Visualization-Driven Time-Series Extraction from Wearable Systems Can Facilitate Differentiation of Passive ADL Characteristics among Stroke and Healthy Older Adults

Wearable technologies allow the measurement of unhindered activities of daily living (ADL) among patients who had a stroke in their natural settings. However, methods to extract meaningful information from large multi-day datasets are limited. This study investigated new visualization-driven time-series extraction methods for distinguishing activities from stroke and healthy adults. Fourteen stroke and fourteen healthy adults wore a wearable sensor at the L5/S1 position for three consecutive days and collected accelerometer data passively in the participant’s naturalistic environment. Data from visualization facilitated selecting information-rich time series, which resulted in classification accuracy of 97.3% using recurrent neural networks (RNNs). Individuals with stroke showed a negative correlation between their body mass index (BMI) and higher-acceleration fraction produced during ADL. We also found individuals with stroke made lower activity amplitudes than healthy counterparts in all three activity bands (low, medium, and high). Our findings show that visualization-driven time series can accurately classify movements among stroke and healthy groups using a deep recurrent neural network. This novel visualization-based time-series extraction from naturalistic data provides a physical basis for analyzing passive ADL monitoring data from real-world environments. This time-series extraction method using unit sphere projections of acceleration can be used by a slew of analysis algorithms to remotely track progress among stroke survivors in their rehabilitation program and their ADL abilities.

Left Ventricular Ejection Time Measured by Echocardiography Differentiates Neurobehavioral Resilience and Vulnerability to Sleep Loss and Stress

There are substantial individual differences (resilience and vulnerability) in performance resulting from sleep loss and psychosocial stress, but predictive potential biomarkers remain elusive. Similarly, marked changes in the cardiovascular system from sleep loss and stress include an increased risk for cardiovascular disease. It remains unknown whether key hemodynamic markers, including left ventricular ejection time (LVET), stroke volume (SV), heart rate (HR), cardiac index (CI), blood pressure (BP), and systemic vascular resistance index (SVRI), differ in resilient vs. vulnerable individuals and predict differential performance resilience with sleep loss and stress. We investigated for the first time whether the combination of total sleep deprivation (TSD) and psychological stress affected a comprehensive set of hemodynamic measures in healthy adults, and whether these measures differentiated neurobehavioral performance in resilient and vulnerable individuals. Thirty-two healthy adults (ages 27–53; 14 females) participated in a 5-day experiment in the Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA), a high-fidelity National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) space analog isolation facility, consisting of two baseline nights, 39 h TSD, and two recovery nights. A modified Trier Social Stress Test induced psychological stress during TSD. Cardiovascular measure collection [SV, HR, CI, LVET, BP, and SVRI] and neurobehavioral performance testing (including a behavioral attention task and a rating of subjective sleepiness) occurred at six and 11 timepoints, respectively. Individuals with longer pre-study LVET (determined by a median split on pre-study LVET) tended to have poorer performance during TSD and stress. Resilient and vulnerable groups (determined by a median split on average TSD performance) showed significantly different profiles of SV, HR, CI, and LVET. Importantly, LVET at pre-study, but not other hemodynamic measures, reliably differentiated neurobehavioral performance during TSD and stress, and therefore may be a biomarker. Future studies should investigate whether the non-invasive marker, LVET, determines risk for adverse health outcomes.

Incidences of Adverse Reactions in BNT162b2: A Meta-analysis

Review question / Objective: This study searched PubMed, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, Embase Electronics, and other databases to collect healthy adults aged 16 and older, subjects with no previous history of COVID-19 infection, A randomized controlled trial of Pfizer's vaccine BNT162b2 versus placebo. Using RevMan5.4 software, meta-analysis was conducted to compare the effects of injection of BNT162b2 and placebo on the incidence of adverse reactions in healthy adults over 16 years of age. Main indexes include total incidence of adverse reactions, the incidence of local adverse reactions at the injection site (including red hot accessories), the incidence of systemic adverse reactions, including fever, headache, rash, urticaria, joint pain, muscle pain, gastrointestinal tract reaction, fatigue, cough, etc.), death rate, so as to provide a reference for clinical practice. Information sources: The following electronic databases will be searched from January 2020 to November 2021: PubMed, the Cochrane Library, Web of Science, Embase Electronics. In addition, reference lists of the included studies were manually searched to identify additional relevant studies.

Nitric Oxide-mediated Cutaneous Microvascular Function is not Altered in Young Adults Following Mild-to-Moderate SARS CoV-2 Infection.

