Effects of Multiple Concussions

Author(s):  
Michael A. McCrea ◽  
Lindsay D. Nelson

There is growing concern that suffering multiple sport-related concussions may increase an athlete’s risk of cumulative neurocognitive and neurobehavioral impairment. Many concerns have not been well-validated, however, owing to limited samples of repeatedly concussed players. In this article, we review the theoretical risks and current evidence regarding the extent to which repeat concussions impact players’ experience of and recovery following successive injuries. Concussion effects are considered at multiple levels (e.g., self-reported physical and psychiatric symptoms, neuropsychological performance, and neurophysiological measures) across both the acute and chronic phases of recovery. Recommendations for applying findings to injury management decisions are provided. Although repeat concussions appear to have the potential for cumulative neurophysiological burden, a number of factors (e.g., individual risk for experiencing or responding poorly to injury, recovery time between injuries) appear important to explain discrepant findings among studies and to translate general scientific principles into clinical decisions for individual players. Future work that accumulates larger, prospective samples will allow for clearer delineation of the factors that appear important for predicting how recurrent concussions impact individual athletes.

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. 860-884
Author(s):  
V.G. Kogdenko ◽  
A.A. Sanzharov

Subject. The article deals with the analysis of suppliers in the public procurement system based on reasonable prequalification parameters. Objectives. The aim is to test the hypothesis about strong reputation characteristics of the winners in the public procurement system and develop a methodology for assessing the reputation of suppliers for prequalification purposes. Methods. We employ general scientific principles and methods of research, like abstraction, generalization of approaches used by domestic and foreign authors for prequalification and assessment of reputation of public procurement participants. Results. To test the hypothesis, we calculated four groups of indicators on corporate, financial, market, and social components of reputation. The methodology was tested on the data obtained from SPARK-Interfax and SPARK-Marketing information resources. Conclusions. The study revealed that not all reputational characteristics of public procurement winners can be regarded as high level. In terms of the corporate component, it is the low level of share capital, indicating the mistrust on the part of owners and their reluctance to invest in the business, and the low percentage of non-current assets. In terms of the market component, it is a low sales growth rate, as well as low return on sales. As to the financial component, it is a low capitalization of winners, low share of long-term debt capital and low credit limit. With respect to the social component, it is a below-average tax burden.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1753495X2098401
Author(s):  
Konstantinos Giannakou

Pre-eclampsia is a leading cause of neonatal and maternal mortality and morbidity that complicates approximately 2–8% of all pregnancies worldwide. The precise cause of pre-eclampsia is not completely understood, with several environmental, genetic, and maternal factors involved in its pathogenesis and pathophysiology. An accurate predictor of pre-eclampsia will facilitate early recognition, close surveillance according to the individual risk and early intervention, and reduce the negative consequences of the disorder. Current evidence shows that no single test predicts pre-eclampsia with sufficient accuracy to be clinically useful. A combination of markers into multiparametric models may provide a more useful and feasible predictive tool for pre-eclampsia screening in the routine care setting than a test of either component alone. This review presents a summary of the current advances on prediction of pre-eclampsia, highlighting their performance and applicability. Key priorities when conducting research on predicting pre-eclampsia are also analyzed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryant A. Seamon ◽  
Richard R. Neptune ◽  
Steven A. Kautz

Factorization methods quantitatively group electromyographic signals from several muscles during dynamic tasks into multiple modules where each module consists of muscles that are coactive during the movement. Module-based analyses may provide an analytical framework for testing theories of poststroke motor control recovery based on one’s ability to move independently from mass flexion-extension muscle group coactivation. Such a framework may be useful for understanding the causality between underlying neural impairments, biomechanical function, and walking performance in individuals poststroke. Our aim is to synthesize current evidence regarding the relationships between modules, gait mechanics, and rehabilitation in individuals poststroke. We synthesized eleven studies that performed module-based analyses during walking tasks for individuals poststroke. Modules were primarily identified by nonnegative matrix factorization, and fewer modules correlated with poor walking performance on biomechanical and clinical measures. Fewer modules indicated reduced ability to control individual muscle timing during paretic leg stance. There was evidence that rehabilitation can lead to the use of more and/or better-timed modules. While future work will need to establish the ability of modules to identify impairment mechanisms, they appear to offer a promising analytical approach for evaluating motor control.


