Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Knee posture during gait and global functioning post-stroke: a theoretical ICF framework using current measures in stroke rehabilitation

Abstract Purpose: To characterise the global functioning post-stroke in patients with normal knee posture (NKP) and abnormal knee posture (AKP) during loading-response. Methods: 35 people, 6 months post-stroke. with NKP and AKP were identified and assessed using clinical measures classified into the corresponding International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) domains: weight function (body mass index); muscle power (knee isometric strength); muscle tone (Modified Ashworth Scale); voluntary motor control (Leg sub-score of Fugl–Meyer scale); walking short distances (5-meter walk test; Timed-Up and Go test); walking on different surfaces (Functional Ambulation Categories); moving around (Falls Efficacy Scale); moving using equipment (walking aids) and global assessment of function (WHODAS II). Age, gender, marital status, current occupation and caregivers support characterised personal factors. Results: Patients with AKP had significantly lower knee flexor strength, higher knee flexor and extensor spasticity, more difficulty in maintaining a standing position, walking short and long distances, used walking aids more often and needed more caregiver support. Restriction in activities and participation were correlated with knee flexor strength for AKP and with knee spasticity for NKP group. Conclusions: AKP restricts functioning and participation. Implications for Rehabilitation Identification of abnormal knee posture in gait can indicate potential assessment and treatment priorities, e.g. knee flexor strength is a major determinant of functioning in patients with abnormal knee posture and should be assessed. The identification of an abnormal knee posture post-stroke seems relevant for planning patient’s long-term needs (e.g. amount of caregiver support). The interpretation of functional measures based on the ICF framework can enhance clinical-reasoning in rehabilitation post-stroke.
Modeling and predicting the spread of COVID-19 in Lebanon: A Bayesian perspective

In this article, we investigate the problem of modelling the trend of the current Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic in Lebanon along time. Two different models were developed using Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation methods. The models fitted included Poisson autoregressive as a function of a short-term dependence only and Poisson autoregressive as a function of both a short-term dependence and a long-term dependence. The two models are compared in terms of their predictive ability using root mean squared error and deviance information criterion. The Poisson autoregressive model that allows to capture both short and long term memory effects performs best under all criterions. The use of such a model can greatly improve the estimation of number of new infections, and can indicate whether disease has an upward/downward trend, and where about every country is on that trend, so that containment measures can be applied and/or relaxed.
Neuropsychiatric symptoms in community‐dwelling Mexican‐Americans: results from the Hispanic Established Population for Epidemiological Study of the Elderly (HEPESE) study

The Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) is a well‐established measure of psychopathology and frequently used in dementia studies. Little is known about its psychometric characteristics at a population level, particularly among Hispanics. We report the frequency of NPI symptoms in a community‐dwelling older Mexican‐American (MA) population cohort and the degree of symptom‐related distress experienced by participant informants.
Prognostic Models With Competing Risks: Methods and Application to Coronary Risk Prediction

Clinical decision-making often relies on a subject's absolute risk of a disease event of interest. However, in a frail population, competing risk events may preclude the occurrence of the event of interest. We review competing-risk regression models with a view toward predictive modeling. We show how measures of prognostic performance (such as calibration and discrimination) can be adapted to the competing-risks setting. An example of coronary heart disease (CHD) prediction in women aged 55–90 years in the Rotterdam study is used to illustrate the proposed methods, and to compare the Fine and Gray regression model to 2 alternative approaches: (1) a standard Cox survival model, which ignores the competing risk of non-CHD death, and (2) a cause-specific hazards model, which combines proportional hazards models for the event of interest and the competing event. The Fine and Gray model and the cause-specific hazards model perform similarly. However, the standard Cox model substantially overestimates 10-year risk of CHD; it classifies 18% of the individuals as high risk (>20%), compared with only 8% according to the Fine and Gray model. We conclude that competing risks have to be considered explicitly in frail populations such as the elderly.
Glutenin is involved in the gluten‐driven mucosal T cell response

