The purpose of this review is to describe and evaluate the existing research on the use of urine alarms in the daytime toilet training of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). A systematic literature search yielded 12 studies, many of which were published over a decade ago. The findings suggest that interventions that incorporate the use of urine alarms are promising in the treatment of daytime enuresis for children with IDD; however, more carefully controlled research is needed to confirm these findings and elucidate the precise role urine alarms may play in toileting interventions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of irreversible and predictable blindness among older adults with serious physical and mental health consequences. Visual impairment is associated with negative future outlook and depression and has serious consequences for older adults' quality of life and, by way of depression, on long-term survival. Psychosocial interventions have the potential to alleviate and prevent depression symptoms among older AMD patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To investigate the long-term effects of the Canadian folic acid fortification program in older adults' whole blood cell folate (folate) and cobalamin (Cbl) status, including homocysteine (tHcy) and methylmalonic acid (MMA), with and without voluntary B-vitamin intake, from 1997 to 2004.
Methods: Cohort of community-dwelling volunteer older adults. Clinical and biochemical data, including intake of B-vitamin supplements, were obtained at 2- to 2.
Dysregulation of iron homeostasis is implicated in Alzheimer's disease (AD). In this pilot study, common variants of the apolipoprotein E (APOE) and HFE genes resulting in the iron overload disorder of hereditary hemochromatosis (C282Y, H63D and S65C) were evaluated as factors in sporadic AD in an Ontario sample in which folic acid fortification has been mandatory since 1998. Laboratory studies also were done to search for genetic effects on blood markers of iron status, red cell folates and serum B12.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDementia is highly prevalent among elderly people, and projections show that the number of people affected might triple over the next 50 years, mainly because of a large increase in the oldest-old segment of the population. Because of this and the disease's devastating effects, measures for the prevention and early detection of dementia are crucial. Age and years of education are among the most relevant risk factors for dementia, but in recent years the role of homocysteine has also been investigated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNondeclarative memory (NDM) has subtypes associated with different brain regions; learning of a probabilistic classification task is impaired by striatal damage and learning of a gambling task is impaired by ventromedial prefrontocortical damage. Typical and atypical antipsychotic medications differentially affect immediate early gene expression in the striatum and frontal cortex in normal rats. This suggested the hypothesis that schizophrenic patients treated with typical antipsychotics will have impaired probabilistic classification learning (PCL) and that similar patients treated with atypical antipsychotics will have impaired learning of the gambling task.
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