Fuzzy logic based risk assessment system giving individualized advice for metabolic syndrome and fatal cardiovascular diseases.

In 2005, global cardiovascular diseases caused 30% of deaths in Europe, which is 46% of total deaths for all death groups. Today, according to the International Adult Diabetes Federation, 20% to 25% of the adult population in the world has Metabolic Syndrome. Turkish Statistical Institute claims that in Turkey 408782 people died of circulatory system diseases in 2016 and it is expected that numbers will dramatically increase. In 2003, total worldwide healthcare budget of Diabetes Mellitus was up to 64.9 billion International Dollars with the continuing rise in prevalence, it is expected that total costs will increase to 396 billion International Dollars by 2025. The main purpose of this study was to present a clinical decision support system that calculates Metabolic Syndrome existence and evaluate HeartScore risk level for Turkish population. The second objective was to create a detailed personal report about individual's risk level of Metabolic Syndrome and HeartScore and give advice to him/her to reduce it. The fuzzy logic risk assessment system (FLRAS) was formed in LabVIEW graphical development platform according to International Diabetes Federation and European Heart Journal's criteria. Mamdani type fuzzy logic sets were identified for each input variable and membership functions were assigned depending on the magnitude of the input limits. System's performance was tested on 96 (72 females, 24 males) patient data. Results show that the proposed system was able to evaluate the Metabolic Syndrome risk with 0.9285 specificity, 0.92708 accuracy and 0.925 sensitivity.

Tactile processing in children and adolescents with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Many obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients experience sensory phenomena, such as bodily sensations and "just-right" perceptions accompanying compulsions. We studied tactile processing in OCD by psychophysical experiments targeting the somatosensory cortex. Thirty-two children and adolescents with OCD (8 tic-related, 19 with sensory phenomena (SP)) and their sex- and age-matched controls participated in the study. After clinical assessments, two questionnaires were completed for sensory problems (Sensory Profile and Touch Inventory for Elementary-School-Aged Children). The psychophysical experiments consisted of five tasks: simple reaction time, choice reaction time, dynamic (detection) threshold, amplitude discrimination, and amplitude discrimination with single-site adaptation. The tactile stimuli were sinusoidal mechanical vibrations (frequency: 25 Hz) applied on the fingertips. Just-noticeable differences (JNDs) were found in amplitude discrimination tasks. There was no difference between the OCD group and controls in detection thresholds. However, the OCD group (especially young males) had worse amplitude discrimination (i.e., higher JNDs) than controls. Young OCD participants had reduced adaptation than young controls. Tic-related OCD participants and those with SP had higher detection thresholds than those without. Additionally, the OCD group reported more problems than controls in the Emotional/Social subset of the Sensory Profile questionnaire. The discrimination results show altered tactile processing in OCD at suprathreshold levels. This can be explained by a scaling factor modifying the sensory signal with decreasing slope at higher input levels to achieve normal Weber fractions internally. Quadratic discriminant analysis gave the best positive (76%) and negative (60%) predictive values for classifying individuals (into "OCD" or "control" groups) based on psychophysical data alone.