Gluten ingestion causes coeliac disease in susceptible individuals. Gluten is a heterogeneous mixture of glutenin and gliadin, the latter of which is considered responsible for disease induction. By combining high‐performance liquid chromatography purification steps of gluten with a T cell bioassay and mass spectral analyses, we have identified a glutenin peptide (glt04 707 – 742) that activates T cells from the small intestine of a coeliac disease patient and results in the secretion of large amounts of IFN‐γ. The minimal T cell stimulatory core of the peptide (residues 724 – 734) is repetitively present in glutenin molecules. Moreover, it was observed that a large number of naturally occurring variants of this peptide are recognized by the T cells. These data suggest that the large heterogeneity of glutenin proteins dramatically increases the number of available T cell epitopes. Together, the results provide new insight into the nature of the gluten antigens that lead to coeliac disease and suggest that glutenin, next to gliadin‐derived antigens, may be involved in the disease process.
Intratumoral Heterogeneity of ALK-Rearranged and ALK/EGFR Coaltered Lung Adenocarcinoma.

PURPOSE Genetic intratumoral heterogeneity has a profound influence on the selection of clinical treatment strategies and on addressing resistance to targeted therapy. The purpose of this study was to explore the potential effect of intratumoral heterogeneity on both genetic and pathologic characteristics of ALK-rearranged lung adenocarcinoma (LADC). METHODS We tested ALK fusions and EGFR mutations in 629 patients with LADC by using laser-capture microdissection to capture spatially separated tumor cell subpopulations in various adenocarcinoma subtypes and to test for ALK fusions and EGFR mutations in ALK-rearranged, EGFR-mutated, and ALK/EGFR coaltered LADCs to compare the oncogenic driver status between different tumor cell subpopulations in the same primary tumor. RESULTS Among the 629 patients, 30 (4.8%) had ALK fusions, 364 (57.9%) had EGFR mutations, and two had ALK fusions that coexisted with EGFR mutations. Intratumoral heterogeneity of ALK fusions were identified in nine patients by reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction. In the two patients with an ALK/EGFR coaltered status, genetic intratumoral heterogeneity was observed both between different growth patterns and within the same growth pattern. The relative abundance of ALK and EGFR alterations was different in the same captured area. ALK fusions were positively associated with a micropapillary pattern (P = .002) and were negatively associated with a lepidic pattern (P = .008) in an expanded statistical analysis of 900 individual adenocarcinoma components, although they appeared to be more common in acinar-predominant LADCs in the analysis of 629 patients. CONCLUSION Intratumoral genetic heterogeneity was demonstrated to coexist with histologic heterogeneity in both single-driver and ALK/EGFR coaltered LADCs. Altered oncogenic drivers in spatially separated subclones of the same tumor may be different.
A Semi-Supervised Learning Approach to Enhance Health Care Community–Based Question Answering: A Case Study in Alcoholism

Background Community-based question answering (CQA) sites play an important role in addressing health information needs. However, a significant number of posted questions remain unanswered. Automatically answering the posted questions can provide a useful source of information for Web-based health communities. Objective In this study, we developed an algorithm to automatically answer health-related questions based on past questions and answers (QA). We also aimed to understand information embedded within Web-based health content that are good features in identifying valid answers. Methods Our proposed algorithm uses information retrieval techniques to identify candidate answers from resolved QA. To rank these candidates, we implemented a semi-supervised leaning algorithm that extracts the best answer to a question. We assessed this approach on a curated corpus from Yahoo! Answers and compared against a rule-based string similarity baseline. Results On our dataset, the semi-supervised learning algorithm has an accuracy of 86.2%. Unified medical language system–based (health related) features used in the model enhance the algorithm’s performance by proximately 8%. A reasonably high rate of accuracy is obtained given that the data are considerably noisy. Important features distinguishing a valid answer from an invalid answer include text length, number of stop words contained in a test question, a distance between the test question and other questions in the corpus, and a number of overlapping health-related terms between questions. Conclusions Overall, our automated QA system based on historical QA pairs is shown to be effective according to the dataset in this case study. It is developed for general use in the health care domain, which can also be applied to other CQA sites.
The Effect of Relaxation Interventions on Cortisol Levels in HIV-Seropositive Women

