Laboratory studies on a potential stress indicator in field research: The palmar sweat index

in Bond, N. W.; Siddle, D. A. T. (Eds.) Psychobiology: Issues and Applications (1989)

Large-scale assessment of polyglutamine repeat expansions in Parkinson disease

in Neurology (2015), 85(15), 1283-92

OBJECTIVES: We aim to clarify the pathogenic role of intermediate size repeat expansions of SCA2, SCA3, SCA6, and SCA17 as risk factors for idiopathic Parkinson disease (PD). METHODS: We invited ... [more ▼]

OBJECTIVES: We aim to clarify the pathogenic role of intermediate size repeat expansions of SCA2, SCA3, SCA6, and SCA17 as risk factors for idiopathic Parkinson disease (PD). METHODS: We invited researchers from the Genetic Epidemiology of Parkinson's Disease Consortium to participate in the study. There were 12,346 cases and 8,164 controls genotyped, for a total of 4 repeats within the SCA2, SCA3, SCA6, and SCA17 genes. Fixed- and random-effects models were used to estimate the summary risk estimates for the genes. We investigated between-study heterogeneity and heterogeneity between different ethnic populations. RESULTS: We did not observe any definite pathogenic repeat expansions for SCA2, SCA3, SCA6, and SCA17 genes in patients with idiopathic PD from Caucasian and Asian populations. Furthermore, overall analysis did not reveal any significant association between intermediate repeats and PD. The effect estimates (odds ratio) ranged from 0.93 to 1.01 in the overall cohort for the SCA2, SCA3, SCA6, and SCA17 loci. CONCLUSIONS: Our study did not support a major role for definite pathogenic repeat expansions in SCA2, SCA3, SCA6, and SCA17 genes for idiopathic PD. Thus, results of this large study do not support diagnostic screening of SCA2, SCA3, SCA6, and SCA17 gene repeats in the common idiopathic form of PD. Likewise, this largest multicentered study performed to date excludes the role of intermediate repeats of these genes as a risk factor for PD. [less ▲]

Late heartbeat-evoked potentials are associated with survival after cardiac arrest

in Resuscitation (2018), 126(1), 7-13

RATIONALE: Cardiac arrest (CA) is a serious condition characterized by high mortality rates, even after initial successful resuscitation, mainly due to neurological damage. Whether brain-heart ... [more ▼]

RATIONALE: Cardiac arrest (CA) is a serious condition characterized by high mortality rates, even after initial successful resuscitation, mainly due to neurological damage. Whether brain-heart communication is associated with outcome after CA is unknown. Heartbeat-evoked brain potentials (HEPs) represent neurophysiological indicators of brain-heart communication. The aim of this study was to address the association between HEPs and survival after CA. METHODS: HEPs were calculated from resting EEG/ECG in 55 CA patients 24 hours after resuscitation. All patients were treated with targeted temperature management and a standardized sedation protocol during assessment. We investigated the association between HEP amplitude (180- 320 ms, 455-595 ms, 860-1000 ms) and 6-month survival. RESULTS: Twenty-five of 55 patients (45%) were still alive at 6-month follow-up. Survivors showed a higher HEP amplitude at frontopolar and frontal electrodes in the late HEP interval than non-survivors. This effect remained significant after controlling for between-group differences in terms of age, Fentanyl dose, and time lag between resuscitation and EEG assessment. There were no group differences in heart rate or heart rate variability. CONCLUSION: Brain-heart communication, as reflected by HEPs, is associated with survival after CA. Future studies should address the brain-heart axis in CA. [less ▲]

Lateralisation in Parkinson disease.

in Cell and tissue research (2018), 373(1), 297-312

Asymmetry of dopaminergic neurodegeneration and subsequent lateralisation of motor symptoms are distinctive features of Parkinson's disease compared to other forms of neurodegenerative or symptomatic ... [more ▼]

