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Role of Occupational Neurotoxicants in Psychiatric and Neurodegenerative Disorders
Published in Lucio G. Costa, Luigi Manzo, Occupatinal Neurotoxicology, 2020
Stefano M. Candura, Luigi Manzo, Lucio G. Costa
One case of severe occupational encephalopathy (associated with pulmonary fibrosis) due to Al has been reported in a man who had worked for 13 years as a ball-mill operator in an Al flake powder factory. Although the patient’s memory became impaired during the course of the disease, AD was excluded. At autopsy, the Al content of the brain and other tissues was greatly raised.188 A similar case was later reported in a Japanese man who had worked for 30 years in an Al refining plant.189 Dementia was diagnosed when the patient was 60 years old, the first symptoms being noted at the age of 55. The patient died at 65. The neuropatho-logical examination of his brain revealed cerebral atrophy, typical neurofibrillary tangles, and senile plaques. The latter were also present in the cerebellum which is not a target site in AD. X-ray microanalysis showed the presence of Al in the nuclei and cytoplasm of tangle-bearing neurons.189 Signs of dementia have recently been observed in a patient more than 40 years after aluminosis was diagnosed in 1946.190
Central nervous system
Published in A Stewart Whitley, Jan Dodgeon, Angela Meadows, Jane Cullingworth, Ken Holmes, Marcus Jackson, Graham Hoadley, Randeep Kumar Kulshrestha, Clark’s Procedures in Diagnostic Imaging: A System-Based Approach, 2020
A Stewart Whitley, Jan Dodgeon, Angela Meadows, Jane Cullingworth, Ken Holmes, Marcus Jackson, Graham Hoadley, Randeep Kumar Kulshrestha
Dementia is occasionally due to a mass, such as haematoma or tumour, causing pressure on certain areas of the brain, and these can be detected by conventional CT. However, the vast majority of cases are due to degenerative processes that may be associated with global or focal atrophy, or secondary to vascular disease. With increasing understanding of these disease processes and the development of effective therapy, imaging is now fundamental to determine the pattern of disease and assist in making a specific diagnosis [28]. In Alzheimer’s disease, for example, there is a tendency for cerebral atrophy to be most conspicuous in the medial temporal lobe structures, while other dementia variants may show focal areas of frontal or temporal atrophy. Global atrophy with features of white matter ischaemic disease is typical of vascular dementia. MRI has greater sensitivity than CT, but if MRI is contraindicated CT with the plane parallel to the long axis of the temporal lobe and multiplanar reconstruction can be useful.
Chapter nine Medical and health management system of systems
Published in Mo Jamshidi, Systems of Systems Engineering, 2017
Yutaka Hata, Syoji Kobashi, Hiroshi Nakajima
Figure 9.13 shows applications of a SoS, which comprises image segmentation and expert knowledge systems. Figure 9.13(a) shows segmented MR images of the human brain that are helpful in understanding cerebral atrophy. To reconstruct the images, the brain region was segmented by 3-D RG using an automated threshold finding method, and the segmented region was decomposed into brain parts by evaluating the position, intensity, distance, etc. The threshold finding method and the evaluation system were constructed by integrating an expert knowledge system [6]. Figure 9.13(b) shows the anatomical structure of the human head that can be used to plan neurosurgery. These images were reconstructed from three images produced by three systems: the first segmented the brain region from MR images, the second segmented the cerebral artery region from MR angiography images [7], and the third segmented the skull region from CT images, because each imaging modality can describe regions with high contrast. Figure 9.13(c) shows the cerebral lobes segmented by an active surface model in which a fuzzy expert system evaluates the deforming model [8], and the lateral ventricles are segmented by a watershed segmentation algorithm in which a fuzzy expert system provides knowledge of the shape and location [9].
Deep brain stimulation and other surgical modalities for the management of essential tremor
Published in Expert Review of Medical Devices, 2020
Kai-Liang Wang, Qianwei Ren, Shannon Chiu, Bhavana Patel, Fan-Gang Meng, Wei Hu, Aparna Wagle Shukla
Since the 1950s, many lesioning surgeries including RF thalamotomy, cryothalamotomy, chemothalamotomy, and electrolytic lesioning have evolved for the treatment of movement disorders [14,15]. In the beginning, the scientists found that cooling the brain structures to 0 to 10°C produced a reversible inhibition of neural activity, whereas further cooling below – 20°C led to the creation of a permanent lesion. After initial positive findings in animal studies, Cooper and colleagues performed 100 (cryothalamotomies) surgeries mainly in patients diagnosed with Parkinsonism [16]. While there was a growing interest in the cryolesioning technique, Brodkey et al. applied RF stimulation to heat the Edinger-Westphal nucleus in cats and a temperature increase to about 44–49°C led to a reversible dilation of the pupil [17]. There is now evidence that prolonged heating (240 minutes) at low temperatures can lead to tissue ablation [18]. RF technique directed to Vim is the most commonly selected lesioning procedure as the thermal dose required for treating tremor is relatively accurate but is usually contraindicated for the patients who have preexistent nervous system damage, or significant cerebral atrophy [19]. Lessons learned from this procedure have largely influenced the field of functional neurosurgery [20] .