Purpose: Activation of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis, assessed in terms of cortisol levels, may enhance the ability of HIV to infect lymphocytes and downregulate the immune system, accelerating disease progression. This study sought to determine the effects of relaxation techniques on cortisol levels in HIV-seropositive women. Methods: Women (n = 150) were randomized to a group cognitive–behavioral stress management (CBSM) condition or an individual information condition and underwent 3 types of relaxation training (progressive muscle relaxation, imagery, and autogenic training). Cortisol levels were obtained pre- and postrelaxation. Results: Guided imagery was effective in reducing cortisol in the group condition (t = 3.90, P < .001), and muscle relaxation reduced cortisol in the individual condition (t = 3.11, P = .012). Among participants in the group condition attending all sessions, the magnitude of pre- to postsession reduction became greater over time. Conclusions: Results suggest that specific relaxation techniques may be partially responsible for cortisol decreases associated with relaxation and CBSM.
Chondrocytes harvested from osteochondritis dissecans cartilage are able to undergo limited in vitro chondrogenesis despite having perturbations of cell phenotype in vivo

Our objective was to characterize the variation in gene expression for key genes associated with chondrogenic phenotype of osteochondrosis (OC)‐affected and normal chondrocytes, and to identify whether OC chondrocytes can redifferentiate and regain a phenotype similar to normal chondrocytes if appropriate chondrogenic signals are given. Equine articular cartilage removed at surgery to treat clinically significant OC lesions was collected (n = 10), and the gene expression evaluated and compared to aged‐matched normal samples (n = 10). Cartilage was harvested from normal (n = 4) and OC (n = 3) joints from horses at necropsy. Chondrogenic pellet cultures were established following monolayer proliferation. After 14 days in culture, the pellets were assessed by histochemical and pellet weight analysis, assay of glycosaminoglycan (GAG) content, and gene expression. Chondrocytes from OC cartilage expressed significantly more Coll‐I, ‐II, ‐III, and ‐X than chondrocytes from normal cartilage (all p < 0.0001). Furthermore, OC chondrocytes expressed significantly more MMP‐13, ADAMTS‐4 (both p < 0.0001), and TIMP‐1 (p < 0.001) and significantly less TIMP‐2 and TIMP‐3. Pellets created from OC chondrocytes contained significantly less GAG (p = 0.0069) and expressed significantly less Sox9 and significantly more superficial zone protein (SZP) (p = 0.0105) than pellets created from normal cartilage. The results suggest that chondrocytes from OC cartilage at the time of surgical treatment have perturbations in phenotype compared to cells from normal cartilage. Despite these differences, following monolayer expansion and pellet culture under chondrogenic conditions, chondrocytes derived from OC cartilage retain some ability to undergo chondrogenic differentiation and synthesize an appropriate cartilage‐like matrix. However, this chondrogenic differentiation potential is inferior to that seen in aged‐matched normal chondrocytes. © 2008 Orthopaedic Research Society. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Orthop Res 26:1133–1140, 2008
MicroRNAs in Development

Over 10 years ago, the lab of Victor Ambros cloned an unusual gene, lin-4, which encodes two small RNA transcripts[1]. In the past few years, hundreds more of these tiny transcripts, termed microRNAs (miRNAs), have been uncovered in over a dozen species. The functions of the first two miRNAs, lin-4 and let-7, were relatively easy to identify since they were found in forward genetic screens in Caenorhabditis elegans[1,2,3]. However, uncovering the functions of the growing list of miRNAs presents a challenge to developmental biologists. This review will describe our current understanding of how miRNAs regulate gene expression and will focus on the roles these noncoding RNAs play during the development of both invertebrate and vertebrate species.
Perinatal HIV Counseling and Rapid Testing in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico: Seroprevalence and Correlates of HIV Infection

