thereby promoting community inclusion. In addition, it is important to provide education to participants about the normal responses and expectations of an exercise programme.     

Development of visual and somatosensory attention of the reach-to-eat movement in human infants aged 6 to 12 months

The reach-to-eat movement is a natural act in which an object or food item is grasped and brought to the mouth. It is one of the earliest forelimb behaviours displayed by human infants, who bring almost all grasped objects to the mouth, and is used daily by adults. In adults, there is a tight coupling between visual attention and the advance phase of the reach-to-eat movement. The target is visually engaged just as hand advance is initiated and visually disengaged just as the target is grasped. This coupling of vision and hand advance suggests that advance is mediated by visual attention and withdrawal by somatosensation. The present study examined when the tight coupling between visual attention and the advance phase of the movement develops in infancy. In a longitudinal study, eight infants, aged 6–12 months, and 20 adults reached for familiar inanimate objects and food items. Visual gaze, hand movement and hand accuracy were measured using frame-by-frame video scoring and 2D kinematic analysis. The study found that the youngest infants (6–8 months) visually engaged the target well before initiating a reaching movement and continued to fixate on the target after it was grasped and as it was brought to the mouth. Between 10 and 12 months of age, infants began to visually engage the target just as the reaching movement was initiated and visually disengaged the target as it was grasped, as did the adults. Over the same developmental time period, the infants developed rotatory hand shaping movements, precision grasping, and improved targeting accuracy both for grasping the object and placing it into the mouth. The results suggest that visual guidance of advance and somatosensory guidance of withdrawal develop together and in concert with hand movement ability and skill.     

Trusting and misleading. Parents’ and children’s communication and negotiation about alcohol as described by teenagers

Background: Typically, research on parents’ and children’s interactions around alcohol issues focuses on how parenting styles and parents’ examples affect teenager’s drinking habits. In this paper, we approach the theme from the youngsters’ perspective. We ask how teenagers describe the interaction on alcohol-related issues with their parents and how they would like their parents to act during these interactions.

Data and methods: The article applies the concept of trust, which is seen as a feature connecting all kinds of communities, and especially families. We pay attention to whether alcohol issues challenge trustful relations and give rise to contradictions and complications in the interactions between parents and children.

Results: The analysis shows the ways how trust is maintained and challenged in teenagers? accounts of communication regarding alcohol with their parents. It also shows that although trust is tested in several ways, it is essential for teenagers. Even though teenagers tell how they can mislead their parents by using strategies that challenge trust, they nevertheless highlight the importance of trusting ties with parents. Teenagers do not exclude their parents from alcohol-related discussion but expect rules, communication and authority from them. Our data suggest that teenagers also want to protect their parents from disappointments caused by their own actions.

Conclusions: A trusting parent–child relationship, based on dialog rather than opposition, seems to play a significant role in guiding teenagers’ alcohol-related attitudes and practices.     

A 10-Year Trend in Statin Use Among Older Adults in Australia: an Analysis Using National Pharmacy Claims Data

Background

Statins have become standard of care in the prevention and treatment of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. The objective of this study was to examine the trends in statin use among Australians aged ≥?65 years for the period 2007–2016.

Methods

Data from the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme covering a 10% random sample of the Australian population were analysed. The 1-year prevalence and incidence of statin use were determined for each year, as were the percentage of statin dispensations according to statin type or intensity and the percentage of new users prescribed each statin type or intensity. To describe relative changes, age-sex adjusted rate ratios (RRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were determined via Poisson regression modelling using 2007 as the reference year.