Sex and age differences in head acceleration during purposeful soccer heading
Published in Research in Sports Medicine, 2018
Jaclyn B. Caccese, Thomas A. Buckley, Ryan T. Tierney, William C. Rose, Joseph J. Glutting, Thomas W. Kaminski
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive neurodegenerative disease, has been identified in the brains of three professional soccer (football) players, including the most well-known case of British player Jeffrey Astle (Grinberg et al., 2016; Hales et al., 2014; McKee, Daneshvar, Alvarez, & Stein, 2014), which has increased societal concern regarding repetitive soccer heading. Although the recognition and diagnosis of CTE has augmented societal awareness of the potential consequences of repetitive head impacts in soccer, questions regarding the safety of repetitive heading arose as early as the 1980s; several studies between 1981 and 1991 on active and retired Norwegian professional soccer players showed abnormal neurological findings, EEG disturbances, cerebral atrophy and neuropsychological impairments (Tysvaer, 1992), although other studies have provided conflicting results (Kirkendall, Jordan, & Garrett, 2001; Maher, Hutchison, Cusimano, Comper, & Schweizer, 2014; Tarnutzer, Straumann, Brugger, & Feddermann-Demont, 2016). The first step in understanding the long-term outcomes of repetitive soccer heading is learning more about the kinematics of head impact and factors, such as sex and age that contribute to individual responses to head impact in soccer.
Deep and hybrid learning of MRI diagnosis for early detection of the progression stages in Alzheimer’s disease
Published in Connection Science, 2022
Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive degenerative disease that affects the nervous system through a loss of neurons in the brain (Ulep et al., 2018). Due to the loss of neurons in the brain, higher brain functions gradually deteriorate and, therefore, this affects memory and knowledge with a decrease in motor functions. AD is one of the common kinds of dementia, accounting for approximately 70% of dementia types. Age plays a key role in AD, as most incidences are observed in people over 65 years of age, with a higher infection rate among women than among men (Viña & Lloret, 2010). The etiology remains obscure; however, the major theories are based on the assembly of Aβ peptides outside cells and hyperphosphorylated tau protein inside cells (Zaretsky & Zaretskaia, 2021). These two forms are named amyloid plaques (a protein deposit called beta-amyloid that accumulates in the spaces of neurons) and tangles (twisted protein fibres called “tau” that accumulate inside nerve cells). Biological signs are indicators of the state of the emergence of a few early symptoms of AD before it develops into clinical symptoms (Porsteinsson et al., 2021). Therefore, it is suspected that amyloid plaques and synapses are responsible for the damage to neurons and lead to a gradual loss of memory, with changes in behaviour and thought (Soldan et al., 2017). Despite the development and advanced renaissance in the medical field, effective treatments for AD remain far from being achieved. Nevertheless, certain medicines delay the progression of the disease to advanced stages. AD is also multifactorial, and is not merely related to ageing; it may result from sleep disorders, diet, human lifestyle, genetics, and environmental factors (X. X. Zhang et al., 2021). Preclinical, mild cognitive, and dementia are the three phases of AD. While Alzheimer’s begins for a long period without symptoms, which is called the clinical stage, the clinical stage develops (the progression of the physiological process) with the emergence of vital signs and is more susceptible to infection with MCI; finally, the MCI stage develops until AD appears with all its vital signs (Venugopalan et al., 2021). Biomarkers in the MCI stage are not sufficient to accurately predict stability versus those who will likely develop dementia or AD (Meghdadi et al., 2021). In other words, MCI is the early indication for early diagnosis of cases before progression to AD (Tabatabaei-Jafari et al., 2015). The widespread use of MRI to diagnose the structure of the brain can be of assistance in the early diagnosis of the disease (Nadel et al., 2021). Therefore, doctors and specialists recommend that patients with cognitive impairment undergo imaging of the brain’s internal structure by MRI, which has a vital role in diagnosing AD and dementia (Johnson et al., 2012). The MRI technique offers a scope of various sequences that can identify the inner tissues of the brain. MRI images show measures of brain atrophy that reflect the cumulative neurological damage responsible for the clinical situation. When comparing brain atrophy with different biomarkers, cerebral atrophy is considered a strong biomarker associated with cognitive decline (Ballarini et al., 2021). Thus, cerebral atrophy is an essential feature of neurodegeneration.