work disability

Students with physical disabilities are underrepresented in medicine, driven in part by ableist beliefs about the ability of individuals with disabilities to complete procedure-based or surgically oriented clerkships, including obstetrics and gynecology (Ob/Gyn). There is a dearth of literature on this topic; however, there is also a growing commitment to disability inclusion by medical and specialty training associations. Nevertheless, published case studies and accommodation protocols for medical student wheelchair users navigating an Ob/Gyn clerkship are absent in the literature...

Temporomandibular disorders are multi-factorial conditions affected by psychological, biomechanical, and neuromuscular factors. Stress and anxiety experienced during the pandemic are capable of influencing and aggravating temporomandibular disorders and orofacial pain. The study aimed to analyze whether the coronavirus infection can directly affect these diseases. All participants were asked to complete the Pain Screener and Patients Health Questionnaire and were assigned to Group I: healthy participants and Group 2: participants with existing complaints...

BACKGROUND: Congenital cytomegalovirus (cCMV) is the most common congenital viral infection in the United States. Symptomatic infections can cause severe hearing loss and neurological disability, although ~ 90% of cCMV infections are asymptomatic at birth. Despite its prevalence, the long-term neurobehavioral risks of asymptomatic cCMV infections are not fully understood. The objective of this work was to evaluate for potential long-term neurobehavioral sequelae in infants with asymptomatic cCMV...

BACKGROUND: Cultural-based literature focusing on Asian autistic immigrants living in Western countries is very limited. AIMS: The present study is a quality improvement exercise aiming to fill the gap by investigating the employment needs of and barriers for Chinese autistic youth and young adults in Ontario, Canada. METHODS & PROCEDURES: 71 individuals diagnosed with autism and 24 diagnosed with other mental illnesses, aged 12-29, participated in an online survey regarding their work readiness, work skills, interests, health and cultural concerns...

This study applied the functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to investigate frontal activity in autism when performing verbal fluency test and emotion recall task. We recruited 32 autistic adults without intellectual disability and 30 typically-developing controls (TDC). Prefrontal hemodynamic changes were evaluated by fNIRS when the participants performed the verbal fluency test and emotion recall task. fNIRS signals in the prefrontal cortex were compared between autism and TDC. Compared to TDC, autistic adults showed comparable performance on the verbal fluency test but exhibited lower frontal activity on the vegetable category...

The post-secondary transition for autistic youth is a complex process, with hopes and expectations serving as malleable mediators often overlooked in research and practice. Career awareness, exploration, and counseling services play a critical role in facilitating vocational transition, but the vocational hopes and expectations of autistic youth and their parents are often disregarded. This study aims to explore these aspirations and their impact on the vocational transition process, seeking to harmonize elements to better align with the needs of autistic youth and their families...

Many viruses inhibit general host gene expression to limit innate immune responses and gain preferential access to the cellular translational apparatus for their protein synthesis. This process is known as host shutoff. Influenza A viruses (IAVs) encode two host shutoff proteins: nonstructural protein 1 (NS1) and polymerase acidic X (PA-X). NS1 inhibits host nuclear pre-messenger RNA maturation and export, and PA-X is an endoribonuclease that preferentially cleaves host spliced nuclear and cytoplasmic messenger RNAs...

BACKGROUND: Zimbabwean government adopted competency-based curriculum in 2017 as a measure to prepare learners for life and work in an indigenised economy and increasingly globalised and competitive environment. The government also sought to ensure that learners develop skills necessary for lifelong learning in line with the emerging opportunities. OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to explore challenges faced by teachers in the implementation of competency-based curriculum to learners with learning disabilities in Mhangura of Makonde District in Zimbabwe...

BACKGROUND: Research on the lived experience of dementia is burgeoning across the social and health sciences. Yet, very little is still known about the experience of dementia for many tribes and ethnoreligious groups, as most studies are conducted in Western countries. OBJECTIVE: The aim is to advance the understanding of the role of faith and prayer in the lives of people with dementia in Nigeria through a lens of everyday citizenship. METHOD: Interviews were conducted with 17 older people with dementia in a low-income, Yoruba-speaking community in Southwestern Nigeria...

