Personal Health Data Tracking by Blind and Low-Vision People: Survey Study.

BACKGROUND: Personal health technologies, including wearable tracking devices and mobile apps, have great potential to equip the general population with the ability to monitor and manage their health. However, being designed for sighted people, much of their functionality is largely inaccessible to the blind and low-vision (BLV) population, threatening the equitable access to personal health data (PHD) and health care services. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to understand why and how BLV people collect and use their PHD and the obstacles they face in doing so. Such knowledge can inform accessibility researchers and technology companies of the unique self-tracking needs and accessibility challenges that BLV people experience. METHODS: We conducted a web-based and phone survey with 156 BLV people. We reported on quantitative and qualitative findings regarding their PHD tracking practices, needs, accessibility barriers, and work-arounds. RESULTS: BLV respondents had strong desires and needs to track PHD, and many of them were already tracking their data despite many hurdles. Popular tracking items (ie, exercise, weight, sleep, and food) and the reasons for tracking were similar to those of sighted people. BLV people, however, face many accessibility challenges throughout all phases of self-tracking, from identifying tracking tools to reviewing data. The main barriers our respondents experienced included suboptimal tracking experiences and insufficient benefits against the extended burden for BLV people. CONCLUSIONS: We reported the findings that contribute to an in-depth understanding of BLV people's motivations for PHD tracking, tracking practices, challenges, and work-arounds. Our findings suggest that various accessibility challenges hinder BLV individuals from effectively gaining the benefits of self-tracking technologies. On the basis of the findings, we discussed design opportunities and research areas to focus on making PHD tracking technologies accessible for all, including BLV people.

Trends in Healthcare Research on Visual Impairment and Blindness: Use of Bibliometrics and Hierarchical Cluster Analysis.

Purpose: Individuals with visual impairments and blindness who are marginalized in healthcare systems are located at the intersection of low accessibility for healthcare services and health-related information. To uncover recent trends in vision healthcare research, this study employed a text mining approach to literature analysis.Methods: A total of 506 journal articles published between January 2000 and April 2020 were collected from the Web of Science database. To investigate the main research themes and evolving trends, bibliometric and hierarchical cluster analyses were performed using R software.Results: Although the number of articles per year fluctuated in the past two decades, the findings of this study indicate a growing interest in visual impairment healthcare research. The United States contributed 32.3% to the overall output followed by the United Kingdom (16.7%). The prolific journals were Ophthalmic Epidemiology (4.7%), British Journal of Ophthalmology (4.4%), and JAMA Ophthalmology (3.4%). By using a hierarchical clustering algorithm, the 10 main research topics were estimated.Conclusions: Given the increasing prevalence of visual impairment in an aging society, an understanding of the current knowledge structure in scientific literature is essential for innovating on the existing healthcare system. The results of this study can guide researchers to discover the unexplored research areas and provide new directions for future work.

An Exploratory Study of the Research on Caregiver Depression: Using Bibliometrics and LDA Topic Modeling.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide readers with a comprehensive overview of scholarly work on the depression of caregivers using bibliometrics and text mining. Methods: A total of 426 articles published between 2000 and 2018 were retrieved from the Clarivate Analytics Web of Science, and then, computer-aided bibliometric analysis as well as Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling were conducted on the collection of the data. Results: Descriptive statistics on the increasing number of publications, network analysis of scientific collaboration between countries, word co-occurrence analysis, conceptual structure, and six latent topics (k = 6) identified are discussed. Conclusions: Preventing or managing depression among caregivers is a growing field with the highest priority for the aging population. In the future, collaborating between countries and reflecting cultural backgrounds in caregiver depression research are needed. This study is expected to contribute to the field of psychological distress of caregivers in looking a big picture of the current position through data-driven analysis and moving forward towards a better direction.

Bariatric/Metabolic Surgery Induces Noticeable Changes of Microbiota and Their Secreting Extracellular Vesicle Composition in the Gut.

