Feasibility, safety and outcomes of playing Kinect Adventures!™ for people with Parkinson's disease: a pilot study.

OBJECTIVES: To assess the feasibility, safety and outcomes of playing Microsoft Kinect Adventures™ for people with Parkinson's disease in order to guide the design of a randomised clinical trial. DESIGN: Single-group, blinded trial. SETTING: Rehabilitation Center of São Camilo University, Brazil. PARTICIPANTS: Seven patients (six males, one female) with Parkinson's disease (Hoehn and Yahr Stages 2 and 3). INTERVENTIONS: Fourteen 60-minute sessions, three times per week, playing four games of Kinect Adventures! MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The feasibility and safety outcomes were patients' game performance and adverse events, respectively. The clinical outcomes were the 6-minute walk test, Balance Evaluation System Test, Dynamic Gait Index and Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire (PDQ-39). RESULTS: Patients' scores for the four games showed improvement. The mean [standard deviation (SD)] scores in the first and last sessions of the Space Pop game were 151 (36) and 198 (29), respectively [mean (SD) difference 47 (7), 95% confidence interval 15 to 79]. There were no adverse events. Improvements were also seen in the 6-minute walk test, Balance Evaluation System Test, Dynamic Gait Index and PDQ-39 following training. CONCLUSION: Kinect-based training was safe and feasible for people with Parkinson's disease (Hoehn and Yahr Stages 2 and 3). Patients improved their scores for all four games. No serious adverse events occurred during training with Kinect Adventures!, which promoted improvement in activities (balance and gait), body functions (cardiopulmonary aptitude) and participation (quality of life).

Specific identification of Candida albicans by hybridization with oligonucleotides derived from ribosomal DNA internal spacers.

In order to develop DNA probes for rapid, sensitive and specific detection of the pathogenic yeast species Candida albicans, we carried out comparative sequence analysis of the two internal transcribed spacer regions (ITS1 and ITS2) of the ribosomal DNA (rDNA) units of C. albicans and the closely related pathogenic species C. tropicalis. While overall sequence similarity between the two species was considerable (65-75%), both ITS1 and ITS2 were found to contain distinct regions with sufficient sequence divergence to make them suitable as specific target sites for the identification of C. albicans. On the basis of these results one ITS1-derived (ANAB1) and two ITS2-derived (ANAB2 and ANAB3) oligonucleotides were selected, chemically synthesized, and used as hybridization probes. Their specificity and reliability were evaluated in dot-blot hybridization experiments with total genomic DNA from 13 strains of medically important Candida species, six strains of other yeast genera associated with man and animals, and ten strains previously identified as C. albicans by phenotypic criteria. Under well-defined hybridization conditions the three probes hybridized exclusively with DNA derived from strains belonging to the species C. albicans, thus demonstrating their potential clinical usefulness. The failure of four of the (presumed) C. albicans strains to show hybridization to the ITS probes sheds doubt upon their taxonomic classification, which is reinforced by other phenotypic aspects of these strains.