Associated movement in hemiplegia: the effects of force exerted, limb usage and inhibitory training.

The intensity of associated movement or motor overflow in the contralateral limb during a unimanual task was evaluated in postacute traumatic brain injured (TBI) young adults with left side hemiplegia and age-matched controls. Both groups demonstrated increased overflow with increasing active limb force, although the trend was for greater overflow to occur in the TBI group, particularly when the spastic limb was active. Following three successive days of inhibitory training with electromyographic feedback, TBI subjects were able to significantly reduce the amount of overflow in the contralateral limb, greater inhibition occurring in the noninvolved limb during spastic limb movement. The results are discussed in terms of a dual model of inhibitory control and the role of such processes in uncoupling the limbs for independent limb usage.     

Reliability of Measurements of Tongue and Hand Strength and Endurance Using the Iowa Oral Performance Instrument with Healthy Adults

The purpose of this study was to investigate the reliability of tongue and handgrip strength and endurance measurements in healthy adults using the Iowa Oral Performance Instrument. Fifty-one healthy participants (21 males, 30 females; age range = 19–57 years) were tested on four occasions 1 week apart to determine test–retest reliability. The primary outcome measures were isometric tongue and handgrip strength (best of three trials) and sustained isometric endurance. Small increases (changes in group mean) in both anterior (1.7 %) and posterior (2.5 %) tongue strength and handgrip strength (5 %) between weeks 1 and 2 were observed with no change in subsequent weeks, suggesting that there is only a small learning effect for these measurements. The within-subject variation (mean-typical error expressed as a coefficient of variation [CV]) indicated higher than desirable initial variation for anterior (CV 10.8 %) and posterior (CV 11.8 %) tongue strength and handgrip strength (CV 15.2 %) but this was reduced in weeks 2–4. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) indicated acceptable and improved reliability for both anterior (ICC 0.77–0.90) and posterior (ICC 0.79–0.86) tongue strength and handgrip strength (ICC 0.69–0.91) after week 1. Additional exploratory analyses were conducted with a subset of data to determine whether two values within 5 kPa (tongue) or 15 kPa (handgrip) provide superior strength reliability. Neither tongue nor hand endurance measurements were sufficiently reliable. These findings suggest that tongue and handgrip strength values demonstrate acceptable reliability, especially if familiarization is provided. Further investigation is needed to reduce sources of variability in tongue endurance measurements.     

山奈酚通过抑制NLRP3炎症小体介导的脂肪组织炎症改善db/db小鼠胰岛素抵抗发生

目的：探讨山奈酚能否通过调控肥胖小鼠脂肪组织炎症改善胰岛素抵抗发生并研究作用机制。方法：db/m小鼠作为对照组,db/db雄性小鼠随机分为模型组、二甲双胍组(0.15 g·kg^-1·d^-1)和山奈酚组(50 mg·kg^-1·d^-1)。连续灌胃给药6周,每周记录小鼠体重,6周后进行葡萄糖耐量试验、胰岛素耐量试验、皮下和附睾白色脂肪组织质量测定;HE染色观察脂肪组织形态学变化,免疫组化法观察巨噬细胞向脂肪组织的浸润程度及巨噬细胞标志物F4/80的表达,实时荧光定量PCR检测TNF-α和IL-18以及Arg-1和IL-10的mRNA表达,蛋白质免疫印迹试验检测NLRP3、pro-caspase1、cle-caspase1和IL-1β表达。结果：与模型组相比,山奈酚能够显著抑制db/db小鼠脂肪质量增加,抑制脂肪细胞肥大。山奈酚组小鼠脂肪组织巨噬细胞浸润减少,TNF-α和IL-18 mRNA表达减少,Arg-1和IL-10 mRNA表达增加;山奈酚治疗能够抑制小鼠附睾脂肪组织NLRP3、caspase1以及...     

Effect of a maxillary glossectomy prosthesis on articulation and swallowing

Swallowing was found to be substantially improved with the prosthesis. Less aspiration, less time necessary to complete the swallow, and greater variation in food consistency tolerated were all positive results of the prosthesis. In addition, videofluoroscopic studies of tongue movements during speech revealed that tip-alveolar /t-d/ and back-velar /k-g/ productions were more normal with the prosthesis. With the prosthesis, the understandibility of /t/ and /d/ was improved 20% and that of /k/ and /g/, 33%. It is clear that compromises must be effected in prosthesis design to facilitate improvement in both speech and swallowing. A large prosthetic mass in the oral cavity can also negatively change speech resonance. These issues are being investigated, as are acoustic and perceptual studies of speech articulation. Future research should address whether a combination of maxillary and mandibular prostheses would result in better speech and swallowing function. A mandibular prosthesis could replace missing teeth and alveolar contour that might influence speech and swallowing. A mandibular prosthesis might also allow construction of a smaller maxillary glossectomy prosthesis to interact with the mandibular prosthesis.     

Applications of flow cytometry in the analysis of blood leukocytes

Flow cytometric analysis of blood leukocytes is currently used for both routine clinical measurements as well as for cutting edge research applications. This technology has enabled rapid and accurate determination of leukocyte antigens and quantitative analysis of leukocyte subsets, tests of leukocyte function, determination of the presence of antineutrophil and antilymphocyte antibodies in plasma and on cells, measurement of CD34+ hematpoietic stem cells in peripheral blood and bone marrow samples, measurement of apoptosis, and detection of virus-infected leukocytes. This review will focus on the use of the flow cytometer for investigations of blood leukocytes in transfusion medicine.     

3D variable‐density SPARKLING trajectories for high‐resolution T2*‐weighted magnetic resonance imaging

We have recently proposed a new optimization algorithm called SPARKLING (Spreading Projection Algorithm for Rapid K‐space sampLING) to design efficient compressive sampling patterns for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This method has a few advantages over conventional non‐Cartesian trajectories such as radial lines or spirals: i) it allows to sample the k‐space along any arbitrary density while the other two are restricted to radial densities and ii) it optimizes the gradient waveforms for a given readout time. Here, we introduce an extension of the SPARKLING method for 3D imaging by considering both stacks‐of‐SPARKLING and fully 3D SPARKLING trajectories. Our method allowed to achieve an isotropic resolution of 600 μm in just 45 seconds for T2? ‐weighted ex vivo brain imaging at 7 Tesla over a field‐of‐view of 200 × 200 × 140 mm³ . Preliminary in vivo human brain data shows that a stack‐of‐SPARKLING is less subject to off‐resonance artifacts than a stack‐of‐spirals.