Asymmetry of dopaminergic neurodegeneration and subsequent lateralisation of motor symptoms are distinctive features of Parkinson's disease compared to other forms of neurodegenerative or symptomatic parkinsonism. Even 200 years after the first description of the disease, the underlying causes for this striking clinicopathological feature are not yet fully understood. There is increasing evidence that lateralisation of disease is due to a complex interplay of hereditary and environmental factors that are reflected not only in the concept of dominant hemispheres and handedness but also in specific susceptibilities of neuronal subpopulations within the substantia nigra. As a consequence, not only the obvious lateralisation of motor symptoms occurs but also patterns of associated non-motor signs are defined, which include cognitive functions, sleep behaviour or olfaction. Better understanding of the mechanisms contributing to lateralisation of neurodegeneration and the resulting patterns of clinical phenotypes based on bilateral post-mortem brain analyses and clinical studies focusing on right/left hemispheric symptom origin will help to develop more targeted therapeutic approaches, taking into account subtypes of PD as a heterogeneous disorder. [less ▲]

Lean mass plays a gender-specific role in familial resemblance for femoral neck bone mineral density in adult subjects

in Osteoporosis International (2006), 17(6), 897-907

Introduction Whether the femoral neck bone mineral density (FN BMD) of children may be better predicted from that of their parents when taking into account the anthropometry of the children was assessed ... [more ▼]

Introduction Whether the femoral neck bone mineral density (FN BMD) of children may be better predicted from that of their parents when taking into account the anthropometry of the children was assessed in a healthy adult sample consisting of 86 mother-daughter, 32 mother-son, 32 father-daughter, and 23 father-son pairs from 128 families. Heritability for FN BMD, which is considered to be a measurement of general resemblance, was defined as the regression coefficient of the mean of the parents’ BMD. Among the anthropometric factors, lean mass was the most strongly associated with FN BMD following the adjustment for age in women (r=0.52, p<0.0001) and men (r=0.25, p=0.02). After adjustment for age, calcium intake, physical activity, and menopause and hormonal replacement therapy if relevant, heritability estimates (h2) for FN BMD were 0.68±0.23 [95% credible interval (CI): 0.15–0.99] in father-daughter pairs, 0.40±0.17 (95% CI: 0.08–0.74) in mother-daughter pairs, and 0.19±0.15 (95% CI: 0.01–0.57) in father-son pairs. Adjustment for lean mass of children increased the h2 for FN BMD in mother-son pairs [from 0.24±0.17 (95% CI: 0.01–0.57) to 0.66±0.18 (95% CI: 0.26–0.95)]. The present results show that FN BMD is heritable in adult father-daughter pairs (7.2% of a daughter’s FN BMD variance was explained by the father’s FN BMD) and that taking into account the lean mass of sons might improve the prediction of their FN BMD based on that of their mother’s (reduction of sons’ FN BMD residual variance by 5.1%). Taking the lean mass of children into account might improve the prediction of their FN BMD by 9.1% in daughters and by 18.1% in sons, irrespective of their parent’s FN BMD. These results, obtained using a Bayesian regression model, have to be confirmed in further studies involving a greater number of adult parent-offspring pairs of both genders before extrapolation to clinical practice. [less ▲]

The legacy of intimate partner violence in heterosexual and gay (LGBTQ) communities. New challenges for the family doctor.

in Baum, Erika; Ungan, Mehmet; Steylaerts, Carl (Eds.) The World Book of Family Medicine (2020)

The “classic” gender violence of the heterosexual couples has left a painful legacy to the LGBT community. Recent researches show that rates of IPV in LGBT are similar to or higher than the rates found ... [more ▼]

