Randomized Trial on the Effects of High-Dose Zopiclone on OSA Severity, Upper Airway Physiology, and Alertness.

Background: Studies indicate that standard doses of hypnotics reduce or do not change the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) or pharyngeal muscle activity. A 1-month trial of nightly zopiclone (7.5 mg) modestly reduced the AHI vs baseline without changing other sleep parameters or next-day sleepiness.

The promise of growth hormone in sport: doped or duped.

Skeletal muscle is a target tissue of GH. Based on its anabolic properties, it is widely accepted that GH enhances muscle performance in sports. Athletic performance depends on muscle strength and the energy required to power muscle function.

Addressing the specialist workforce CAMH skill-gap: providing and evaluating iCAMH training in Fiji and Papua New Guinea.

Objective: Child and adolescent mental health problems are common and result in significant morbidity. Whereas in high-income countries there is an established workforce, in lower income countries, such as the Pacific nations, the workforce has little capacity despite a potentially higher population risk of mental disorder. We report on a workforce development effort, a child and adolescent mental health training package.

Serious kidney disease in pregnancy: an Australian national cohort study protocol.

Background: Maternal kidney disease (acute kidney injury (AKI), advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD), dependence on dialysis or a kidney transplant) has a substantial impact on pregnancy, with risks of significant perinatal morbidity. These pregnancies require integrated multidisciplinary care to manage a complex and often challenging clinical situation. The ability to deliver optimal care is currently hindered by a lack of understanding around prevalence, management and outcomes in Australia.

The effects of zolpidem in obstructive sleep apnea - An open-label pilot study.

New knowledge on hypnotics and their effects on the phenotypic causes of obstructive sleep apnea indicate that zolpidem has therapeutic potential for certain patients. Specifically, zolpidem increases the threshold for arousal threshold and pharyngeal dilator muscle responsiveness. However, the effects of a standard dose of zolpidem (10 mg) on obstructive sleep apnea severity and symptoms have not been investigated.

Probiotics [LGG-BB12 or RC14-GR1] versus placebo as prophylaxis for urinary tract infection in persons with spinal cord injury [ProSCIUTTU]: a randomised controlled trial.

Study Design: Randomised double-blind factorial-design placebo-controlled trial.

Objective: Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are common in people with spinal cord injury (SCI). UTIs are increasingly difficult to treat due to emergence of multi-resistant organisms.

Development of Cohesion in Mixed-Gender Recruit Training.

Introduction: With the removal in 2016 of restrictions on recruiting women to the combat arms in the all-volunteer Australian Army, a key question has been whether adding women to small combat teams will reduce the sense of cohesion among their members, which entails their subjective bonds with each other, their leader, and wider organization. Despite recent initiatives in Australia and the USA, there are too few women in combat units in any country to answer this question and how these subjective bonds affect a team's ability to stick together under pressure.Men and women recruits in the Australian Army have undertaken basic soldier training in mixed-gender teams since 1995.

Brain Banking for Research into Neurodegenerative Disorders and Ageing.

Advances in cellular and molecular biology underpin most current therapeutic advances in medicine. Such advances for neurological and neurodegenerative diseases are hindered by the lack of similar specimens. It is becoming increasingly evident that greater access to human brain tissue is necessary to understand both the cellular biology of these diseases and their variation.

The Combination of Atomoxetine and Oxybutynin Greatly Reduces Obstructive Sleep Apnea Severity. A Randomized, Placebo-controlled, Double-Blind Crossover Trial.

There is currently no effective pharmacological treatment for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). Recent investigations indicate that drugs with noradrenergic and antimuscarinic effects improve genioglossus muscle activity and upper airway patency during sleep. We aimed to determine the effects of the combination of a norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (atomoxetine) and an antimuscarinic (oxybutynin) on OSA severity (apnea-hypopnea index [AHI]; primary outcome) and genioglossus responsiveness (secondary outcome) in people with OSA.

Women and Men Together in Recruit Training.

