MASA tool

Neural tube defects (NTDs) occur secondary to failed closure of the neural tube between the third and fourth weeks of gestation. The worldwide incidence ranges from 0.3 to 200 per 10,000 births with the United States of American NTD incidence at around 3-6.3 per 10,000 dependent on race and socioeconomic background. Human NTD incidence has fallen by 35-50% in North America due to mandatory folic acid fortification of enriched cereal grain products since 1998. The US Food and Drug Administration has approved the folic acid fortification of corn masa flour with the goal to further reduce the incidence of NTDs, especially among individuals who are Hispanic...

Elderly pneumonia patients have various underlying diseases and social backgrounds, and it is difficult to predict their mortality using the current severity assessment tools. However, aspiration is a risk factor for mortality in pneumonia patients. In the evaluation of aspiration, endoscopic and video fluoroscopic methods are reliable but cannot be performed in all pneumonia patients. We evaluated the significance of the Mann Assessment of Swallowing Ability (MASA) in these patients. This study was prospectively performed between December 2014 and June 2015, and all adult hospitalized patients with pneumonia were consecutively enrolled...

BACKGROUND: In a healthy individual, ammonia is converted to urea in the liver. Urea is then transported through the bloodstream and then excreted into the urine by the kidneys. In patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD), the accumulated urea is degraded by salivary urease into ammonia, which is then excreted by breathing. Breath ammonia can therefore be used for detecting the increased nitrogen-bearing wastes. In our pilot study, an electrochemical sensor was used to measure and analyze breath ammonia in healthy volunteers and patients with CKD...

The large majority of the available dysphagia screening tools has been developed for the stroke population. Only few screening tools are suitable for heterogeneous groups of patients admitted to a subacute care unit. The Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital (RBWH) dysphagia screening tool is a nurse-administered, evidence-based swallow screening tool for generic acute hospital use that demonstrates excellent sensitivity and specificity. No Italian version of this tool is available to date. The aim of this study was to determine the reliability and screening accuracy of the Italian version of the RBWH (I-RBWH) dysphagia screening tool...

OBJECTIVES: Carotid intima-media thickness (cIMT) may be used increasingly as a cardiovascular disease (CVD) screening tool in individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI) as other routine invasive diagnostic tests are often unfeasible. However, variation in cIMT acquisition and analysis methods is an issue in the current published literature. The growth of the field is dependent on cIMT quality acquisition and analysis to ensure accurate reporting of CVD risk. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the quality of the reported methodology used to collect cIMT values in SCI...

The establishment of consistent and reliable methods for the analysis of atherosclerosis molecular pathways and for testing the efficiency of new therapeutics is of utmost importance. Here, we fed ApoE-knockout (KO) mice with high-fat diet to for 16 weeks to induce atherosclerosis. Atherosclerotic lesions in mice were methodically investigated using pathologic analyses and molecular biology tools. These lesions were histopathologically classified into three categories: early, progressive, and combined lesions...

Motivation: A glycan consists of monosaccharides linked by glycosidic bonds, has branches and forms complex molecular structures. Databases have been developed to store large amounts of glycan-binding experiments, including glycan arrays with glycan-binding proteins. However, there are few bioinformatics techniques to analyze large amounts of data for glycans because there are few tools that can handle the complexity of glycan structures. Thus, we have developed the MCAW (Multiple Carbohydrate Alignment with Weights) tool that can align multiple glycan structures, to aid in the understanding of their function as binding recognition molecules...

Chronically critically ill patients often undergo prolonged mechanical ventilation. The role of noninvasive ventilation (NIV) during weaning of these patients remains unclear. The aim of this study was to determine the value of NIV and whether a parameter can predict the need for NIV in chronically critically ill patients during the weaning process. We conducted a prospective study that included chronically critically ill patients admitted to Spanish respiratory care units. The weaning method used consisted of progressive periods of spontaneous breathing trials...

BACKGROUND: Limited data available about the mechanisms of dysphagia and areas involving swallow after brain damage; accordingly it is hard to predict which cases are more likely to develop swallowing dysfunction based on the neuroimaging. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between brain lesions and dysphagia in a sample of acute conscious stroke patients. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In a cross-sectional study, 113 acute conscious stroke patients (69 male mean [standard deviation (SD)] age 64...

Fluorophores with emission wavelengths that shift depending on their hydrogen-bonding microenvironment in water would be fascinating tools for the study of biological events. Herein we describe the design and synthesis of a series of water-soluble solvatochromic fluorophores, 2,5-bis(oligoethylene glycol)oxybenzaldehydes (8-11) and 2,5-bis(oligoethylene glycol)oxy-1,4-dibenzaldehydes (14-17), based on a push-pull strategy. Unlike typical examples in this class of fluorophores, the fluorescence properties of these compounds are independent of solvent polarity and become fluorescent upon intermolecular hydrogen-bonding, exhibiting high quantum yields (up to ϕ = 0...