The “classic” gender violence of the heterosexual couples has left a painful legacy to the LGBT community. Recent researches show that rates of IPV in LGBT are similar to or higher than the rates found for heterosexual women. Though hardly worked, it seems to be that existing approach programs turn out to be incomplete and insufficient to address this problem in heterosexual women, being practically unknown in sexual minorities. The greater part of health professionals seems to have a vague and unclear knowledge of many basic LGBTQ+ concepts and specific health needs (social isolation, substance abuse, eating disorders, intimate partner violence, cancer prevention, etc...) The reality is that most of nowadays family physicians are not conscious nor trained to identify no manage the differences in professional help need between sexual minorities and heterosexual patients. [less ▲]

Leprosorien in der Großregion SaarLorLux

E-print/Working paper (2010)

Die Lepra ist eine Infektionskrankheit, die höchstwahrscheinlich aus dem Orient stammt und in Mitteleuropa von der Spätantike bis zum Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts verbreitet war. In dieser Zeit bestanden ... [more ▼]

Die Lepra ist eine Infektionskrankheit, die höchstwahrscheinlich aus dem Orient stammt und in Mitteleuropa von der Spätantike bis zum Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts verbreitet war. In dieser Zeit bestanden die sogenannten Leprosorien als Institutionen, die speziell der Unterbringung und Versorgung Leprakranker dienten. Insbesondere vom hohen Mittelalter bis in die frühe Neuzeit waren diese Einrichtungen in Europa weit verbreitet. Die Karte zeigt die Verbreitung von Leprosorien von ihren Anfängen im Frühmittelalter bis zum Verschwinden der Krankheit zu Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts. Bisher wurde nur der westliche Teil der Großregion untersucht. Die östlichen Teile werden später ergänzt. [less ▲]

Level of physical activity among children and adolescents in Europe: A review of physical activity assessed objectively by accelerometry

in Public Health (2013), 127(4), 301-311

This study explored the proportion of European youth who are sufficiently active according to physical activity (PA) recommendations, based exclusively on objective assessment through accelerometers. A ... [more ▼]

This study explored the proportion of European youth who are sufficiently active according to physical activity (PA) recommendations, based exclusively on objective assessment through accelerometers. A systematic electronic search of studies published up to March 2012 was conducted. PubMed was used to identify accelerometry-assessed PA studies that involved European youth. Within the 131 European studies, only 35 clearly reported the proportion of youth meeting the PA recommendations. Different thresholds lying between 1000 and 4000 counts/min (cpm) were used to define moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA). Overall, up to 100% of youth may be sufficiently active when using a threshold of approximately >1000-1500 cpm. With the most cited cut-off point (i.e. >2000 cpm), up to 87% of European youth might be considered physically active with reference to the current recommendations. Alternatively, with a cut-off point >3000 cpm, no more than 3-5% of them appeared to achieve these recommendations. The large discrepancy in outcomes released by accelerometer data is mainly due to the variety of cut-off points for MVPA among youth, hindering the definition of a clear goal towards PA promotion in Europe. Standardization of methods is urgently required. © 2013 The Royal Society for Public Health. [less ▲]

The Levodopa Response Trial and the Parkinson Disease Digital Biomarker Challenge: Monitoring symptoms of Parkinson’s disease in the lab and home using wearable sensors

in Movement Disorders : Official Journal of the Movement Disorder Society (2018, October 03), 33(S2), 525

Objective: To leverage a community of researchers and shared wearable data to develop algorithms to estimate the severity of PD specific symptoms. Background: People with Parkinson’s disease (PwPD) often ... [more ▼]

