"You have to trust yourself": The Overlooked Role of Self-Trust in Coping with Chronic Illness.

Self-trust is essential to the well-being of people with chronic illnesses and those who care for them. In this exploratory essay, we draw on a trove of health narratives to catalyze examination of this important but often overlooked topic. We explore how self-trust is impeded at both personal and structural levels, how it can best be nourished, and how it is related to self-advocacy.

Parenting Children with Cystic Fibrosis: Developmental Acquisition of Expertise.

Objective: This study was designed to increase our understanding of parents' experiences managing the needs of their children with cystic fibrosis (CF) and to identify potential gaps in services.

Method: We used grounded dimensional analysis of anonymous survey data obtained from a quality improvement initiative conducted by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CFF). The Patient and Family Experience of Care (PFEC) survey was administered continuously at 125 CF care centers throughout the United States in 2017.

Production losses in laying hens during infestation with the poultry red mite .

A research centre with 30,568 laying hens, kept in enriched cages and in aviaries, had become naturally infested with poultry red mites (PRM) in 32 of its 48 bird units. Therefore, at the age of 52 weeks all hens were treated with fluralaner through the drinking water. After this treatment, PRM were no longer observed.

Effect of a Drinking Water Conditioner on Stability and Efficacy of Fluralaner in Laying Hens Infested with Poultry Red Mites.

Concurrent use of a colorant during drinking water treatment could contribute to the correct application of fluralaner to poultry. The present studies therefore examined whether the blue-colored drinking water conditioner Vac-Safe has an influence on the stability of fluralaner in water and/or on its efficacy for the control of poultry red mites (PRM). Laboratory trials showed that fluralaner dissolved at various concentrations in water conditioned with Vac-Safe retained full stability for at least 27 hr at temperatures up to 40 C.

A First-in-Human, Phase I Study of Neural Stem Cell Transplantation for Chronic Spinal Cord Injury.

We tested the feasibility and safety of human-spinal-cord-derived neural stem cell (NSI-566) transplantation for the treatment of chronic spinal cord injury (SCI). In this clinical trial, four subjects with T2-T12 SCI received treatment consisting of removal of spinal instrumentation, laminectomy, and durotomy, followed by six midline bilateral stereotactic injections of NSI-566 cells. All subjects tolerated the procedure well and there have been no serious adverse events to date (18-27 months post-grafting).

Improved Performance of Broilers and Broiler Breeders Associated with an Amended Vaccination Program Against Reovirosis.

A vertically integrated monitoring program was set up for breeders hatched in 2013 and their offspring to detect differences in performance related to the reovirus vaccination schedule. Within the same organization in Belgium, 17 breeder flocks were vaccinated with one dose of live and one dose of inactivated reovirus vaccine, while 14 flocks received two doses of inactivated vaccine without live priming. The hatchability of the eggs produced by these birds was examined.

High-precision comparison of the antiproton-to-proton charge-to-mass ratio.

Invariance under the charge, parity, time-reversal (CPT) transformation is one of the fundamental symmetries of the standard model of particle physics. This CPT invariance implies that the fundamental properties of antiparticles and their matter-conjugates are identical, apart from signs. There is a deep link between CPT invariance and Lorentz symmetry--that is, the laws of nature seem to be invariant under the symmetry transformation of spacetime--although it is model dependent.

Pain prevalence and its determinants after spinal cord injury: a systematic review.

Pain prevalence studies are important as they illustrate the magnitude of pain problems in a certain patient population, such as patients living with a spinal cord injury (SCI). Strikingly, reported pain prevalence rates in SCI patients are found to vary greatly, while determinants for the differences between pain prevalence reports remain unclear. We here aim to identify determinants for the differences (heterogeneity) in pain prevalence reports through a systematic review of all SCI pain prevalence reporting studies.

Translation of the rat thoracic contusion model; part 1-supraspinally versus spinally mediated pain-like responses and spasticity.

Study Design: Experimental animal study.

Objectives: Stimulus-evoked below-level paw withdrawals in animal models of spinal cord injury (SCI) can be mediated solely by below-level spinal cord reflexes. Interpreting lowered thresholds for such responses as a model for chronic below-level pain after (thoracic contusion) SCI appears not appropriate, which requires reinterpretation of many prior results.

Translation of the rat thoracic contusion model; part 2 - forward versus backward locomotion testing.

Study Design: Experimental animal study.

Objectives: Locomotion analyses in rat spinal cord contusion injury (SCI) models are widely used for the evaluation of recovery of supraspinal locomotor control. However, many commonly used locomotion tests are inadequate to test for spinal cord integrity as they assess motor function that can be highly mediated through below-level propriospinal pattern-generating circuitry, independently of below-level perception.

A source of antihydrogen for in-flight hyperfine spectroscopy.

Antihydrogen, a positron bound to an antiproton, is the simplest antiatom. Its counterpart-hydrogen--is one of the most precisely investigated and best understood systems in physics research. High-resolution comparisons of both systems provide sensitive tests of CPT symmetry, which is the most fundamental symmetry in the Standard Model of elementary particle physics.