Objective:To evaluate the acceptance of counseling and rapid HIV testing and to determine the associated risk factors for HIV infection in pregnant women in Baja California, Mexico. Methods:Pregnant women attending Tijuana General Hospital who consented to participate in the study had blood drawn for a rapid HIV test (Determine HIV-1/2; Abbott Diagnostics, North Chicago, IL). A confirmatory enzyme immunoassay and Western blot were performed and demographic and risk factor data were obtained. Results:From March to November 2003, 1529 (92.5%) of 1653 women who sought prenatal care and 1068 (95.2%) of 1122 women in labor consented to participate. HIV seroprevalence was significantly higher among women screened during labor (12/1068, 1.12%) compared with those seeking prenatal care (5/1529, 0.33%). HIV-infected women were significantly more likely to use injection drugs (12% vs. 1%, P = 0.02), “other” drugs, including methamphetamine, marijuana, and cocaine (65% vs. 6%, P < 0.001), to have more sex partners (3.6 vs. 2.6, P = 0.0002), to not have received prenatal care (41% vs. 13%, P = 0.03), and to have a spouse/partner who used injection drugs (36% vs. 4%, P < 0.001) or “other” drugs (73% vs. 23%, P < 0.001). In multivariate regression analysis, use of methamphetamine (adjusted odds ratio, 17.8, 95% CI, 5.6-56) was independently associated with the risk of HIV infection. Conclusions:These findings indicate a wide acceptance of HIV counseling and testing and document a higher HIV seroprevalence among pregnant women delivering at Tijuana General Hospital than current established estimates in Mexico.
Crossmodal influences in somatosensory cortex: Interaction of vision and touch

Previous research has shown that information from one sensory modality has the potential to influence activity in a different modality, and these crossmodal interactions can occur early in the cortical sensory processing stream within sensory‐specific cortex. In addition, it has been shown that when sensory information is relevant to the performance of a task, there is an upregulation of sensory cortex. This study sought to investigate the effects of simultaneous bimodal (visual and vibrotactile) stimulation on the modulation of primary somatosensory cortex (SI), in the context of a delayed sensory‐to‐motor task when both stimuli are task‐relevant. It was hypothesized that the requirement to combine visual and vibrotactile stimuli would be associated with an increase in SI activity compared to vibrotactile stimuli alone. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was performed on healthy subjects using a 3T scanner. During the scanning session, subjects performed a sensory‐guided motor task while receiving visual, vibrotactile, or both types of stimuli. An event‐related design was used to examine cortical activity related to the stimulus onset and the motor response. A region of interest (ROI) analysis was performed on right SI and revealed an increase in percent blood oxygenation level dependent signal change in the bimodal (visual + tactile) task compared to the unimodal tasks. Results of the whole‐brain analysis revealed a common fronto‐parietal network that was active across both the bimodal and unimodal task conditions, suggesting that these regions are sensitive to the attentional and motor‐planning aspects of the task rather than the unimodal or bimodal nature of the stimuli. Hum Brain Mapp, 2010. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Visualization of Erythrocytes in the Zebrafish Brain

Abstract We found that erythrocytes of zebrafish have cytoplasmic peroxidase activity. Blood in the zebrafish brain was visualized using a standard peroxidase staining method after formaldehyde fixation. The erythrocytes in the brain were heavily stained, but neurons and glias were not stained at all. This easy method enables the distribution of erythrocytes in the whole brain to be determined, and enables the actual number of erythrocytes in each area in the brain to be calculated. The paths of major, thick blood vessels in zebrafish brain are similar to those in higher vertebrates, however, the distribution of thin blood vessels is different. We also found that the erythrocytes were unevenly distributed in the brain. For example, the density of erythrocytes in the surface layer of the tectum was more than 30-fold higher than in the deeper granular layer. Very few erythrocytes were found in bundles of axons like cranial nerves and the medial longitudinal fascicle. In general, fewer erythrocytes were found in areas near the ventricle, whereas many more were found closer to the surface of the brain. The distribution of erythrocytes in the brains of sleeping, awake and actively moving fish were compared. In the brains of sleeping fish, most of the erythrocytes were present in large vessels. This was not observed in brains of awake or actively moving fish. We found that the blood supply to motor neurons in the ventral horn of the spinal cord increased during active movement compared to that in awake or sleeping fish.
Investigation of Phosphorus In-Diffusion and Strain in GaAsP/GaAs Using High-Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy

We report our experiments based on the interfaces of a 5-period superlattice, containing GaAsP(3Å)/GaAs (190Å) heterostructures grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). The atomic arrangement at the interfaces of GaAsP/GaAs is investigated using high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). Our results indicate that the superlattice was grown coherently with strained layers. We propose that the atomic arrangement at the interface is GaP, assuming that phosphorus incorporation occurs primarily via substitution due to desorption of arsenic at the surface for substrate temperatures above 500°C. The incorporation of phosphorus has been investigated using fast Fourier transform (FFT) patterns and shows a form of strain distribution near the heterointerface. The FFT patterns of the superlattice reveal that strain distributes mostly near the interface and gradually decreases along the direction of growth. Phosphorus diffused into a GaAs layer changes the lattice constant in the growth direction, which reduces strain in the superlattice.
Increased Misincorporation Fidelity Observed for Nucleoside Analog Resistance Mutations M184V and E89G in Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Reverse Transcriptase Does Not Correlate with the Overall Error Rate Measured In Vitro

ABSTRACT Nucleoside analog-resistant variants of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) reverse transcriptase (RT) that displayed higher in vitro polymerase fidelity were previously identified via nucleotide insertion and mispair extension assays. To evaluate the contribution of increased nucleotide insertion and primer extension fidelities on the overall error rate of HIV-1 RT, we have measured the impact of two such mutations, E89G and M184V, on DNA copying fidelity in an M13 phage-based forward mutation assay. Using this assay, we observed mutation frequencies of 8.60 × 10−3, 6.26 × 10−3, 5.53 × 10−3, and 12.30 × 10−3 for wild-type, E89G, M184V, and double-mutant E89G/M184V HIV-1 RTs, respectively. Therefore, the overall polymerase fidelities of wild-type, E89G, M184V, and E89G/M184V HIV-1 RTs are similar (less than twofold differences) for DNA-dependent DNA synthesis. Thus, rather large increases in fidelity of deoxynucleoside triphosphate insertion and mispair extension observed previously appear not to influence the overall error rate of these mutants. However, a qualitative analysis of the mutations induced revealed significant differences in the mutational spectra between the wild-type and mutant enzymes.
Dietary sources and intakes of folates and vitamin B12 in the Spanish population: Findings from the ANIBES study

Background Folates and vitamin B12 are key nutrients in one-carbon metabolism and related diseases. Updated and plausible information on population intakes and their major dietary sources is scarce and urgently needed in Spain in order to increase the knowledge that can lead as previous step to prevention by fortification and supplementation policies. Aims The present study aims to evaluate main dietary folate and vitamin B12 sources and intakes in the Spanish population. Materials and methods Results were derived from the ANIBES cross-sectional study using a nationally representative sample of the Spanish population (9–75 years, n = 2,009). Results Food groups with the highest mean proportional contribution to total folate intakes in both males and females were vegetables (21.7–24.9%) and cereals (10.7–11.2%), while meat and meat products (26.4%) and milk and dairy products (27.3%) were for B12. Total median folate and B12 intakes amongst women were 156.3 μg/d and 4.0 μg/d while for men were 163.6 μg/d and 4.5 μg/d, respectively. In all age groups, vitamin intakes were significantly higher in plausible than in non-plausible energy reporters. Conclusion A limited number of participants had adequate folate intakes, whereas vitamin B12 intakes were adequate for practically the entire population. There is a clear need for improving folates intake in the Spanish population.