Digital health refers to the use of information and communication technologies in medicine (including smartphone apps, wearables, other non-invasive sensors, informatics and telehealth platforms) to prevent illness, deliver treatment, and promote wellness. This rapidly proliferating group of technologies has the potential to reduce harm for people with opioid use disorder (OUD) and facilitate the recovery process; however, development in this space for OUD has been slower compared to that for other medical conditions. Unique issues with OUD management surrounding patient provider relationships, interaction with the healthcare system, autonomy and trust sometimes hinder care approaches, including those in digital health.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The recent growth of eHealth is unprecedented, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. Within eHealth, wearable technology is increasingly being adopted because it can offer the remote monitoring of chronic and acute conditions in daily life environments. Wearable technology may be used to monitor and track key indicators of physical and psychological stress in daily life settings, providing helpful information for clinicians.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiopotential electrodes play an integral role within smart wearables and clothing in capturing vital signals like electrocardiogram (ECG), electromyogram (EMG), and electroencephalogram (EEG). This study focuses on dry e-textile electrodes (E1-E6) and a laser-cut knit electrode (E7), to assess their impedance characteristics under varying contact forces and moisture conditions. Synthetic perspiration was applied using a moisture management tester and impedance was measured before and after exposure, followed by a 24 h controlled drying period.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFParkinson's disease (PD) is a neurological progressive movement disorder, affecting more than 10 million people globally. PD demands a longitudinal assessment of symptoms to monitor the disease progression and manage the treatments. Existing assessment methods require patients with PD (PwPD) to visit a clinic every 3-6 months to perform movement assessments conducted by trained clinicians.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe advancement of smart textiles has led to significant interest in developing wearable textile sensors (WTS) and offering new modalities to sense vital signs and activity monitoring in daily life settings. For this, textile fabrication methods such as knitting, weaving, embroidery, and braiding offer promising pathways toward unobtrusive and seamless sensing for WTS applications. Specifically, the knitted sensor has a unique intermeshing loop structure which is currently used to monitor repetitive body movements such as breathing (microscale motion) and walking (macroscale motion).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGlutaric acidemia type 1 (GA-1, OMIM 231670) is an autosomal recessive inborn error of metabolism caused by the deficiency of glutaryl-coenzyme A (CoA) dehydrogenase with most children presenting in infancy with encephalopathy, dystonia, and macrocephaly. In this article, we presented the clinical characteristics, molecular profile, and outcomes in 29 unrelated families with affected children (30 cases total). The mean age at onset of illness was 10 months (±14.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFeasibility of portable neuroimaging of cerebellar transcranial direct current stimulation (ctDCS) effects on the cerebral cortex has not been investigated vis-à-vis cerebellar lobular electric field strength. We studied functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) in conjunction with electroencephalography (EEG) to measure changes in the brain activation at the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the sensorimotor cortex (SMC) following ctDCS as well as virtual reality-based balance training (VBaT) before and after ctDCS treatment in 12 hemiparetic chronic stroke survivors. We performed general linear modeling (GLM) that putatively associated the lobular electric field strength with the changes in the fNIRS-EEG measures at the ipsilesional and contra-lesional PFC and SMC.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Investigation of lobule-specific electric field effects of cerebellar transcranial direct current stimulation (ctDCS) on overground gait performance has not been performed, so this study aimed to investigate the feasibility of two lobule-specific bilateral ctDCS montages to facilitate overground walking in chronic stroke.
Methods: Ten chronic post-stroke male subjects participated in this repeated-measure single-blind crossover study, where we evaluated the single-session effects of two bilateral ctDCS montages that applied 2 mA via 3.14 cm disc electrodes for 15 min targeting (a) dentate nuclei (also, anterior and posterior lobes), and (b) lower-limb representations (lobules VIIb-IX).
Unlabelled: Stroke is one of the leading causes of disability with ~80% of post-stroke survivors suffering from gait-related deficits. Conventional gait rehabilitation settings are labor-intensive and need rigorous involvement of clinicians (who use their expertise to decide the dosage of exercise intensity based on patient's capability). This demands a technology-assisted individualized exercise platform that can offer varying dosage of exercise intensity based on one's capability.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Cerebrovascular accidents are the second leading cause of death and the third leading cause of disability worldwide. We hypothesized that cerebellar transcranial direct current stimulation (ctDCS) of the dentate nuclei and the lower-limb representations in the cerebellum can improve functional reach during standing balance in chronic (>6 months' post-stroke) stroke survivors.
Materials And Methods: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) based subject-specific electric field was computed across a convenience sample of 10 male chronic (>6 months) stroke survivors and one healthy MRI template to find an optimal bipolar bilateral ctDCS montage to target dentate nuclei and lower-limb representations (lobules VII-IX).
Tay-Sachs disease (TSD) (OMIM) is a neurodegenerative lysosomal storage disorder caused due to mutations in the HEXA gene. To date, nearly 190 mutations have been reported in HEXA gene. Here, we have characterized 34 enzymatically confirmed TSD families to investigate the presence of novel as well as known variants in HEXA gene.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Ring chromosome 6 (r(6)) is a rare disorder that mainly occurs as a 'de novo' event. Nonetheless, a wide phenotypic spectrum has been reported in r(6) cases, depending on breakpoints, size of involved region, copy number alterations and mosaicism of cells with r(6) and/or monosomy 6 due to loss of r(6).
Case Presentation: An 11-year-old male was referred with developmental delay, intellectual disability and microcephaly.
Ambulation is a fundamental requirement of human beings for enjoying healthy community life. A neurological disorder such as stroke can significantly affect one's gait thereby restricting one's active community participation. To quantify one's gait, spatiotemporal gait parameters are widely used in clinical context with different tests such as 10 meter walk test, 6 min walk test, etc.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Tay-Sachs disease (TSD) is a sphingolipid storage disorder caused by mutations in the HEXA gene. To date, nearly 170 mutations of HEXA have been described, including only one 7.6 kb large deletion.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA 34-week-old, 1.6 kg preterm boy was admitted for management of mild respiratory distress syndrome. On the third day of life 1 min after an intravenous cannulation attempt at the right cubital fossa, he developed pregangrene bluish discoloration of all fingertips up to the distal interphalangial joint and pallor of right palm.
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