PURPOSE: Workplace accommodation can help employees with disabilities remain employed or access employment rather than leave the labor force. However, the workplace accommodation process is still poorly understood and documented. AIM: The aim of this study was to develop a national operating model to make workplace accommodation interactive and procedural for workplaces and work ability support services and lower the threshold to making accommodations. METHODS: The collaborative development process was carried out by a multiprofessional expert team with eleven workplaces in the private and public sectors in Finland...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: In the last decades, Germany has experienced a vast increase in the number of individuals applying for or receiving disability benefit. Only a small proportion of them intends to return to work. The present study aims to identify and describe the percentage of temporary disability pensioners, who have the intention to return to working life. METHODS: The final sample consisted of 496 insured individuals who were receiving temporary disability pension from the Regional German Pension Insurance (DRV) at that time...

OBJECTIVE: In recent years, EEG-based Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) applied to inner speech classification have gathered
attention for their potential to provide a communication channel for individuals with speech disabilities. However, existing methodologies for this task fall short in achieving acceptable accuracy for real-life implementation. This paper concentrated on exploring
the possibility of using inter-trial coherence (ITC) as a feature extraction technique to enhance inner speech classification accuracy
in EEG-based BCIs...

The neural processes underpinning cognition and language development in infancy are of great interest. We investigated EEG power and coherence in infancy, as a reflection of underlying cortical function of single brain region and cross-region connectivity, and their relations to cognition and early precursors of speech and language development. EEG recordings were longitudinally collected from 21 infants with typical development between approximately 1 and 7 months. We investigated relative band power at 3-6Hz and 6-9Hz and EEG coherence of these frequency ranges at 25 electrode pairs that cover key brain regions...

BACKGROUND: Opioids are widely used in chronic non-cancer pain (CNCP) management. However, they remain controversial due to serious risk of causing opioid use disorder (OUD). Our main aim was to develop a predictive model for future clinical translation that include pharmacogenetic markers. METHODS: An observational study was conducted in 806 pre-screened Spanish CNCP patients, under long-term use of opioids, to compare cases (with OUD, N.=137) with controls (without OUD, N...

Always-on, upper-body input from sensors like accelerometers, infrared cameras, and electromyography hold promise to enable accessible gesture input for people with upper-body motor impairments. When these sensors are distributed across the person's body, they can enable the use of varied body parts and gestures for device interaction. Personalized upper-body gestures that enable input from diverse body parts including the head, neck, shoulders, arms, hands and fingers and match the abilities of each user, could be useful for ensuring that gesture systems are accessible...

People with visual impairment face significant material challenges to access and inclusion in South Africa. These are in large part rooted in and supported by prejudiced assumptions about the needs, nature and capabilities of this group. The cultural and psychological face of oppression needs to be attended to. To this end, this viewpoint brings together the work of three visually impaired scholars in three key areas pertaining to the promotion of the inclusion and citizenship of visually impaired persons in South Africa...

PROBLEM: Burnout and the psychological co-morbidities stress, anxiety and depression have a significant impact on healthcare providers, including midwives. These conditions impact the quality of care provided to women, and midwives' ability to remain in the profession. BACKGROUND: There is growing concern regarding the retention of maternity care providers in Canada, particularly midwives. Nationally, 33% of Canadian midwives are seriously considering leaving practice; impacts of the profession on work-life-balance and mental health being commonly cited reasons...

OBJECTIVE: Rumination is a major risk factor for the onset and recurrence of depressive episodes and has been associated with deficits in updating working memory content. This randomized controlled trial examines whether training updating-specific cognitive control processes reduces daily ruminative thoughts in clinically depressed individuals. METHODS: Sixty-five individuals with a current major depressive episode were randomized to 10 sessions of either cognitive control training (N = 31) or placebo training (N = 34)...

BACKGROUND: Diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) pose a serious long-term threat because of elevated mortality and disability risks. Research on its biomarkers is still, however, very limited. In this paper, we have effectively identified biomarkers linked with macrophage excretion in diabetic foot ulcers through the application of bioinformatics and machine learning methodologies. These findings were subsequently validated using external datasets and animal experiments. Such discoveries are anticipated to offer novel insights and approaches for the early diagnosis and treatment of DFU...

X-linked epilepsies are a heterogeneous group of epileptic conditions, which often overlap with X-linked intellectual disability. To date, various X-linked genes responsible for epilepsy syndromes and/or developmental and epileptic encephalopathies have been recognized. The electro-clinical phenotype is well described for some genes in which epilepsy represents the core symptom, while less phenotypic details have been reported for other recently identified genes. In this review, we comprehensively describe the main features of both X-linked epileptic syndromes thoroughly characterized to date ( PCDH19 -related DEE, CDKL5 -related DEE, MECP2 -related disorders), forms of epilepsy related to X-linked neuronal migration disorders (e...