Ankle foot orthosis that prevents slippage for tibial rotation in knee osteoarthritis patients.

Knee osteoarthritis (OA) is a disease caused by age-related muscle weakness, obesity, or sports injury that leads to gait disability due to pain during walking. Knee OA is characterized by abnormal knee joint alignment and rotational dyskinesia, which are believed to worsen the symptoms. We previously developed an ankle orthosis that mechanically induces the rotation of the lower limb in conjunction with that of the ankle joint.

Mechanical Orthosis with Rotation Induction to Lower Leg for Patients with Knee Osteoarthritis.

Knee osteoarthritis (Knee-OA) is a disease caused by age-related muscle weakness, obesity, or sports injury, and it has been estimated to occur in approximately half of all people by the age of 85. One of the characteristics of knee-OA is rotation dyskinesia of the knee joint due to the degeneration of the system around the knee. This rotation movement, a key element of walking, is crucial for impact absorption, balanced walking, and stabilization of the knee joint.

An assistance device to help people with trunk impairment maintain posture.

People with trunk impairment cannot lean forward because of the dysfunction of the trunk resulting from events such as cervical cord injury (CCI). It is therefore difficult for such people to work at a table because they may easily fall from their wheelchair, and it is also hard for them to return to their original position. This limits the activities of daily living (ADLs) of people with trunk impairment.

[Features of a short stay service facility for the severely motor and intellectually disabled persons in relation to the Niigata Chuetsu Prefecture earthquake in 2004].

Twenty-four handicapped victims of the Niigata-Chuetsu earthquake have used our "short-stay-service" . We have summarized the characteristics of this utilization. Two prominent patterns were noted:1) The mean duration of the stays was clearly longer when compared to ordinary service, and correlated with the proximity of the victims to the focus of the earthquake, and 2) victims living near the epicenter took longer to start utilizing the short-stay service.

Relationship among systolic blood pressure, serum insulin and leptin, and visceral fat accumulation in obese children.

The aim of this study was to clarify the relation among systolic blood pressure (SBP), serum insulin, leptin, visceral fat accumulation and family history of hypertension, and to elucidate the pathophysiologic mechanism of blood pressure elevation in obese children. This study examined 109 obese children with a family history of hypertension (OF: 77 boys and 32 girls), and 83 obese children without such a history (ON: 60 boys and 23 girls). Body height and weight, and percent of body fat were measured and the percent of relative weight was calculated.