Results

The 1-year prevalence of statin use increased consistently each year from 34.2% in 2007 to 44.1% in 2016 (RR 1.29, 95% CI 1.28–1.31). The 1-year incidence was 68.5 per 1000 in 2007 and 59.0 per 1000 in 2016 (RR 0.87, 95% CI 0.84–0.90). Women were 18% (age-adjusted rate ratio [aRR] 0.82, 95% CI 0.79–0.83) less likely than men to initiate statins across all years. The incidence of statin use was also highest among individuals aged 65–74 years, who were about 15% (sex-adjusted rate ratio [sRR] 1.15, 95% CI 1.13–1.16) and 45% (sRR 1.45, 95% CI 1.44–1.47) more likely to initiate statins than those aged 75–84 and ≥ 85 years, respectively. Atorvastatin was the most commonly dispensed statin across all years. The proportion of new users dispensed high-intensity statins increased year-on-year from 23.6% in 2007 to 30.5% in 2016 (RR 1.26, 95% CI 1.21–1.31).

Conclusion

The proportion of older adults in Australia using statins has increased over the last decade, although the incidence has declined. Atorvastatin is the most commonly dispensed statin and the use of high intensity statin has increased.

     

Production of metacyclic forms by cyclical transmission of west African Trypanosoma (T.) brucei isolates from man and animals

Fifteen West African Trypanosoma (T.) brucei isolates from man and animals were cyclically transmitted. Five stocks, belonging to the non-gambiense group, could easily be transmitted through Glossina morsitans morsitans or Glossina m. centralis infected on mice, whereas successful transmission of the 10 isolates, identified as Trypanosoma brucei gambiense, was performed using G. palpalis gambiensis as vector. Glossina p. gambiensis was infected with culture-derived procyclic trypanosomes by repeated membrane feeding. In both cases, metacyclic forms could normally be detected in saliva samples of positive flies 3 to 4 weeks after first infection. These forms of major interest were subsequently characterized relative to their resistance/sensitivity against normal human serum in vitro and their antigenic properties, using indirect immunofluorescence: Metacyclic forms of all the T. b. gambiense isolates were determined by a stable human serum resistance and a restricted metacyclic variable antigen type (mVAT) repertoire, whereas representatives of the non-gambiense group (including TH162/78E 021) were sensitive against the trypanolytic factors of normal human serum and expressed a heterogeneous metacyclic antigen profile.     

Evidence for haploidy in metacyclic forms of Trypanosoma brucei.

The parasitic flagellate Trypanosoma brucei undergoes a series of morphologic and metabolic changes during its passage in the digestive organs of its insect vector, a Glossina or tsetse fly. This morphogenesis ends by the differentiation, in the salivary gland of the fly, of the metacyclic form, which will be transmitted in the bloodstream of the mammalian host. On the basis of DNA microfluorometric measurements, we propose that these metacyclic trypanosomes have a haploid amount of DNA, compared to that of bloodstream forms and also of the proventricular forms, which initiate the invasion of the salivary glands. It can be inferred that trypanosomes undergo meiosis during their developmental cycle in the tsetse fly's salivary glands and syngamy shortly after cyclic transmission.     

Maternal corticosterone is transferred into the egg yolk

Hormones deposited in the avian egg are considered in many studies to influence or to adjust offspring phenotype to prevailing conditions in an adaptive way. Several studies demonstrated an effect of corticosterone, the main glucocorticoid in birds, injected into the egg on the developing chick, but the injection of steroids in the egg is far from mimicking the natural distribution of the hormone in the egg. Other studies applied a stressor or corticosterone to the mother. However it is still debated whether an increase of circulating corticosterone in the mother translates into higher concentrations of corticosterone in the egg. Therefore, we investigated in captive barn owls Tyto alba whether circulating corticosterone in egg-laying females elevated within a physiological range, resulted in the deposition of corticosterone in eggs. We found that an increase in circulating corticosterone in the mother within the naturally occurring range translated into elevated concentrations of corticosterone in the yolk of subsequently laid eggs, indicating a specific time frame and yolk layer of corticosterone deposition. We conclude that increasing maternal plasma corticosterone within a naturally occurring range is an efficient tool to increase corticosterone concentration in the egg and to manipulate conditions for the developing embryo.