OBJECTIVE: to investigate the association between resilience and sociodemographic variables and the health of people with chronic kidney disease and / or type 2 diabetes mellitus. METHOD: a cross-sectional observational study performed with 603 people with chronic kidney disease and / or type 2 diabetes mellitus. A tool to collect socio-demographic and health data and the Resilience Scale developed by Connor and Davidson were applied. A descriptive and multivariate analysis was performed...

CONTEXT: Exact measurement of quality of life (QOL) in schizophrenia patients for evaluation of the patient's deterioration and also to assess the efficacy of therapeutic Interventions has become a daily task, which requires accurate assessment tools. AIMS: This study was aimed to assess the psychometric properties of a Persian version of schizophrenia QOL scale (SQLS) as a common transcultural instrument. SETTINGS AND DESIGN: One hundred and fifty schizophrenia patients who referred to Psychiatric Clinic in Noor Hospital (Isfahan, Iran) have been selected using simple sampling method...

AIM: Dysphagia is common in dependent older adults. Thus, a method of evaluating eating and swallowing functions that can be used to diagnose and manage dysphagia in a simple and robust manner is required. In 2002, the Mann Assessment of Swallowing Ability (MASA) was introduced to identify dysphagia in acute-stage stroke patients. As the MASA enables easy screening, it might also be applicable to dependent older adults if appropriate MASA cut-off values and the most useful assessment items could be determined...

Whole exome sequencing (WES) technologies have accelerated genetic studies of Mendelian disorders, yielding approximately 30% diagnostic success. We encountered a 13-year-old Japanese female initially diagnosed with familial hypercholesterolemia on the basis of clinical manifestations of severe hypercholesterolemia (initial LDL cholesterol=609 mg/dl at the age of one) and systemic intertriginous xanthomas with histories of recurrent self-limiting episodes of fever and arthritis. Both her phenotypes seemed to co-segregate in a recessive manner...

A very large grey area exists between translational stem cell research and applications that comply with the ideals of randomised control trials and good laboratory and clinical practice and what is often referred to as snake-oil trade. We identify a discrepancy between international research and ethics regulation and the ways in which regulatory instruments in the stem cell field are developed in practice. We examine this discrepancy using the notion of 'national home-keeping', referring to the way governments articulate international standards and regulation with conflicting demands on local players at home...

BACKGROUND: The Cotton osteotomy has been used to correct residual forefoot supination in flexible flatfoot deformity reconstruction. The purpose of this study was to delineate the radiographic effects of the Cotton osteotomy by controlling for concomitant procedures used for deformity correction. METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed 67 patients who underwent a Cotton osteotomy as part of a flatfoot reconstructive procedure. We evaluated 12 radiographic parameters including the articular surface angles of the foot, Meary angle, and a newly defined medial arch sag angle (MASA)...

BACKGROUND: Few rare variants in atrial fibrillation (AF)-associated genes have been functionally characterized to identify a causal relationship between these variants and development of AF. We here sought to determine the clinical effect of rare variants in AF-associated genes in patients with lone AF and characterized these variants electrophysiologically and bioinformatically. METHODS AND RESULTS: We screened all coding regions in 12 AF-associated genes in 90 patients with lone AF, with an onset of 47±11 years (66 men; mean age, 56±13 years) by high-resolution melting curve analysis and DNA sequencing...

The inverse problem for estimating model parameters from brain spike data is an ill-posed problem because of a huge mismatch in the system complexity between the model and the brain as well as its non-stationary dynamics, and needs a stochastic approach that finds the most likely solution among many possible solutions. In the present study, we developed a segmental Bayesian method to estimate the two parameters of interest, the gap-junctional (gc ) and inhibitory conductance (gi ) from inferior olive spike data...

Pathway-specific gene delivery is requisite for understanding complex neuronal systems in which neurons that project to different target regions are locally intermingled. However, conventional genetic tools cannot achieve simultaneous, independent gene delivery into multiple target cells with high efficiency and low cross-reactivity. In this study, we systematically screened all receptor-envelope pairs resulting from the combination of four avian sarcoma leukosis virus (ASLV) envelopes (EnvA, EnvB, EnvC, and EnvE) and five engineered avian-derived receptors (TVA950, TVB(S3), TVC, TVB(T), and DR-46TVB) in vitro...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: The 9-item Wearing-off Questionnaire (WOQ-9) is a useful tool for screening of wearing-off. We performed a validation study of the Japanese version of the WOQ-9 (JWOQ-9) using a cross-sectional design in Japanese Parkinson's disease (PD) patients diagnosed with sporadic PD and treated with levodopa. METHODS: Subjects with severe dementia, uncontrolled psychiatric comorbidities, and previous PD neurosurgery were excluded. The wearing-off phenomenon was detected according to the JWOQ-9, and the results were compared with independent evaluations of wearing-off conducted by PD specialists blinded to the JWOQ-9 results...