Effective long-term immunosuppression in rats by subcutaneously implanted sustained-release tacrolimus pellet: effect on spinally grafted human neural precursor survival.

Achievement of effective, safe and long-term immunosuppression represents one of the challenges in experimental allogeneic and xenogeneic cell and organ transplantation. The goal of the present study was to develop a reliable, long-term immunosuppression protocol in Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats by: 1) comparing the pharmacokinetics of four different subcutaneously delivered/implanted tacrolimus (TAC) formulations, including: i) caster oil/saline solution, ii) unilamellar or multilamellar liposomes, iii) biodegradable microspheres, and iv) biodegradable 3-month lasting pellets; and 2) defining the survival and immune response in animals receiving spinal injections of human neural precursors at 6 weeks to 3 months after cell grafting. In animals implanted with TAC pellets (3.

Amelioration of motor/sensory dysfunction and spasticity in a rat model of acute lumbar spinal cord injury by human neural stem cell transplantation.

Introduction: Intraspinal grafting of human neural stem cells represents a promising approach to promote recovery of function after spinal trauma. Such a treatment may serve to: I) provide trophic support to improve survival of host neurons; II) improve the structural integrity of the spinal parenchyma by reducing syringomyelia and scarring in trauma-injured regions; and III) provide neuronal populations to potentially form relays with host axons, segmental interneurons, and/or α-motoneurons. Here we characterized the effect of intraspinal grafting of clinical grade human fetal spinal cord-derived neural stem cells (HSSC) on the recovery of neurological function in a rat model of acute lumbar (L3) compression injury.

Motor outcome and allodynia are largely unaffected by novel olfactory ensheathing cell grafts to repair low-thoracic lesion gaps in the adult rat spinal cord.

Olfactory ensheathing cells (OEC) are a promising graftable cell population for improving functional outcomes after experimental spinal cord injury. However only few studies have focused on experimental models with large cavitations, which require bridging substrates to transfer and maintain the donor cells within the lesion site. Here, a state-of-the-art collagen-based multi-channeled three dimensional scaffold was used to deliver olfactory ensheathing cells to 2 mm long unilateral low-thoracic hemisection cavities.

Survival and differentiation of human embryonic stem cell-derived neural precursors grafted spinally in spinal ischemia-injured rats or in naive immunosuppressed minipigs: a qualitative and quantitative study.

In previous studies, we have demonstrated that spinal grafting of human or rat fetal spinal neural precursors leads to amelioration of spasticity and improvement in ambulatory function in rats with spinal ischemic injury. In the current study, we characterize the survival and maturation of three different human embryonic stem (ES) cell line-derived neural precursors (hNPCs) once grafted into ischemia-injured lumbar spinal cord in rats or in naive immunosuppressed minipigs. Proliferating HUES-2, HUES-7, or HUES-9 colonies were induced to form embryoid bodies.

Improved broiler performance associated with Ornithobacterium rhinotracheale vaccination in breeders.

During a field study in 2010 the daily growth, feed conversion, first-week mortality, broiler loss due to mortality and slaughterhouse condemnation, and production index were monitored in 100 broiler flocks derived from four breeder farms vaccinated with Nobilis OR inac and four Ornithobacterium rhinotracheale-unvaccinated breeder farms of the same organization in Belgium. Other parameters related to the broiler flocks, such as flock size, season, age of the breeders, and corresponding breeder farms, were also noted. All gathered data were examined with ANOVA, linear correlation, and linear regression analyses.

Donor B-type natriuretic peptide predicts early cardiac performance after heart transplantation.

Background: Decision processes in heart donation remain difficult and are often based on subjective evaluation. We measured B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) in heart donors and analyzed its value as a discriminator for early post-transplant cardiac performance.

Methods: Blood samples were prospectively obtained in 94 brain-dead patients, among whom 56 were scheduled for heart donation.

Probing sporadic and familial Alzheimer's disease using induced pluripotent stem cells.

Our understanding of Alzheimer's disease pathogenesis is currently limited by difficulties in obtaining live neurons from patients and the inability to model the sporadic form of the disease. It may be possible to overcome these challenges by reprogramming primary cells from patients into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). Here we reprogrammed primary fibroblasts from two patients with familial Alzheimer's disease, both caused by a duplication of the amyloid-β precursor protein gene (APP; termed APP(Dp)), two with sporadic Alzheimer's disease (termed sAD1, sAD2) and two non-demented control individuals into iPSC lines.

Neuropathy-induced spinal GAP-43 expression is not a main player in the onset of mechanical pain hypersensitivity.

Structural plasticity within the spinal nociceptive network may be fundamental to the chronic nature of neuropathic pain. In the present study, the spatiotemporal expression of growth-associated protein-43 (GAP-43), a protein which has been traditionally implicated in nerve fiber growth and sprouting, was investigated in relation to mechanical pain hypersensitivity. An L5 spinal nerve transection model was validated by the presence of mechanical pain hypersensitivity and an increase in the early neuronal activation marker cFos within the superficial spinal dorsal horn upon innocuous hindpaw stimulation.