Publications by authors named "Knobel A"

Article Synopsis
  • Myopia is a significant cause of eye disease and vision impairment, and the AIM study seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of 0.02% atropine eye drops in slowing its progression specifically in a German population of children.
  • The study is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial involving children aged 8-12 with myopia, aiming to compare the effects of atropine 0.02% against a placebo over three years.
  • Key outcomes will include changes in eye refraction and axial length, along with safety assessments, with a target enrollment of 300 participants to ensure robust results.
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Article Synopsis
  • - Child protective services (CPS) rely on risk assessment tools to help make decisions about child maltreatment, especially with new guidelines under the Family First Prevention Services Act allowing federal reimbursement for prevention services based on these assessments.
  • - A review of 25 studies revealed that existing research on the validity and reliability of these tools is outdated and varies widely in methodology, with inconsistent definitions and measures of risk.
  • - Findings indicate that there's a lack of solid evidence supporting the effectiveness of these tools across different demographic groups, suggesting that CPS agencies should be careful about depending too much on them without more reliable data.
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Background Women are increasingly delaying childbearing, and thus lactation, into their 30s and 40s, when mammography would typically be the initial imaging modality to evaluate palpable masses in the general population. Current guidelines recommend US as the first-line imaging modality for palpable masses in pregnant and lactating women, but data regarding breastfeeding women age 30 years and older are near nonexistent. Purpose To evaluate the diagnostic performance of targeted US as the primary imaging modality for the evaluation of palpable masses in lactating women, including those of advanced maternal age.

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Introduction: We report a case of late onset hyperplastic callus formation (HPC) in the right femur in type V osteogenesis imperfecta (OI) mimicking the occurrence of a malignant osteosarcoma.

Presentation Of Case: A 27-year-old female patient consulted us due to swelling in her right femur over 2-3 months without trauma. X-rays looked like an osteosarcoma, blood tests showed increased bone metabolism.

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Rethinking Unplugging.

J Med Philos

November 2019

Opponents of abortion have traditionally responded to Judith Thomson's "A Defense of Abortion" by denying that her example of the unconscious violinist is analogous to a pregnancy that results from rape. In this article, I argue that this strategy does not work. Although there are differences between Thomson's violinist and pregnancies that result from rape, the differences are not morally relevant.

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Background: To assess the clinical impact of a regular, multidisciplinary, video debriefed training intervention for trauma team members on real trauma resuscitations. In addition, attending personnel evaluated the training program via questionnaire.

Methods: The training intervention is a regular (monthly), video debriefed, team-based trauma simulation.

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Background: Posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome (PRES) is a variable cerebrovascular syndrome associated with hypertension and autoregulatory failure. Steroids have been reported to both precipitate and treat PRES. We sought to determine the prevalence of steroid therapy at the time of PRES and to assess the relationship between steroid therapy and extent of vasogenic edema.

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Purpose: Posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome (PRES) is a disorder of cerebrovascular autoregulation that can result in brain edema, hemorrhage, and infarction. We sought to investigate whether certain imaging characteristics in PRES are associated with clinically significant patient outcomes.

Methods: We retrospectively reviewed all cases of PRES occurring between 2008 and 2014 at two major academic medical centers.

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This paper describes the practice of sociodrama, a method created by J. L. Moreno in the 1930s, and the Brazilian contemporary socio-psychodrama.

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Autoantibodies to the gamma-aminobutyric acid-B (GABAB) receptor were recently described in patients with limbic encephalitis presenting with early or prominent seizures. We report on a 64-year-old man with malignant melanoma who during adjuvant therapy with interferon (IFN)-alpha developed cerebellar ataxia. Indirect immunofluorescence on brain tissue sections revealed high-titer (1:20,000) IgG1 serum autoantibodies to the cerebellar molecular and granular layer, which were confirmed to be directed against GABAB receptor in a cell-based assay.

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Article Synopsis
  • Dopamine problems in the brain are believed to help explain some symptoms of schizophrenia, like believing things that aren't true (delusions).
  • Research shows that people with schizophrenia may notice things that don’t matter more than healthy people do, which can lead to these false beliefs.
  • Certain brain areas, when not working right, can also cause feelings of anxiety and fear, and medications can sometimes make people feel less motivated or interested in rewards.
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Background: The long-term prognosis of arteriovenous (AV) polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) hemodialysis grafts is dissatisfying. Responsible for the poor outcome is a stenosis of the venous anastomosis. This originates from both pseudointimal (PI) and neointimal hyperplasia (IH) development.

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Rationale: Negative mood states are characterized by both stress hormone dysregulation and serotonergic dysfunction, reflected by altered thalamic serotonin transporter (5-HTT) levels. However, so far, no study examined the individual association between cortisol response and cerebral in vivo 5-HTT levels in patients suffering from negative mood states.

Objective: The objective of this cross-sectional study was to assess the interrelation of cortisol response, thalamic 5-HTT levels, and anxiety in healthy subjects and two previously published samples of patients with unipolar major depression (UMD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), controlling for age, gender, 5-HTT genotype, smoking, and seasonality.

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Imaging the deluded brain.

Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci

November 2008

Various factors contribute to the development and maintenance of delusions in the context of schizophrenic psychoses. Studies with functional and structural MRI were able to detect neurobiological correlates of paranoid symptoms. Consistent with the neurodevelopmental hypothesis of schizophrenic psychosis, which implies an early developmental disorder affecting temporo-limbic areas and resulting in a disinhibition of striatal dopamine release, current imaging studies point towards the involvement of temporo-limbic and frontal dysfunction in delusion formation.

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Serotonergic dysfunction may contribute to negative mood states in affective disorders. Some in vivo imaging studies showed reduced availability of serotonin transporters (5-HTT) in the brainstem and thalamus of patients with major depression. We tested the hypothesis that 5-HTT availability is reduced in unmedicated unipolar patients with major depression compared to healthy control subjects matched for gender, age, genotype and smoking status.

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Reduced availability of brainstem serotonin transporters (5-HTT) has been observed in vivo in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, results vary and may be influenced by competition with endogenous serotonin. Using positron emission tomography (PET) and [11C]DASB, a specific 5-HTT ligand that showed no competition with serotonin for 5-HTT binding in vitro, we tested the hypothesis that 5-HTT availability is reduced in OCD patients and correlated with OCD severity.

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[Preoperative information].

Mund Kiefer Gesichtschir

March 2005

Article Synopsis
  • Many studies have shown that patient information quality and communication are critical issues in treatment, and multimedia presentations can enhance this by catering to individual needs.
  • A multimedia system for pre-operative patient information was developed using Macromedia Director 8.5, which was then evaluated by 85 patients for its effectiveness in terms of design, understanding, and knowledge acquisition compared to traditional media.
  • Results indicated that over 70% of patients found the multimedia program equally or more effective than other formats, highlighting that modern multimedia methods significantly improve the quality of preoperative patient information.
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The determination of folic acid, nicotinamide, nicotinic acid, riboflavin, riboflavin-5'-phosphate, pyridoxine and thiamine in tablets has been successfully automated using a bench-top robotic system (Zymark Tablet Processing Workstation II) coupled to reversed-phase (RP-18) HPLC with UV-detection. The new automated methods have been validated and were found to be applicable in routine analysis for all common types of multivitamin tablets. The precision is exemplified by relative standard deviations of 5.

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As an aid to the design and operation of anaerobic digesters treating high sulphate waste waters, a mathematical model describing this treatment process has been developed. Apart from sulphate reduction, the model includes those reactions which occur either prior to sulphate reduction or in competition with it. These include, hydrolysis of solid substrates, acidogenesis.

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