1,721,021 research outputs found
Novel approaches to the diagnosis of Sarcopenia
No full textSarcopenia is common in older people and is associated with disability, reduced mobility, hospitalization, and various comorbidities. Although it has been recognized for over a quarter of a century, we do not currently have a universally adopted definition. This limits our ability to compare results from different studies and impedes the development of novel therapies. Although sarcopenia was initially defined purely based on low muscle mass, the importance of measures of muscle function has been realized and these have been included in recent operational definitions. These continue to evolve with some including an assessment of adiposity and others adding further components of musculoskeletal health in a score-based approach. This review describes the importance of reaching a widely accepted method to define sarcopenia in both research and clinical practice. It details the ways in which the definition has changed since its initial inception and explores how it may continue to evolve in the future. The different methods by which components of sarcopenia can be measured are described, and the various advantages and disadvantages of these techniques are evaluated. Clearly, there are several other similar syndromes in older people, such as frailty and cachexia; their relationships and overlap with sarcopenia are also explored
Postpartum onset and subsequent relapse of eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangitis
No full textEosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis (EGPA) can affect women of childbearing age. However, reports of the disease in the postpartum period are limited. We present a case of postpartum-onset EGPA that went into clinical remission before relapsing in the subsequent postpartum period. Our patient presented with dyspnoea, arthralgia and rash, shown to be eosinophilic vasculitis, 3?days following the birth of her second child. CT of the thorax showed alveolar shadowing and mediastinal lymphadenopathy. She was treated successfully for EGPA with glucocorticoid therapy. She declined maintenance treatment during remission. Off treatment, she remained disease free throughout her next pregnancy. In the postpartum period she relapsed in an almost identical manner, requiring prolonged glucocorticoid therapy, cyclophosphamide and rituximab. This case highlights the importance of maintenance therapy around pregnancy in individuals with EGPA, and the need for careful monitoring of women with a history of EGPA in the postpartum period
Bone: the growing cost of fractures in Ireland
No full textOsteoporosis and fragility fractures are common and associated with considerable morbidity, mortality and socioeconomic cost. For the majority of the 20th century, rates of fragility fracture steadily increased worldwid
High-resolution imaging of bone and joint architecture in rheumatoid arthritis
No full textINTRODUCTION: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is characterized by local and systemic bone loss caused by increased bone resorption. We describe the current utilization of high-resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography (HR-pQCT) in the evaluation of bone and joint in RA.SOURCES OF DATA: PubMed was searched for publications using keywords that included 'bone microarchitecture', 'high-resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography' and 'rheumatoid arthritis'.AREAS OF AGREEMENT: HR-pQCT may simultaneously allow assessment of trabecular and cortical bone parameters and be a useful method for depicting bone erosions.AREAS OF CONTROVERSY: HR-pQCT only assesses bone microarchitecture at the distal radius and tibia. Controversy exists regarding the optimal way to differentiate cortical and trabecular regions.GROWING POINTS: Although HR-pQCT is currently a research tool, there is potential for its use in the clinical diagnosis and management in RA. Further research is required to evaluate the clinical relevance of imaging abnormalities identified in RA patients
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe 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
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