1,720,957 research outputs found
Myosteatosis and myofibrosis: Relationship with aging, inflammation and insulin resistance
No full textThe mechanisms impairing muscle quality and leading to myofibrosis (MF) and myosteatosis (MS) are incompletely known. In biopsies of paraspinous muscle (PM) of 16 elderly men undergoing elective vertebral surgery, we histologically determined the area of MF and MS expressed as muscle quality index (MQI), in order to investigate the relation between them, as well as the main predictors of muscle quality. Total PM area and intermuscular adipose tissue (IMAT) were evaluated by MRI and body composition by DXA. Circulating fasting glucose, insulin, hs-CRP, leptin, adiponectin and IL-6 were measured and HOMA index calculated. Quantification of gene expression in PM and in subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) overlying the muscle was performed by rt-PCR. The degree of MS and MF was significantly and positively related to each other and positively associated with BMI, waist, FM and FM% as well as with IMAT. The area of PM was negatively related with MF even after adjustment for weight. Leptin was positively associated with MF and MS, whereas hs-CRP to MF. In backward regression analyses, larger waist and smaller PM area explained 90% of MF variance, whereas leptin about 80% of MS variance. IL-6 expression in SAT was significantly higher in participants with higher MQI values. In PM biopsies we found significantly higher expression of SOCS-3 and a trend toward higher expression of myostatin with greater degrees of MQI. MS and MF are related phenomena that concur to alter muscle quality and both should be considered in further studies on the evolution of sarcopenia. © 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd
Sarcopenia, Cachexia and Congestive Heart Failure in the Elderly
No full textSkeletal muscle abnormalities and loss are frequently present in patients with mild or moderate cardiac heart failure (CHF) and may contribute to fatigue and dyspnea. These muscle abnormalities may be associated with age related body composition changes, such as sarcopenia. Muscle damage has also been observed in subjects with cardiac cahexia, a serious CHF complication, associated with poor prognosis independently of functional disease severity, age, and measures of exercise capacity and cardiac function. Loss of muscle mass is a feature of cachexia, whereas most sarcopenic subjects are not cachectic. Individuals with no weight loss, no anorexia, and no measurable systemic inflammatory response may be sarcopenic. Patients with severe CHF show multiple marked histological abnormalities of skeletal muscle, such as muscle fiber atrophy. These abnormalities are different in sarcopenia and cachexia. The majority of mechanisms involved in sarcopenia play a role even in the determination of cachexia and they are amplified in cachexia where they may induce both muscle damage as well as other abnormalities, such as fat and weight loss, through activation of lypolisis or anorexia. To distinguish cachexia and sarcopenia in CHF patients, even if not easy, should be clinically relevant, because no specific treatment is available for cachectic patients whereas treatment options are possible for sarcopenia
The association between excess weight and comorbidity and self-rated health in the Italian population
No full textPURPOSE:
To evaluate the association of obesity with comorbidity and with subjective health perception in a large sample representative of the Italian population and how the association differs by age and gender.
METHODS:
Cross-sectional data were obtained from nine waves of the "Multipurpose Household Survey," conducted by the Italian National Institute of Statistics. Self-reported height and weight, six weight-associated diseases and self-rated health (SRH) were evaluated on 352,020 subjects aged 20 to 89 years. Comorbidity was defined as the presence of two or more diseases.
RESULTS:
The prevalence of comorbidity was significantly different between obese and normal weight subjects in all age categories. SRH was worse in obese subjects than in those of normal weight; this difference persisted, at least in females, into older ages.
CONCLUSIONS:
Obesity is associated with comorbidity and self-rated health; this association varies across ages and genders. The results found for obese subjects of a given age category were similar to (or worse than) those found for older normal weight subjects of the next age class. For comorbidity, this was true both in males and in females of all the considered age categories; for SRH, this was true in particular for females and younger males
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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