Levodopa-carbidopa intestinal gel (LCIG, carbidopa-levodopa enteral suspension in the United States) is a treatment option for advanced Parkinson's disease (PD) patients with motor fluctuations. The objective of this investigation was to identify the baseline characteristics predictive of treatment response, measured by improvement in motor symptom severity, in advanced PD patients treated with LC

The recognition of human actions such as pointing at objects ("Give me that...") is difficult because they ought to be recognized independent of scene parameters such as viewing direction. Furthermore, the parameters of the action, such as pointing direction, are important pieces of information. One common way to achieve recognition is by using 3D human body tracking followed by action recognition

Over 100,000,000 people worldwide are exposed to high arsenic groundwater utilised for drinking or cooking. The consequent global avoidable disease burden is estimated to be of the order of 100,000 avoidable deaths or more per annum from just direct exposures e i.e. excluding indirect exposure (from rice and other foods) and excluding morbidity. Notwithstanding 1000s of papers published on arsenic

Motor aspects of Parkinson's disease, such as fluctuations and dyskinesia, can be reliably evaluated using a variety of "wearable" technologies, but practical guidance on objective measurement (OM) and the optimum use of these devices is lacking. Therefore, as a first step, a panel of movement disorder specialists met to provide guidance on how OM could be assessed and incorporated into clinical g

Recent data suggested a decrease in non-motor fluctuations in late-stage Parkinson's disease (PD), but systematic data on non-motor fluctuations over the whole disease course are mainly lacking. We performed a meta-analysis of two studies with very similar cross-sectional cohort designs, namely the German multicenter Non Motor Fluctuation in PD study and the Swedish part of the European multicente

Patients with advanced Parkinson's disease and motor complications undergoing optimized oral therapy can significantly benefit from continuous intrajejunal levodopa/carbidopa infusion applied by means of a medication pump. However, this requires a correctly positioned PEG-J tube and finely adjusted pump settings. Although this method is a routine procedure in specialist centers, no standard proced

Production of nitric oxide through the action of nitric oxide synthase (NOS) has been detected in the islets of Langerhans. The inducible isoform of NOS (iNOS) is induced by cytokines and might contribute to the development of type-1 diabetes, while the constitutive isoform (cNOS) is thought to be implicated in the physiological regulation of insulin secretion. In the present study we have detecte

Continuous dopaminergic stimulation (CDS) has become one of the main concepts in present Parkinson's disease (PD) research. This is based on the assumption that CDS, or rather near CDS, is the normal striatal setting in a healthy individual. In PD, the degeneration of dopaminergic neurons leads to a reduced capacity to buffer dopamine, which could increase the vulnerability to a pulsatile administ

Dysfunction of the gastrointestinal tract has now been recognized to affect all stages of Parkinson's disease (PD). The consequences lead to problems with absorption of oral medication, erratic treatment response, as well as silent aspiration, which is one of the key risk factors in developing pneumonia. The issue is further complicated by other gut abnormalities, such as small intestinal bacteria

Background.Task-shifting mental health into general medical care requires more than brief provider training. Generalists need long-term support to master new skills and changes to work context are required to sustain change in the face of competing priorities. We examined program and context factors promoting sustainability of a mental health task-shifting training for hospital-based HIV providers

A molecular laser-radar system, based on the Scheimpflug principle, has been constructed and demonstrated for remote sensing of atmospheric CO2 concentrations using Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) in the (30012←00001) absorption band. The laser source is a Continues Wave (CW) Distributed-FeedBack (DFB) diode laser seeding an Erbium-doped fiber amplifier, emitting narrowband (3 MHz) tunable ra