Italian validation of the Belastungsfragebogen Parkinson kurzversion (BELA-P-k): a disease-specific questionnaire for evaluation of the subjective perception of quality of life in parkinson's disease.

BACKGROUND: Quality of life (QoL) is the sense of well-being perceived by people. The improvement of parkinsonian patient's QoL is a crucial goal for clinicians involved in rehabilitative care. In order to provide an appropriate endpoint for the assessment of the effectiveness of rehabilitation treatments on QoL of patients with Parkinson's Disease (PD), in this study we have first translated and then validated the Belastungsfragebogen Parkinson kurzversion (BELA-P-k). This tool allows evaluating separately two crucial aspects: i) the loss of personal autonomy in activities of daily life and ii) the psychological and psychosocial impact of the disease. METHODS: The BELA-P-k was translated from Dutch into Italian. Subsequently 202 PD patients filled out the questionnaire. Patients were also evaluated by using the Parkinson Disease Questionnaire -39 (PDQ39), the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS), the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB). RESULTS: The internal consistency for total of two different scores Bothered by (Bb) and Need for Help (NfH) was excellent (p = 0.91) for both categories. The correlation between Bb and NfH categories was significant and strong, very-strong, ranging from 0.78 to 0.88 (all p < 0.0001). Finally, the value of Spearman r for the relationship between Bb and NfH items and PDQ 39 values were significant (p ≤ 0.003). CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion, we validated the BELA-P-k and demonstrated that it is an appropriate and potentially useful tool for assessing QoL in the management of PD. TRIALS REGISTRATION: This trial was retrospectively registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03073044.

Synergistic Effect of Different Plant Cell Wall-Degrading Enzymes Is Important for Virulence of Fusarium graminearum.

Endo-polygalacturonases (PGs) and xylanases have been shown to play an important role during pathogenesis of some fungal pathogens of dicot plants, while their role in monocot pathogens is less defined. Pg1 and xyr1 genes of the wheat pathogen Fusarium graminearum encode the main PG and the major regulator of xylanase production, respectively. Single- and double-disrupted mutants for these genes were obtained to assess their contribution to fungal infection. Compared with wild-type strain, the ∆pg mutant showed a nearly abolished PG activity, slight reduced virulence on soybean seedlings, but no significant difference in disease symptoms on wheat spikes; the ∆xyr mutant was strongly reduced in xylanase activity and moderately reduced in cellulase activity but was as virulent as wild type on both soybean and wheat plants. Consequently, the ΔpgΔxyr double mutant was impaired in xylanase, PG, and cellulase activities but, differently from single mutants, was significantly reduced in virulence on both plants. These findings demonstrate that the concurrent presence of PG, xylanase, and cellulase activities is necessary for full virulence. The observation that the uronides released from wheat cell wall after a F. graminearum PG treatment were largely increased by the fungal xylanases suggests that these enzymes act synergistically in deconstructing the plant cell wall.