1,721,108 research outputs found
Parkinson disease therapy: current strategies and future research priorities
No full textParkinson disease (PD) is the fastest growing neurological disorder globally and poses substantial management challenges owing to progressive disability, emergence of levodopa-resistant symptoms, and treatment-related complications. In this Review, we examine the current state of research into PD therapies and outline future priorities for advancing our understanding and treatment of the disease. We identify two main research priorities for the coming years: first, slowing the progression of the disease through the integration of sensitive biomarkers and targeted biological therapies, and second, enhancing existing symptomatic treatments, encompassing surgical and infusion therapies, with the goal of postponing complications and improving long-term patient management. The path towards disease modification is impeded by the multifaceted pathophysiology and diverse mechanisms underlying PD. Ongoing studies are directed at alpha-synuclein aggregation, complemented by efforts to address specific pathways associated with the less common genetic forms of the disease. The success of these efforts relies on establishing robust end points, incorporating technology, and identifying reliable biomarkers for early diagnosis and continuous monitoring of disease progression. In the context of symptomatic treatment, the focus should shift towards refining existing approaches and fostering the development of novel therapeutic strategies that target levodopa-resistant symptoms and clinical manifestations that substantially impair quality of life.Parkinson disease (PD) poses substantial management challenges owing to progressive disability and emergence of levodopa-resistant symptoms and treatment-related complications. This Review examines the current state of research into symptomatic and disease-modifying PD therapies and outlines future priorities for advancing our understanding and treatment of the disease.Parkinson disease (PD) is the fastest growing neurological disorder globally but, currently, no therapeutic intervention can modify disease progression and treatment is still based on levodopa (either alone or in combination with dopamine agonists or monoamine oxidase B or catechol--methyltransferase inhibitors) and device-aided therapies.Disease-modifying therapies targeting alpha-synuclein that are under investigation include active and passive immunization and small molecules that can inhibit protein aggregation.Studies of compounds that can enhance glucocerebrosidase activity, reduce leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 activity or prevent inflammation are ongoing or starting.Medications that can alleviate symptomatic manifestations, including new levodopa formulations, dopamine agonists with different dopamine receptor stimulation profiles or modes of administration, and gene and cell transplantation therapies, are under investigation.Early detection of PD is crucial, and educational programmes aimed at the general population could aid this effort by increasing awareness of the early symptoms.Biomarker discovery and validation initially require considerable financial and human resources, but the development of safe, easy-to-perform biomarker assays - for example, using blood samples or skin biopsies - would allow screening of large cohorts in a cost-effective manner
The Current Evidence for the Use of Safinamide for the Treatment of Parkinson's Disease
No full textIntroduction: Parkinson's therapeutic interventions are only symptomatic. An optimal treatment should therefore address the largest number of motor and non-motor symptoms, to manage patients at best. Safinamide is one of the most recent approved drugs for fluctuating patients, in add-on to levodopa, that remains the gold standard treatment. It has a unique mechanism of action, both dopaminergic (as MAO-B inhibitor) and glutamatergic (through Na+ channel blockade). Results from Phase III trials, post-hoc analyses and real-life experiences suggest a beneficial effect on motor (such as tremor, bradykinesia, rigidity and gait) and non-motor (pain, mood, sleep) symptoms.Areas Covered: Here, the authors discuss clinical efficacy and safety of safinamide, identifying the patients' profiles that could benefit most. A search in PubMed was performed in September 2020, with no time limits. Publications' abstracts were reviewed.Conclusion: Safinamide is peculiar due to its double mechanism of action. Its benefits in improving motor functions and fluctuations, and some non-motor symptoms, could have a valuable impact on patients' quality of life (QoL), together with its safety profile
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
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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