2018 ◽  
Vol 104 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Moutier

Awareness of high rates of physician burnout, depression and suicide is leading to changes within the medical profession at all levels. Most mental health problems can be effectively managed, but real and perceived barriers — such as confidentiality concerns and fear of negative ramifications on one's reputation, licensure, or hospital privileging — keep many physicians from addressing their mental health needs. Unattended distress has ramifications for physicians as well as the health care industry and patient safety. A number of factors contribute: in addition to individual risk factors and stress load, institutional culture plays a critical role in leading physicians to rationalize and internalize distress as part of their professional identity. There are several initiatives with demonstrated effectiveness in medical settings that can be scaled up for greatest impact: education and stigma reduction efforts, policies and procedures that treat mental health on par with physical health, and efforts that promote an overarching culture of respect. Further strides can be made by addressing hospital and state licensing forms' questions related to mental health — ensuring that questions pertain to competence rather than illness — or replacing questions altogether with a statement encouraging proactive actions to protect physician mental health and safe practice.


2021 ◽  
pp. 54-61
Author(s):  
S. G. Trifonov ◽  
◽  
K. V. Trifonova

Currently, the Ombudsman is a traditional component of democratic legal systems. The creation of such a body, as noted in the Council of Europe Resolution «On the role of commissioners/ombudsmen in the protection of citizens’ rights», which would try to ensure justice, respect for the foundations of the rule of law and at the same time be able to establish a dialogue with citizens, is necessary in many States. The purpose and objectives of this article are to consider the issues of the emergence and development of the constitutional-legal institution as an Ombudsman in General, and the evolution of this institution, in which there were various models and types of ombudsmen. It is also necessary to describe the existing models of the Ombudsman applied in different States. The article examines the functional specialization of ombudsmen, which occurs through the introduction of ombudsmen in certain areas of public relations or to protect the rights and interests of the most legally vulnerable categories and groups of the population, and specifically the emergence of the institution of migration ombudsmen. The methodology of the article is based on a set of philosophical and worldview, General scientific principles and approaches and special scientific methods of cognition of constitutional and legal phenomena. When writing, a number of General scientific and special scientific methods were used, including: system and structural-functional methods, sociological method, formal-logical method, comparative-legal method. As a result of the research, we can conclude that the essential characteristics of the Ombudsman institution have changed from the institution of supervision of the administration and the court to the most important human rights mechanism that it represents at the present stage. Within the framework of the functioning of the institution of the Ombudsman, different models have been identified in different States and specialized ombudsmen have appeared, including those dealing with the protection of the legal rights and interests of migrant workers.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Warner Myntti ◽  
Jensen Spicer ◽  
Carol Janney ◽  
Stacey Armstrong ◽  
Sarah Domoff

Adolescents are spending more time interacting with peers online than in person, evidencing the need to examine this shift’s implications for adolescent loneliness and mental health. The current review examines research documenting an association between social media use and mental health, and highlights several specific areas that should be further explored as mechanisms within this relationship. Overall, it appears that frequency of social media use, the kind of social media use, the social environment, the platform used, and the potential for adverse events are especially important in understanding the relationship between social media use and adolescent mental health.


2019 ◽  
Vol 217 (4) ◽  
pp. 555-561 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Coid ◽  
Rafael Gonzalez Rodriguez ◽  
Constantinos Kallis ◽  
Yamin Zhang ◽  
Kamaldeep Bhui ◽  
...  

BackgroundEthnic inequalities in health outcomes are often explained by socioeconomic status and concentrated poverty. However, ethnic disparities in psychotic experiences are not completely attenuated by these factors.AimsWe investigated whether disparities are better explained by interactions between individual risk factors and place-based clustering of disadvantage, termed a syndemic.MethodWe performed a cross-sectional survey of 3750 UK men, aged 18–34 years, oversampling Black and minority ethnic (BME) men nationally, together with men residing in London Borough of Hackney. Participants completed questionnaires covering psychiatric symptoms, substance misuse, crime and violence, and risky sexual health behaviours. We included five psychotic experiences and a categorical measure of psychosis based on the Psychosis Screening Questionnaire.ResultsAt national level, more Black men reported psychotic experiences but disparities disappeared following statistical adjustment for social position. However, large disparities for psychotic experiences in Hackney were not attenuated by adjustment for social factors in Black men (adjusted odds ratio, 3.24; 95% CI 2.14–4.91; P < 0.002), but were for South Asian men. A syndemic model of joint effects, adducing a four-component latent variable (psychotic experiences and anxiety, substance dependence, high-risk sexual behaviour and violence and criminality) showed synergy between components and explained persistent disparities in psychotic experiences. A further interaction confirmed area-level effects (Black ethnicity × Hackney residence, 0.834; P < 0.001).ConclusionsSyndemic effects result in higher rates of non-affective psychosis among BME persons in certain inner-urban settings. Further research should investigate how syndemics raise levels of psychotic experiences and related health conditions in Black men in specific places with multiple deprivations.


