Rheumatoid arthritis and falls: the influence of disease activity.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the correlation between disease activity of RA and the risk of falling. METHODS: Seventy-eight patients were tested. Disease activity was measured with acute-phase reactants, autoantibodies, swollen and tender joint count (SJC28, TJC28), pain on a visual analogue scale (VAS pain), patient and evaluator global assessment of disease activity (PGA, EGA), HAQ disability index (HAQ-DI), 28-joint DAS (DAS-28) and the clinical and simple disease activity indexes (CDAI, SDAI). The risk of falling was evaluated by a fall assessment consisting of Tinetti test (TIT), timed get up and go test (TUG), chair-rising test (CRT), tandem walk and tandem stand test. RESULTS: During the last 12 months, 26.9% of the participants reported a fall and 46.2% mentioned the fear of falling. The most evident link [Spearman's correlation (r(s))] with the results of the fall assessment was found in HAQ-DI (CRT: r(s) = 0.523, TUG: r(s) = 0.620, TIT: r(s) = -0.676), CDAI (CRT: r(s) = 0.460, TUG: r(s) = 0.504, TIT: r(s) = -0.472), VAS pain (CRT: r(s) = 0.441, TUG: r(s) = 0.616, TIT: r(s) = -0.548) PGA (CRT: r(s) = 0.473, TUG: r(s) = 0.577, TIT: r(s) = -0.520) and TJC (CRT: r(s) = 0.488, TUG: r(s) = 0.394, TIT: r(s) = -0.385). Patients with higher disease activity achieved poorer results in the fall assessment. CONCLUSION: The strongest correlation with falls was evident for patient-reported outcomes. Pain seems to be the common ground of these parameters. At the same time, disease activity influences pain. The results suggest an increased attention towards the risk of falling with patients of higher levels of disease activity or pain, and physio- or ergotherapeutical interventions as needed.

GROWSCREEN-Rhizo is a novel phenotyping robot enabling simultaneous measurements of root and shoot growth for plants grown in soil-filled rhizotrons.

Root systems play an essential role in ensuring plant productivity. Experiments conducted in controlled environments and simulation models suggest that root geometry and responses of root architecture to environmental factors should be studied as a priority. However, compared with aboveground plant organs, roots are not easily accessible by non-invasive analyses and field research is still based almost completely on manual, destructive methods. Contributing to reducing the gap between laboratory and field experiments, we present a novel phenotyping system (GROWSCREEN-Rhizo), which is capable of automatically imaging roots and shoots of plants grown in soil-filled rhizotrons (up to a volume of ~18L) with a throughput of 60 rhizotrons per hour. Analysis of plants grown in this setup is restricted to a certain plant size (up to a shoot height of 80cm and root-system depth of 90cm). We performed validation experiments using six different species and for barley and maize, we studied the effect of moderate soil compaction, which is a relevant factor in the field. First, we found that the portion of root systems that is visible through the rhizotrons' transparent plate is representative of the total root system. The percentage of visible roots decreases with increasing average root diameter of the plant species studied and depends, to some extent, on environmental conditions. Second, we could measure relatively minor changes in root-system architecture induced by a moderate increase in soil compaction. Taken together, these findings demonstrate the good potential of this methodology to characterise root geometry and temporal growth responses with relatively high spatial accuracy and resolution for both monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous species. Our prototype will allow the design of high-throughput screening methodologies simulating environmental scenarios that are relevant in the field and will support breeding efforts towards improved resource use efficiency and stability of crop yields.

Daily functioning and health status in patients with hand osteoarthritis: Fewer differences between women and men than expected.

OBJECTIVE: To explore and describe potential differences between women and men in functioning, health status and socio-economic variables in hand OA. METHODS: Unselected patients of an Austrian outpatient clinic meeting the ACR criteria for hand OA were consecutively included and assessed once. Descriptive statistics and subgroup analyses were performed for differences between women and men. By regression analysis, we explored whether the variables sex, practice of sports, manual activities, aesthetic changes and functioning in daily life predict the levels of pain and vitality. RESULTS: 223 (88.1%) women and 30 (11.9%) men were included in the study. Significant differences between women and men were found in involvement in housework, aesthetic changes and own net income. Sex did not contribute significantly to any of the regression models, while e.g. involvement in sports was a strong individual contributor to self-reported vitality - irrespective of sex. Total X-ray scores of both hands as well as the involvement of CMCI joints did not show significant differences. CONCLUSION: Our study showed significant differences between women and men with hand OA in socio-economic variables and aesthetic changes. In contrast to our expectations, no other differences between women and men were found in functioning and health status.

Dynamics of seedling growth acclimation towards altered light conditions can be quantified via GROWSCREEN: a setup and procedure designed for rapid optical phenotyping of different plant species.

Using a novel setup, we assessed how fast growth of Nicotiana tabacum seedlings responds to alterations in the light regime and investigated whether starch-free mutants of Arabidopsis thaliana show decreased growth potential at an early developmental stage. Leaf area and relative growth rate were measured based on pictures from a camera automatically placed above an array of 120 seedlings. Detection of total seedling leaf area was performed via global segmentation of colour images for preset thresholds of the parameters hue, saturation and value. Dynamic acclimation of relative growth rate towards altered light conditions occurred within 1 d in N. tabacum exposed to high nutrient availability, but not in plants exposed to low nutrient availability. Increased leaf area was correlated with an increase in shoot fresh and dry weight as well as root growth in N. tabacum. Relative growth rate was shown to be a more appropriate parameter than leaf area for detection of dynamic growth acclimation. Clear differences in leaf growth activity were also observed for A. thaliana. As growth responses are generally most flexible in early developmental stages, the procedure described here is an important step towards standardized protocols for rapid detection of the effects of changes in internal (genetic) and external (environmental) parameters regulating plant growth.