ABSTRACT
Spinal cord injury (SCI) has deleterious effects on quality of life and vocation. A partial or complete loss of sensory and motor functions below the site of injury is a potential clinical sign of SCI. Trunk and pelvic control are crucial for balance and gait to perform vocational tasks of daily living. In this case report, a 40-year-old male with traumatic incomplete paraplegia (AIS Grade C, neurological level T6) received 45 min of intervention per session, which included pelvic proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation combined with core strengthening exercises 5 times a week for 4 weeks. Baseline and postassessments were done for trunk control with the trunk control test for SCI, balance with the Berg Balance Scale (BBS) and the SCI-functional ambulation inventory (SCI-FAI), and gait with the walking index for SCI II (WISCI). After 4 weeks of intervention, there were significant differences between baseline and postintervention scores on the trunk control test for SCI (16-18), WISCI (Level 1-2), SCI-FAI (03-06), and BBS (04-08). This is the first case report that enabled and promoted potentiate intervention to improve trunk control, balance, and gait in paraplegics. This outcome motivates additional research on its therapeutic potential and mechanism.
ABSTRACT
The systematic design of functional peptides has technological and therapeutic applications. However, there is a need for pattern-based search engines that help locate desired functional motifs in primary sequences regardless of their evolutionary conservation. Existing databases such as The Protein Secondary Structure database (PSS) no longer serves the community, while the Dictionary of Protein Secondary Structure (DSSP) annotates the secondary structures when tertiary structures of proteins are provided. Here, we extract 1.7 million helices from the PDB and compile them into a database (Therapeutic Peptide Design database; TP-DB) that allows queries of compounded patterns to facilitate the identification of sequence motifs of helical structures. We show how TP-DB helps us identify a known purification-tag-specific antibody that can be repurposed into a diagnostic kit for Helicobacter pylori. We also show how the database can be used to design a new antimicrobial peptide that shows better Candida albicans clearance and lower hemolysis than its template homologs. Finally, we demonstrate how TP-DB can suggest point mutations in helical peptide blockers to prevent a targeted tumorigenic protein-protein interaction. TP-DB is made available at http://dyn.life.nthu.edu.tw/design/ .
