Hemichorea associated with polycythaemia vera

Abstract Chorea is a rare complication of polycythaemia vera. Polycythaemic chorea occurs predominantly in females and usually in generalised form. We present a 66-year-old woman with acute onset hemichorea-ballism with no vascular pathology in the basal ganglia region. A clear relationship was observed between the onset of chorea and worsening of haematological parameters in the patient. After repeated phlebotomies the patient's clinical status was improved. Polycythaemic chorea must be considered, especially in the elderly, as early diagnosis leads to effective treatment and prevention of complications.     

P300-based brain computer interface: reliability and performance in healthy and paralysed participants.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to describe the use of the P300 event-related potential as a control signal in a brain computer interface (BCI) for healthy and paralysed participants. METHODS: The experimental device used the P300 wave to control the movement of an object on a graphical interface. Visual stimuli, consisting of four arrows (up, right, down, left) were randomly presented in peripheral positions on the screen. Participants were instructed to recognize only the arrow indicating a specific direction for an object to move. P300 epochs, synchronized with the stimulus, were analyzed on-line via Independent Component Analysis (ICA) with subsequent feature extraction and classification by using a neural network. RESULTS: We tested the reliability and the performance of the system in real-time. The system needed a short training period to allow task completion and reached good performance. Nonetheless, severely impaired patients had lower performance than healthy participants. CONCLUSIONS: The proposed system is effective for use with healthy participants, whereas further research is needed before it can be used with locked-in syndrome patients. SIGNIFICANCE: The P300-based BCI described can reliably control, in 'real time', the motion of a cursor on a graphical interface, and no time-consuming training is needed in order to test possible applications for motor-impaired patients.     

Synthesis of 1-alkyl-3,4-dihydroisoquinoline derivatives and study of their effect on arterial pressure

A series of 1-alkyl-3,4-dihydroisoquinolines and the related 4-alkyl-1,2-dihydro-benzo[f]isoquinolines was synthesized using reactions of dialkylbenzylcarbinols and their naphthyl analogs with alkylcyanides. Experiments showed that 1-alkyl-6,7-dimethoxy-3,4-dihydroisoquinolines typically produce a hypotensive action, while the benzo-annelated structures usually exhibit a hypertensive effects. The most active compound decreases the arterial pressure in cats by 52 Torr and the effect lasts for about 4 hours. __________ Translated from Khimiko-Farmatsevticheskii Zhurnal, Vol. 40, No. 3, pp. 15–17, March, 2006.     

Falls and consequent injuries in hospitalized patients: effects of an interdisciplinary falls prevention program

Background  

Patient falls in hospitals are common and may lead to negative outcomes such as injuries, prolonged hospitalization and legal liability. Consequently, various hospital falls prevention programs have been implemented in the last decades. However, most of the programs had no sustained effects on falls reduction over extended periods of time.