Measured and predicted resting energy expenditure in wheelchair rugby athletes

Objective: Report measured resting energy expenditure (REE) in wheelchair rugby athletes and evaluate agreement between REE and the prediction models of Chun, Cunningham, Harris-Benedict, Mifflin, Nightingale and Gorgey, and Owen.

Design: Cohort-based validation study.

Setting. Paralympic team training camp.

Participants: Fourteen internationally competitive athletes who play wheelchair rugby, 13 of whom had cervical spinal cord injuries (SCI).

Outcome Measures: A portable metabolic analyzer was used to measure REE following an overnight fast and dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) was used to assess lean body mass for the prediction equations.

Results: REE in the current sample was 1735?±?257?kcal?×?day^?1 ranging from 1324 to 2068?kcal?×?day^{?1 Bhambhani Y. Physiology of wheelchair racing in athletes with spinal cord injury. Sports Med 2002;32(1):23–51.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]}. Bland–Altman analyses revealed negative mean bias but similar limits of agreement between measured REE and scores predicted by Chun, Cunningham, Mifflin, Nightingale and Gorgey, and Owen models in elite athletes who play wheelchair rugby.

Conclusion: Prediction models regressed on persons with and without SCI under-predicted REE of competitive wheelchair rugby athletes. This outcome may be explained by the higher REE/fat-free mass (FFM) ratio of current athletes compared to less active samples. Findings from the current study will help practitioners to determine nutrient intake needs on training days of varied intensity.     

Attachment to Caregivers and Type 1 Diabetes in Children

Attachment is a behavioral and physiological system, which enables individual’s dynamic adaptation to its environment. Attachment develops in close interaction between an infant and his/her mother, plays an important role in the development of the infant’s brain, and influences the quality of interpersonal relationships throughout life.Security of attachment is believed to influence individual response to stress, exposing insecurely organized individuals to deregulated autonomic nervous system and exaggerated hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal activity, which, in turn, produces increased and prolonged exposure to stress-hormones. Such stress responses may have considerable implications for the development of diverse health-risk conditions, such as insulin resistance and hyperlipidemia, shown by numerous studies.Although the mechanisms are not yet fully understood, there is compelling evidence highlighting the role of psychological stress in the development of type 1 diabetes (T1D). One of the possible contributing factors for the development of T1D may be the influence of attachment security on individual stress reactivity. Thus, the suggestion is that insecurely attached individuals are more prone to experience increased and prolonged influence of stress hormones and other mechanisms causing pancreatic beta-cell destruction.The present paper opens with a short overview of the field of attachment in children, the principal attachment classifications and their historic development, describes the influence of attachment security on individual stress-reactivity and the role of the latter in the development of T1D. Following is a review of recent literature on the attachment in patients with T1D with a conclusion of a proposed role of attachment organization in the etiology of T1D.     

Secondary haemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis: Experience from the Uppsala University Hospital

Background. Haemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) is a rare clinical syndrome characterized by fever, hepatosplenomegaly, cytopenia, and progressive multiple-organ failure. HLH in adults is often secondary to autoimmune diseases, cancer, or infections in contrast to familial HLH. Treatment of secondary HLH is directed against the triggering disease in addition to immunosuppressive therapy, the latter commonly according to the HLH-2004 protocol.Methods. We conducted a retrospective study to identify triggering diseases, disease-specific and immunosuppressive therapy administered, and prognosis in adult patients with secondary HLH. Patient data were collected from October 2010 to January 2015.Results. Ten adult patients with secondary HLH were identified. Seven were men, and the median age at diagnosis was 62 years. Five cases were triggered by malignant disease and five by infection. The median patient fulfilled five of the eight HLH-2004 diagnostic criteria. All patients fulfilled the criteria fever, cytopenia, and ferritin >500 µg/L. Median time from hospital admission to HLH diagnosis was 20 days. Four patients received immunosuppressive therapy according to the HLH-2004 protocol. The prognosis was dismal, especially for the patients with malignancy-associated HLH, of whom all died.Conclusion. HLH should be suspected in patients who present with fever, cytopenia, and ferritin >500 µg/L. Secondary HLH has a dismal prognosis. None of the patients with HLH triggered by malignancy survived. Achieving remission of the triggering disease seems to be important for a favourable outcome as, in all surviving patients, the haemophagocytic syndrome resolved after remission of the underlying infection.