2020 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca M. Todd ◽  
Vladimir Miskovic ◽  
Junichi Chikazoe ◽  
Adam K. Anderson

Recent advances in our understanding of information states in the human brain have opened a new window into the brain's representation of emotion. While emotion was once thought to constitute a separate domain from cognition, current evidence suggests that all events are filtered through the lens of whether they are good or bad for us. Focusing on new methods of decoding information states from brain activation, we review growing evidence that emotion is represented at multiple levels of our sensory systems and infuses perception, attention, learning, and memory. We provide evidence that the primary function of emotional representations is to produce unified emotion, perception, and thought (e.g., “That is a good thing”) rather than discrete and isolated psychological events (e.g., “That is a thing. I feel good”). The emergent view suggests ways in which emotion operates as a fundamental feature of cognition, by design ensuring that emotional outcomes are the central object of perception, thought, and action.


2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (6) ◽  
pp. 881-890 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole N. Lønfeldt ◽  
Frank C. Verhulst ◽  
Katrine Strandberg-Larsen ◽  
Kerstin J. Plessen ◽  
Eli R. Lebowitz

AbstractExperts have raised concerns that oxytocin for labor induction and augmentation may have detrimental effects on the neurodevelopment of children. To investigate whether there is the reason for concern, we reviewed and evaluated the available evidence by searching databases with no language or date restrictions up to 9 September 2018. We included English-language studies reporting results on the association between perinatal oxytocin exposure and any cognitive impairment, psychiatric symptoms or disorders in childhood. We assessed the quality of studies using the Newcastle–Ottawa Quality Assessment Scales. Independent risk estimates were pooled using random-effects meta-analyses when at least two independent datasets provided data on the same symptom or disorder. Otherwise, we provided narrative summaries. Two studies examined cognitive impairment, one examined problem behavior, three examined attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and seven focused on autism spectrum disorders (ASD). We provided narrative summaries of the studies on cognitive impairment. For ADHD, the pooled risk estimate was 1.17; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.77–1.78, based on a pooled sample size of 5 47 278 offspring. For ASD, the pooled risk estimate was 1.10; 95% CI 1.04–1.17, based on 8 87 470 offspring. Conclusions that perinatal oxytocin increases the risks of neurodevelopmental problems are premature. Observational studies of low to high quality comprise the evidence-base, and confounding, especially by the genetic or environmental vulnerability, remains an issue. Current evidence is insufficient to justify modifying obstetric guidelines for the use of oxytocin, which state that it should only be used when clinically indicated.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (517) ◽  
pp. 161-168
Author(s):  
M. V. Chorna ◽  
◽  
A. M. Volosov ◽  
M. O. Rieznyk ◽  
◽  
...  

The article is aimed at developing a scientific-methodical approach to the identification of sources of competitive advantages, taking into account the specifics of enterprises in the retail trade sector. The development and transformation of approaches to identifying sources of competitive advantage within the institutional, market and resource concepts is considered. The main provisions of scientific thought on this problem are defined and the observance of the resource approach is substantiated. A methodical approach to identification of the existing sources of competitive advantages and potential of their development in retail enterprises is proposed. As a basis, the following general scientific principles are allocated: complexity, security, comparability, information sufficiency, orientation towards creating the bigger consumer value. The stages of implementation of evaluation-identification procedures are characterized. The directions of identification of the sources of competitive advantages are determined as follows: provision of labor and commodity resources, capital, level of management, capabilities of staff. The stage of formation of the information base is characterized. The choice of research objects is substantiated, taking into account the dual nature of competitive advantages and the sectoral specifics of trade enterprises. The quantitative and qualitative correspondence of both the potential and the realized advantages within each resource-competent plane of the enterprise’s potential is determined. The conditions for identifying sources of competitive advantages and their corresponding target development benchmarks are defined. The proposed methodical instrumentarium was tested at the trade network enterprises of the city of Kharkiv. The competitive position of enterprises according to available sources, the level of their involvement in the processes of creating competitive advantages are specified; recommendations on the ways of their formation and development are made.


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