Thiamine deficiency-related neuropathy: A reversible entity from an endemic area.

Background And Purpose: Despite thiamine deficiency being a lesser-known entity in modern times, beriberi in various forms, including thiamine deficiency-related neuropathy, remains endemic in Kashmir due to the consumption of polished rice as a staple food. This observational study investigates cases of peripheral neuropathy of unknown etiology and their potential responsiveness to thiamine administration.

Methods: This prospective study enrolled adult patients presenting to the emergency department with weakness consistent with thiamine deficiency-related neuropathy and conducted a therapeutic challenge with thiamine on 41 patients.

Acoustic Gaits: Gait Analysis With Footstep Sounds.

We describe the acoustic gaits-the natural human gait quantitative characteristics derived from the sound of footsteps as the person walks normally. We introduce the acoustic gait profile, which is obtained from temporal signal analysis of sound of footsteps collected by microphones and illustrate some of the spatio-temporal gait parameters that can be extracted from the acoustic gait profile by using three temporal signal analysis methods-the squared energy estimate, Hilbert transform and Teager-Kaiser energy operator. Based on the statistical analysis of the parameter estimates, we show that the spatio-temporal parameters and gait characteristics obtained using the acoustic gait profile can consistently and reliably estimate a subset of clinical and biometric gait parameters currently in use for standardized gait assessments.