INTRODUCTION: Microbial ecology is reported to be an important regulator of energy homeostasis and glucose metabolism. Microbes secrete extracellular vesicles (EVs) during their proliferation and death to communicate with other cells. To investigate the roles of gut microbiota in glucose metabolism, we analyzed serial changes of gut microbe and microbial EV composition before and after bariatric/metabolic surgery (BMS). METHODS: Twenty-eight Wistar rats were fed on high-fat diet (HFD) to induce obesity and diabetes. Five of them compared with 5 rats fed on regular chow diet (RCD). Among the remaining 23 rats, Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB) (n = 10), sleeve gastrectomy (SG) (n = 10), or sham operation (n = 3) was randomly performed. Gut microbiota and EVs from fecal samples were analyzed by 16S rDNA amplicon sequencing. RESULTS: The present study showed that microbial diversity was decreased in HFD-fed rats versus RCD-fed rats. In addition, BMS reversed glucose intolerance and microbial richness which were induced by HFD. In terms of microbiota and microbial EV composition, both RYGB and SG enhance the composition of phyla Proteobacteria, Verrucomicrobia, and their secreting EVs, but decrease phylum Firmicutes and its EVs. We tried to demonstrate specific genera showed a significant compositional difference in obesity/diabetes-induced rats compared with normal rats and then restored similarly toward normal rats' level after BMS. At the genus level, Lactococcus, Ruminococcus, Dorea in Firmicutes(p), Psychrobacter in Proteobacteria(p), and Akkermansia in Verrucomicrobia(p) fit these conditions after BMS. CONCLUSION: We suggest that these genera are the candidates contributing to obesity and diabetes improvement mechanism after BMS.

Analysis of caregiver burden in palliative care: An integrated review.

The inclusion of caregivers in a holistic care approach represents a basic principle in palliative care. However, many palliative care professionals have a lack of understanding of difficulties or unmet needs among caregivers. To enhance the quality of life of caregivers and the quality of care for patients, healthcare professionals should be better informed about the constructs of caregiver burden. The aim of this study is to synthesize the concept of caregiver burden in palliative care, providing implications for the caregivers and their support systems. This concept analysis study adopts the integrative review approach and the basic text analysis method (ie, word frequency). The PubMed, CINAHL, Embase, and PsycINFO databases are explored for eligible studies. From this literature search, 66 articles from 1998 to 2018 are located. After data collection is completed, the two authors independently evaluate the quality of studies published before 1 September 2018. The caregiver burden is then redefined with its attributes, antecedents, consequences, empirical referents, and facilitators. It is recommended that the multidimensional concept of caregiver burden in palliative care be measured by considering caregiver characteristics and the caregiving context.

Impacts of Phragmites australis Invasion on Soil Enzyme Activities and Microbial Abundance of Tidal Marshes.

The rapid expansion of Phragmites australis in brackish marshes of the East Coast of the USA has drawn much attention, because it may change vegetation diversity and ecosystem functions. In particular, higher primary production of Phragmites than that of other native species such as Spartina patens and Schoenoplectus americanus has been noted, suggesting possible changes in carbon storage potential in salt marshes. To better understand the long-term effect of the invasion of Phragmites on carbon storage, however, information on decomposition rates of soil organic matter is essential. To address this issue, we compared microbial enzyme activities and microbial functional gene abundances (fungi, laccase, denitrifier, and methanogens) in three depths of soils with three different plants in a brackish marsh in Maryland, USA. Laccase and phenol oxidase activities were measured to assess the decomposition potential of recalcitrant carbon while ß-glucosidase activity was determined as proxy for cellulose decomposition rate. Microbial activities near the surface (0-15 cm) were the highest in Spartina-community sites followed by Phragmites- and Schoenoplectus-community sites. A comparison of stable isotopic signatures (δ13C and δ15N) of soils and plant leaves suggests that deep organic carbon in the soils mainly originated from Spartina, and only the surface soils may have been influenced by Phragmites litter. In contrast, fungal, laccase, and denitrifier abundances determined by real-time qPCR exhibited no discernible patterns among the surface soils of the three vegetation types. However, the abundance of methanogens was higher in the deep Phragmites-community soil. Therefore, Phragmites invasion will accelerate CH4 emission by greater CH4 production in deep soils with abundant methanogens, although enzymatic mechanisms revealed the potential for larger C accumulation by Phragmites invasion in salt marshes in the east coast of the USA.