Vascular dysfunction has been reported in adults who have recovered from COVID-19. To date, no studies have investigated the underlying mechanisms of persistent COVID-19-associated vascular dysfunction. PURPOSE: To quantify nitric oxide (NO)-mediated vasodilation in healthy adults who have recovered from SARS-CoV-2 infection. We hypothesized that COVID-19-recovered adults would have impaired NO-mediated vasodilation compared to adults who have not had COVID-19. METHODS: We performed a cross-sectional study including: 10 (5M/5W, 24 ± 4yrs) healthy control (HC) adults who were unvaccinated for COVID-19, 11 (4M/7W, 25 ± 6yrs) healthy vaccinated (HV) adults, and 12 (5M/7W, 22 ± 3yrs) post-COVID-19 (PC, 19 ± 14wks) adults. COVID-19 symptoms severity (survey) were assessed. A standardized 39°C local heating protocol was used to assess NO-dependent vasodilation via perfusion (intradermal microdialysis) of 15 mM NG-nitro-l-arginine methyl ester during the plateau of the heating response. Red blood cell flux was measured (laser-Doppler flowmetry) and cutaneous vascular conductance (CVC = flux/mmHg) was expressed as a percentage of maximum (28mM sodium nitroprusside + 43°C). RESULTS: The local heating plateau (HC: 61 ± 20%, HV: 60 ± 19%, PC: 67 ± 19%, p=0.80) and NO-dependent vasodilation (HC: 77 ± 9%, HV: 71 ± 7%, PC: 70 ± 10%, p=0.36) were not different among groups. Neither symptom severity (25 ± 12 AU) nor time since diagnosis correlated with the NO-dependent vasodilation (r=0.46, p=0.13; r=0.41, p=0.19, respectively). CONCLUSION: Healthy adults who have had mild-to-moderate COVID-19 do not have altered NO-mediated cutaneous microvascular function.

Safety and Immunogenicity of the Third Booster Dose with Inactivated, Viral Vector, and mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines in Fully Immunized Healthy Adults with Inactivated Vaccine

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has become a severe healthcare problem worldwide since the first outbreak in late December 2019. Currently, the COVID-19 vaccine has been used in many countries, but it is still unable to control the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, despite patients receiving full vaccination doses. Therefore, we aimed to appraise the booster effect of the different platforms of vaccines, including inactivated vaccine (BBIBP), viral vector vaccine (AZD122), and mRNA vaccine (BNT162b2), in healthy adults who received the full dose of inactivated vaccine (CoronaVac). The booster dose was safe with no serious adverse events. Moreover, the immunogenicity indicated that the booster dose with viral vector and mRNA vaccine achieved a significant proportion of Ig anti-receptor binding domain (RBD), IgG anti-RBD, and IgA anti-S1 booster response. In contrast, inactivated vaccine achieved a lower booster response than others. Consequently, the neutralization activity of vaccinated serum had a high inhibition of over 90% against SARS-CoV-2 wild-type and their variants (B.1.1.7–alpha, B.1.351–beta, and B.1.617.2–delta). In addition, IgG anti-nucleocapsid was observed only among the group that received the BBIBP booster. Our study found a significant increase in levels of IFN-ɣ secreting T-cell response after the additional viral vector or mRNA booster vaccination. This study showed that administration with either viral vector (AZD1222) or mRNA (BNT162b2) boosters in individuals with a history of two doses of inactivated vaccine (CoronaVac) obtained great immunogenicity with acceptable adverse events.

Effects of Caffeine Intake on Cardiopulmonary Variables and QT Interval after a Moderate-Intensity Aerobic Exercise in Healthy Adults: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Caffeine is considered a widely consumed natural and legal psychoactive stimulant with several effects on the body. The present study attempted to investigate the effects of caffeine consumed before and after a physical exercise on cardiovascular and cardiorespiratory functions in healthy adults. 36 healthy adult males were recruited and randomly allocated to one of the three (3) groups: group I (exercise without caffeine consumption), group II (caffeine beverage intake before exercise), and group III (caffeine beverage intake immediately after exercise). The heart rate (HR), QTc interval, blood pressure (BP), respiratory rate (RR), oxygen consumption (VO₂), and carbon dioxide emission (VCO₂) were measured at 0, 5, 10, and 15 min after the exercise. We observed a significant difference in all measured outcomes during the different recovery times in all the groups ( p < 0.05 ). HR, RR, SBP, VO2, and VCO2 gradually decreased with time, DBP contrarily increased with time, and the QTc showed an irregular pattern. We can affirm that ingestion of caffeine before and after moderate aerobic exercise slows down the parasympathetic stimulation, heart rate recovery, and the recovery of HR and QTc with no major effects on BP, RR, VO₂, and VCO₂ in healthy adult men.