Faith as a Mechanism for Health Promotion among Rural African American Prostate Cancer Survivors: A Qualitative Examination.

Conceptualized using critical race theory as a theoretical underpinning, this study analyzed the lived experiences of older, rural, African American male prostate cancer (hereafter referenced as PrCA) survivors' faith and health promotion practices within Northeast Louisiana. Qualitative data from journaling, observations, and semi-structured interviews were obtained from ten older, African American male PrCA survivors residing in four rural parishes of Louisiana. The data analysis employed a two-stage approach known as Polkinghorne's analysis of narratives and narrative analysis using an art-based methodological approach. Framed as composite character counterstories, survivors' narratives revealed how survivors made sense of and gave meaning to their PrCA diagnosis, treatment, recovery, and survivorship. Specifically, their counterstories indicate that centering and honoring the unique and often taken-for-granted perspectives of older, rural, African American male PrCA survivors offered a deeper understanding of the multiple factors influencing their quality of life, as well as the sociostructural mechanisms impacting their survivorship care. Faith was examined as both a secular and sacred source of support that these men viewed as central to the acceptance of their diagnosis, treatment, recovery, and survivorship.

"There is a Balm in Gilead": Black Social Workers' Spiritual Counterstory on the COVID-19 Crisis.

The authors assert that art-based inquiry can serve as a powerful medium for understanding the connection between faith and resilience as perceived and understood by older African-Americans adults disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Utilizing the CRT method of counterstorytelling as our conduit to elucidate our culturally situated responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. We seek to explore the connections between faith and resilience in social work practice during this public health crisis. Drawing from our shared experiences as two Black social workers we discuss the role spirituality plays in mitigating loneliness and stress among socially isolated older African-American adults (i.e., social distancing). Finally, with physical contact limited (i.e., social distancing) because of COVID-19, implications and recommendations for using spiritual-based practices with older African-American adults and families are discussed.

Mapping of autosomal recessive chronic distal spinal muscular atrophy to chromosome 11q13.

Distal spinal muscular atrophy is a heterogeneous group of neuromuscular disorders caused by progressive anterior horn cell degeneration and characterized by progressive motor weakness and muscular atrophy, predominantly in the distal parts of the limbs. Here we report on chronic autosomal recessive distal spinal muscular atrophy in a large, inbred family with onset at various ages. Because this condition had some of the same clinical features as spinal muscular atrophy with respiratory distress, we tested the disease gene for linkage to chromosome 11q and mapped the disease locus to chromosome 11q13 in the genetic interval that included the spinal muscular atrophy with respiratory distress gene (D11S1889-D11S1321, Z(max) = 4.59 at theta = 0 at locus D11S4136). The sequencing of IGHMBP2, the human homologue of the mouse neuromuscular degeneration gene (nmd) that accounts for spinal muscular atrophy with respiratory distress, failed to detect any mutation in our chronic distal spinal muscular atrophy patients, suggesting that spinal muscular atrophy with respiratory distress and chronic distal spinal muscular atrophy are caused by distinct genes located in the same chromosomal region. In addition, the high intrafamilial variability in age at onset raises the question of whether nonallelic modifying genes could be involved in chronic distal spinal muscular atrophy.

Princípios de neurologia / Principles of neurology

In writing the Principles of Neurology, we have adopted a method of exposition quite unlike that of standard textbooks of neurology, in which the many diseases of the nervous system are described in tedious succession. Instead, we have chosen to introduce the subject with a discussion of the phenomenology, or cardinal manifestations, of neurologic disease - a detailed exposition of the symptoms and signs of disordered nervous function, their anatomic and physiologic bases, and their clinical implications