An engineered fibrinogen variant AαQ328,366P does not polymerise normally, but retains the ability to form α cross-links.

A fibrin clot is stabilised through the formation of factor XIIIa-catalysed intermolecular ε-lysyl-γ-glutamyl covalent cross-links between α chains to form α polymers and between γ chains to form γ dimers. In a previous study we characterised fibrinogen Seoul II, a heterozygous dysfibrinogen in which a cross-linking acceptor site in Aα chain, Gln328, was replaced with Pro (AαQ328P). Following on the previous study, we investigated whether the alteration of Gln residues Aα328 and Aα366 affects fibrin polymerisation and α chain cross-linking. We have expressed three recombinant fibrinogens: AαQ328P, AαQ366P, and AαQ328,366P in Chinese hamster ovary cells, purified these fibrinogens from the culture media and performed biochemical tests to see how the introduced changes affect fibrin polymerisation and α chain cross-linking. Thrombin-catalysed fibrin polymerisation of all variants was impaired with the double mutation being the most impaired. In contrast, sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and immunoblot analysis showed α polymer formation with all three engineered proteins. This study demonstrates that AαQ328 and AαQ366 are important for normal fibrin clot formation and in the absence of residues AαQ328 and AαQ366, other Gln residues in the α chain can support FXIIIa-catalysed fibrin cross-linking.

Effects of Dietary Lipid Source and Level on Growth Performance, Blood Parameters and Flesh Quality of Sub-adult Olive Flounder (Paralichthys olivaceus).

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of dietary lipid source and level on growth performance, blood parameters, fatty acid composition and flesh quality of sub-adult olive flounder Paralichthys olivaceus. Eight experimental diets were formulated to contain 5% squid liver oil (SLO), 5% linseed oil (LO), 5% soybean oil (SO), a mixture of 1% squid liver oil, 2% linseed oil and 2% soybean oil (MIX), no lipid supplementation with high protein level (LL-HP), 10% squid liver oil (HL-SLO), a mixture of 1% squid liver oil, 4.5% linseed oil and 4.5% soybean oil (HL-VO), and 1% squid liver oil with high starch level (LL-HC), respectively. Two replicate groups of fish (average initial weight of 296 g) were fed the diets for 17 wks. After 5 wks, 11 wks and the end of the feeding trial, five fish from each tank were randomly sampled for analysis of body composition. At the end of the feeding trial, final mean weight of fish fed the LL-HP diet was significantly (p<0.05) higher than that of fish fed the HL-VO diet, but did not differ significantly from those of fish fed the SLO, LO, SO, MIX, HL-SLO and LL-HC diets. Fish fed the LL-HP diet showed significantly higher feed efficiency than fish fed the LO, HL-SLO and HL-VO diets. Feed efficiency of fish fed the LO, SO and MIX diets were similar to those of fish fed the SLO and HL-SLO diets. Fish fed the HL-SLO diet showed significantly higher total cholesterol content in plasma compared with other diets. Fatty acid composition of tissues was reflected by dietary fatty acid composition. The highest linoleic (LA) and linolenic acid (LNA) contents in the dorsal muscle were observed in fish fed the SO and LO diets, respectively, regardless of feeding period. The highest eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) content in the dorsal muscle was observed in fish fed the LL-HP and LL-HC diets after 11 and 17 weeks of feeding, respectively. Fish fed the SLO and HL-SLO diets showed higher docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) content than that of other treatments after 11 and 17 weeks of feeding, respectively. Dietary inclusion of vegetable oils reduced n-3 HUFA contents in the dorsal muscle and liver of fish. The n-3 HUFA contents in tissues of fish fed the SLO and HL-SLO diets were higher than those of fish fed other diets, except for the LL-HP and LL-HC diets. Hardness, gel strength, chewiness and cohesiveness values of dorsal muscle in fish were significantly affected by dietary lipid source. The results of this study indicate that fish oil in fish meal based diets for sub-adult olive flounder could be replaced by soybean oil and linseed oil without negative effects on growth and feed utilization.