Hypermetabolism associated with worse prognosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Journal of Neurology - Exploration of hypermetabolism in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) with different ethnicities is needed to understand its metabolic implications for clinical management....     

Safety and efficacy of hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis in treating end-stage diabetic nephropathy: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

International Urology and Nephrology - Present investigation aims to elucidate safety and efficacy of hemodialysis as well as peritoneal dialysis in treating end-stage diabetic nephropathy. We...     

Detection of functional and structural brain alterations in female schizophrenia using elastic net logistic regression

Brain Imaging and Behavior - Neuroimaging technique is a powerful tool to characterize the abnormality of brain networks in schizophrenia. However, the neurophysiological substrate of schizophrenia...     

Facial emotion perception abilities are related to grey matter volume in the culmen of cerebellum anterior lobe in drug-naïve patients with first-episode schizophrenia

Brain Imaging and Behavior - Impaired capability for understanding and interpreting the expressions on other people's faces manifests itself as a core feature of schizophrenia, contributing to...     

Electroacupuncture enhances resting-state functional connectivity between dorsal caudate and precuneus and decreases associated leptin levels in overweight/obese subjects

Brain Imaging and Behavior - Electroacupuncture (EA) is a safe and effective method for treating obesity. However, how it modulates reward-related brain activity/functional connectivity and gut...     

PS-Net: Progressive Selection Network for Salient Object Detection

Cognitive Computation - Low-level features contain abundant details and high-level features have rich semantic information. Integrating multi-scale features in an appropriate way is significant for...     

Development of a New Index Based on Preoperative Serum Lipocalin 2 to Predict Post-LSG Weight Reduction

Obesity Surgery - Bariatric surgery is the most effective therapy for obesity, but targeted weight reduction is not always achieved. Serum lipocalin-2 (LCN2) is closely associated with obesity, but...     

Deep brain stimulation for chorea-acanthocytosis: a systematic review

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a reversible treatment for chorea-acanthocytosis (ChAc). Its safety and efficacy remain elusive due to the low prevalence of ChAc. We aimed to investigate the safety and efficacy of DBS for ChAc by systematically reviewing literature through PubMed and EMBASE. Inclusion criteria were reports on the efficacy or safety of DBS for ChAc and English language articles, and exclusion criteria were other movement disorders, non-human subjects, and studies without original data. Most studies were published as case reports, and we therefore pooled these cases in one cohort. Twenty studies with 34 patients were included. The mean age of symptom onset was 29.3 years (range, 17–48). The median follow-up was 12 months (range, 2–84). Twenty-nine patients underwent GPi-DBS, two received STN-DBS, and one underwent Vop-DBS. Electrodes were implanted into the ventralis oralis complex of the thalamus and the pallidal in two patients. Symptoms seemed to be easier relieved in chorea (88.5%) and dystonia (76.9%) but dysarthria of most patients (85.7%) was no response after DBS. The Unified Huntington’s Disease Rating Scale-Motor Score was used to assess the efficacy of DBS in 25 patients; the mean score decreased from 43.2 to 22.3 and the median improvement rate was 46.7%. Of 24 patients with data on adverse events, complications occurred in 9 patients (37.5%; mostly transient and mild events). DBS is a promising treatment for ChAc with satisfactory efficacy and safety based on the review. Pallidal and thalamic DBS have been applied in ChAc; GPi-DBS seems to be more widely used.

     

Effects of a mixed exercise program on cancer related-fatigue and health-related quality of life in oncogeriatric patients: A feasibility study

ObjectivesCancer-related fatigue (CRF) is the most debilitating side effect occurring with cancer treatment accumulation. Although combining aerobic and resistance exercise is an effective strategy to counteract this side effect, there is a paucity of studies performed with older patients even if this is the most affected population. Hence, the objective was to assess the feasibility and the impact of a twelve-week exercise program performed during cancer treatment on CRF, quality of life, and physical capacity in older adults diagnosed with early-stage cancer.Material and MethodsTwenty patients with cancer (70 ± 4 years) beginning systemic cancer treatments were recruited and randomized into two groups: 1) aerobic and resistance training (MIX) and 2) stretching (CON). Both groups were supervised three times/week for a total of twelve weeks. The primary outcome was feasibility and secondary outcomes were CRF (FACIT-Fatigue questionnaire), health-related quality of life (HRQoL) (EORTC QLQ-C30 questionnaire) and physical capacity (6MWT and grip strength).ResultsIn Mix, both exercise adherence (88.2%) and completion rate (86.6%) were high, which suggests that exercise is feasible in an oncologic context. In the MIX group, HRQoL improved (p = 0.05) and CRF was clinically, ableit non-significantly (p = 0.09), decreased. Concerning physical capacity, MIX showed a clinical improvement in the 6MWT during the intervention (p = 0.002) compared to CON.ConclusionThis study suggests that, in older patients with cancer undergoing adjuvant or neoadjuvant systemic treatments, a mixed exercise program is feasible, well tolerated and might help mitigate CRF and HRQoL decrements.