Objective: To leverage a community of researchers and shared wearable data to develop algorithms to estimate the severity of PD specific symptoms. Background: People with Parkinson’s disease (PwPD) often experience fluctuations in motor symptom severity. Wearable sensors have the potential to help clinicians monitor symptoms over time, outside the clinic. However, to gather accurate and clinically-relevant measures, there is a need to develop robust algorithms based on clinically- labelled data. Methods: The Levodopa Response Trial captured three-axis acceleration from two wrist-worn sensors and a smartphone located at the waist from 29 PwPD continuously over 4 days. On day 1, in an in-clinic visit, participants performed clinical assessments and motor tasks on their regular medication regimen. During these visits, a clinician also provided symptom severity scores for tremor, bradykinesia, and dyskinesia. On days 2 & 3, sensor data was collected while participants were at home. On day 4, participants returned to the clinic for the same assessments as day 1, but arrived without having taken their medication for at least 10 hours. Leveraging this dataset, Sage Bionetworks, the Michael J Fox Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation launched the PD Digital Biomarker DREAM Challenge which made a subset of the data available to researchers to develop robust and accurate algorithms for the estimation of specific symptoms’ severity. Results: Teams participating in the challenge used several technical approaches, from signal processing to deep learning. 35 submissions were received for the estimation of action tremor severity. Teams achieved an area under the precision-recall curve (AUPR) of 0.444 to 0.75. As for dyskinesia during movement, 37 submissions were received and the teams achieved an AUPR of 0.175 to 0.477. Finally, 39 submissions were received for the estimation of bradykinesia and the teams achieved an AUPR of 0.413 to 0.95. Null expectations for the testing datasets were 0.432, 0.195, and 0.266, respectively. Conclusions: Making datasets available to the community leverages the creativity of different groups to develop robust and accurate algorithms for the estimation of PD symptom severity. This will lead to better quality and interpretability of data collected in unsupervised settings within the community. [less ▲]

Life Satisfaction between Non-Luxembourgish and Native Luxembourgish Postgraduate Students

in Sociology Migration and Integration (2015)

Life satisfaction (LS) is a potential key to social progress and contributes to the functioning of individuals. In Luxembourg, the postgraduates who receive financial aid from the government are ... [more ▼]

Life satisfaction (LS) is a potential key to social progress and contributes to the functioning of individuals. In Luxembourg, the postgraduates who receive financial aid from the government are registered at the Centre for Documentation and Information on Higher Education. In order to obtain the financial aid, one of the criteria dictates that one of the parents of foreign students should have been working in Luxembourg for at least 5 years. In this country, which is built on migration (46% of the resident population consists of foreigners), is the basis on which our scientific questions are raised: (1) between non-Luxembourgish and native Luxembourgish students is the LS different? (2) What respective relationships exist with mental health-related factors, career attributes, socio-economic characteristics, and LS? (3) What are their associations of mental health (health satisfaction, psychological quality of life, worry), perception of financial situation and career attributes (adaptability, optimism, knowledge, planning) on LS? Between 2012 and 2013, 644 postgraduates were contacted by post to complete an online questionnaire in English or French. Foreign postgraduates who are settled in Luxembourg (born in Luxembourg and did not have the Luxembourgish citizenship, N=147) and native students (born in Luxembourg and had the nationality, N=284), were compared. Postgraduates who were born in Luxembourg but did not have the citizenship or were not born in Luxembourg and had the Luxembourgish citizenship were excluded. A single item measured LS (1 = not at all satisfied to 10 = very satisfied) same as in the European quality of life survey. Bivariate tests, correlations and multiple linear models were used, in which only significant relationships (p< 0.05) were integrated. Between the two groups, no differences exist between LS’ indicators (7.8/10 non-Luxembourgish; 8.0/10 natives), both of which is higher than the European indicator 7.2/10 (for 25-34 years). However, non-Luxembourgish students are older than natives are (29.3 years vs. 26.3 years), perceive their financial situation as more difficult, and a higher percentage of their parents have an education level higher than a Bachelor's degree (father 59.2% vs 44.6% for natives; mother 51.4% vs 33.7% for natives). In addition, father’s education is related to postgraduates’ LS and the higher is their level, the greater is their contribution to LS. Whereas for the native students, the better their health satisfaction, and career optimism is, the higher their LS are. For the both group, mental health-related factors, perception of their financial situation, career optimism, adaptability, and planning are linked to LS. The higher their psychological quality of life is, the better is their LS. Good health and favourable attitudes related to the job market enhance their LS. [less ▲]