Three-year follow-up of children with abnormal newborn screening results for congenital hypothyroidism.

BACKGROUND: To analyze predictive factors suggesting transient congenital hypothyroidism (TCH) compared to permanent congenital hypothyroidism (PCH) or transient thyroid function test (TFT) abnormalities among children who had positive screening results at our centers over the past decade. METHODS: A retrospective chart review of 105 subjects who presented elevated TSH levels on a newborn screening test (NST) was done. TCH was defined when a trial-off therapy was successful, and PCH was defined when a trial failed or when the subject was kept on medication beyond 3 years of age. A transient TFT abnormality was defined when follow-up TFTs were normalized without levothyroxine (LT4) therapy. RESULTS: Congenital hypothyroidism (CH) was diagnosed in 75.2% (TCH 35.2% and PCH 40.0%) of all subjects; the others (24.8%) showed transient TFT abnormalities. Initial NST-TSH levels (optimal cutoff point, 31.0 µIU/mL), the LT4 dose at 2 years of age (4.1 µg/kg/day), and the maximal LT4 dose (50 µg/day) merged as significant predictive factors discriminating between TCH and PCH. The initial serum level of free T4 (1.06 ng/dL) and not TSH (27.2 µIU/mL) was the only discriminating factor between transient TFT abnormalities and TCH. CONCLUSION: Earlier re-evaluation might be possible when a patient's initial NST-TSH levels and maximal or 2-year LT4 doses are low, as both are important predictors of successful trial-off therapy in CH patients. When the initial serum level of free T4 is above the average value in neonates with mildly elevated TSH levels, TFTs may be more likely to normalize on their own.

Smart Gait-Aid Glasses for Parkinson's Disease Patients.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a chronic progressive disease caused by loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra, degenerating the nervous system of a patient over time. Freezing of gait (FOG), which is a form of akinesia, is a symptom of PD. Meanwhile, recent studies show that the gait of PD patients experiencing FOG can be significantly improved by providing the regular visual or auditory patterns for the patients. In this paper, we propose a gait-aid system built upon smart glasses. Our system continuously monitors the gait and so on of a PD patient to detect FOG, and upon detection of FOG it projects visual patterns on the glasses as if the patterns were actually on the floor. Conducting experiments involving ten PD patients, we demonstrate that our system achieves the accuracy of 92.86 % in detecting FOG episodes and that it improves the gait speed and stride length of PD patients by 15.3  âˆ¼  37.2% and 18.7   âˆ¼  31.7%, respectively.