Gait Compensation among Children with Non-Operative Legg-Calvé-Perthes Disease: A Systematic Review.

Unlabelled: Perthes disease is a condition that affects walking patterns in young children due to poor blood circulation in the hip joint. Understanding the gait strategies of affected children is of great importance for an objective assessment and better management of this condition. The aim of this systematic review was to evaluate the current literature to identify gait compensation patterns in non-operative children with Perthes disease.

Dielectrophoresis as a Tool to Reveal the Potential Role of Ion Channels and Early Electrophysiological Changes in Osteoarthritis.

Diseases such as osteoarthritis (OA) are commonly characterized at the molecular scale by gene expression and subsequent protein production; likewise, the effects of pharmaceutical interventions are typically characterized by the effects of molecular interactions. However, these phenomena are usually preceded by numerous precursor steps, many of which involve significant ion influx or efflux. As a consequence, rapid assessment of cell electrophysiology could play a significant role in unravelling the mechanisms underlying drug interactions and progression of diseases, such as OA.

DEP-Dots for 3D cell culture: low-cost, high-repeatability, effective 3D cell culture in multiple gel systems.

It is known that cells grown in 3D are more tolerant to drug treatment than those grown in dispersion, but the mechanism for this is still not clear; cells grown in 3D have opportunities to develop inter-cell communication, but are also closely packed which may impede diffusion. In this study we examine methods for dielectrophoresis-based cell aggregation of both suspension and adherent cell lines, and compare the effect of various drugs on cells grown in 3D and 2D. Comparing viability of pharmacological interventions on 3D cell clusters against both suspension cells and adherent cells grown in monolayer, as well as against a unicellular organism with no propensity for intracellular communication, we suggest that 3D aggregates of adherent cells, compared to suspension cells, show a substantially different drug response to cells grown in monolayer, which increases as the IC is approached.

Dual-Task Effects on Performance of Gait and Balance in People with Knee Pain: A Systematic Scoping Review.

Dual-task paradigms have been increasingly used to assess the interaction between cognitive demands and the control of balance and gait. The interaction between functional and cognitive demands can alter movement patterns and increase knee instability in individuals with knee conditions, such as knee anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury or osteoarthritis (OA). However, there is no consensus on the effects of dual-task on gait mechanics and balance in those individuals.

Ten-Second Electrophysiology: Evaluation of the 3DEP Platform for high-speed, high-accuracy cell analysis.

Electrical correlates of the physiological state of a cell, such as membrane conductance and capacitance, as well as cytoplasm conductivity, contain vital information about cellular function, ion transport across the membrane, and propagation of electrical signals. They are, however, difficult to measure; gold-standard techniques are typically unable to measure more than a few cells per day, making widespread adoption difficult and limiting statistical reproducibility. We have developed a dielectrophoretic platform using a disposable 3D electrode geometry that accurately (r > 0.

Rhythmic potassium transport regulates the circadian clock in human red blood cells.

Circadian rhythms organize many aspects of cell biology and physiology to a daily temporal program that depends on clock gene expression cycles in most mammalian cell types. However, circadian rhythms are also observed in isolated mammalian red blood cells (RBCs), which lack nuclei, suggesting the existence of post-translational cellular clock mechanisms in these cells. Here we show using electrophysiological and pharmacological approaches that human RBCs display circadian regulation of membrane conductance and cytoplasmic conductivity that depends on the cycling of cytoplasmic K levels.

Process development for cell aggregate arrays encapsulated in a synthetic hydrogel using negative dielectrophoresis.

Spatial patterning of cells is of great importance in tissue engineering and biotechnology, enabling, for example the creation of bottom-up histoarchitectures of heterogeneous cells, or cell aggregates for in vitro high-throughput toxicological and therapeutic studies within 3D microenvironments. In this paper, a single-step process for creating peelable and resilient hydrogels, encapsulating arrays of biological cell aggregates formed by negative DEP has been devised. The dielectrophoretic trapping within low-energy regions of the DEP-dot array reduces cell exposure to high field stresses while creating distinguishable, evenly spaced arrays of aggregates.