Introduction: Although men and women recruits to the Australian Army have trained in mixed-gender platoons since 1995, restrictions on women joining the combat arms were only removed in 2016. As part of a longitudinal study starting with recruit training, this article examined recruit records collected before 2016 with the aims of delineating (1) the relative performance of women versus men in mixed-gender platoons and (2) the relative performance of men in mixed-gender platoons versus all-male platoons.

Materials And Methods: De-identified instructor ratings for 630 females and 4,505 males who completed training between 2011 and 2015 were obtained.

Facial Emotion Recognition Performance Differentiates Between Behavioral Variant Frontotemporal Dementia and Major Depressive Disorder.

Objective: Misdiagnosis of early behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) with major depressive disorder (MDD) is not uncommon due to overlapping symptoms. The aim of this study was to improve the discrimination between these disorders using a novel facial emotion perception task.

Method: In this prospective cohort study (July 2013-March 2016), we compared 25 patients meeting Rascovsky diagnostic criteria for bvFTD, 20 patients meeting DSM-IV criteria for MDD, 21 patients meeting McKhann diagnostic criteria for Alzheimer's disease dementia, and 31 healthy participants on a novel emotion intensity rating task comprising morphed low-intensity facial stimuli.

Randomised controlled trial to determine the efficacy and safety of prescribed water intake to prevent kidney failure due to autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (PREVENT-ADPKD).

Introduction: Maintaining fluid intake sufficient to reduce arginine vasopressin (AVP) secretion has been hypothesised to slow kidney cyst growth in autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD). However, evidence to support this as a clinical practice recommendation is of poor quality. The aim of the present study is to determine the long-term efficacy and safety of prescribed water intake to prevent the progression of height-adjusted total kidney volume (ht-TKV) in patients with chronic kidney disease (stages 1-3) due to ADPKD.

Summary of Key Issues Raised in the Technology for Early Awareness of Addiction and Mental Illness (TEAAM-I) Meeting.

Technology provides an unparalleled opportunity to remove barriers to earlier identification and engagement in services for mental and addictive disorders by reaching people earlier in the course of illness and providing links to just-in-time, cost-effective interventions. Achieving this opportunity, however, requires stakeholders to challenge underlying assumptions about traditional pathways to mental health care. In this Open Forum, the authors highlight key issues discussed in the Technology for Early Awareness of Addiction and Mental Illness (TEAAM-I) meeting-held October 13-14, 2016, in New York City-that are related to three identified areas in which technology provides important and unique opportunities to advance early identification, increase service engagement, and decrease the duration of untreated mental and addictive disorders.

Individual care versus broader public health: A qualitative study of hospital doctors' antibiotic decisions.

Objectives: This study aimed to examine how hospital doctors balance competing concerns around antibiotic use and resistance, with a focus on individual care versus broader public health considerations.

Methods: Sixty-four doctors across two hospitals in Australia participated in semi-structured interviews about their perspectives on antibiotic resistance and prescribing decisions. Results were analysed using the framework approach.

Personalized Management Approach for OSA.

OSA is a heterogeneous disorder. If left untreated, it has major health, safety, and economic consequences. In addition to varying levels of impairment in pharyngeal anatomy (narrow/collapsible airway), nonanatomical "phenotypic traits" are also important contributors to OSA for most patients.

How do hospital respiratory clinicians perceive antimicrobial stewardship (AMS)? A qualitative study highlighting barriers to AMS in respiratory medicine.

Background: Suboptimal antibiotic use in respiratory infections is widespread in hospital medicine and primary care. Antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) teams within hospitals, commonly led by infectious diseases physicians, are frequently charged with optimizing the use of respiratory antibiotics, but there is limited information on what drives antibiotic use in this area of clinical medicine, or on how AMS is perceived.

Aim: To explore the perceptions of hospital respiratory clinicians on AMS in respiratory medicine.

An ontologically consistent MRI-based atlas of the mouse diencephalon.

In topological terms, the diencephalon lies between the hypothalamus and the midbrain. It is made up of three segments, prosomere 1 (pretectum), prosomere 2 (thalamus), and prosomere 3 (the prethalamus). A number of MRI-based atlases of different parts of the mouse brain have already been published, but none of them displays the segments the diencephalon and their component nuclei.