Can a Portable Balance System Predict Fall Risk in Community-Dwelling Older Women?

PURPOSE: Increased fall risk has been linked to age, being female, and age-related changes in the postural control system. The purpose of this study was to determine if a portable balance system could predict fall risk by determining the relationship among the modified Clinical Test for Sensory Interaction on Balance (mCTSIB) scores, age, the Activities-specific Balance Confidence Scale (ABC) score, and the Berg Balance Scale (BBS) score in community-dwelling older women. Insight into these relationships may facilitate early intervention and decrease fall risk in older women. METHODS: This study was a non-experimental, prospective, cross-sectional, exploratory analysis to determine the relationship among the mCTSIB, age, ABC, and BBS. Women aged 65 years and over were selected from two independent living facilities using a sample of convenience (n=42). RESULTS: The mCTSIB firm surface, eyes open and the ABC predicted fall risk (BBS) scores, F(2, 36)=35.72, p<0.001, R2=0.67, but adding age did not significantly improve the model, b= -0.17, t(36)= -1.71, p=0.10. CONCLUSION: A portable balance system may be an effective screening tool to predict fall risk in community-dwelling older women and may be used by a variety of allied health professionals. Postural sway, and perceived balance, predicted fall risk scores (BBS). More specifically, data obtained from the mCTSIB firm surface, eyes open test condition when combined with ABC scores could lead to identification of increased fall risk, allowing clinicians to recommend early treatment intervention to prevent future falls.

Does Hands-on Guarding Influence Performance on the Functional Gait Assessment?

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: An accurate fall risk assessment is an important component of fall prevention, though a fall could occur during testing. To minimize this risk, different guarding methods are used, though there is disagreement regarding the optimal method. The purpose of this study was to compare the effect of 2 guarding methods, contact guarding (CG) and standby guarding (SG), on performance during the Functional Gait Assessment (FGA). We hypothesized that (1) there would not be a significant difference in FGA scores when comparing CG with SG, and (2) participants would not perceive a difference between the 2 guarding methods. METHODS: Twenty-three community-dwelling older adults, mean age 73.6 (SD = 6.2) years, participated in this study. Each participant completed 2 trials of the FGA, one with CG and another with SG. Guarding for all trials was provided by the same experienced physical therapist (PT) for this within-subjects design. All trials were video recorded for review by 2 PT raters who were blinded to the purpose of the study. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: Functional Gait Assessment scores for the 2 PT raters indicated high internal agreement for both CG and SG conditions (CG: intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC] = 0.949; SG: ICC = 0.935), and CG FGA scores did not significantly differ from SG FGA scores (t22 = 0.15, P = .882). Furthermore, none of the participants perceived a difference in guarding methods. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study indicate that hands-on guarding does not significantly influence performance on the FGA when the guarding is provided by an experienced PT and the participant is a community-dwelling older adult.

Precursor ion independent algorithm for top-down shotgun proteomics.

We present a precursor ion independent top-down algorithm (PIITA) for use in automated assignment of protein identifications from tandem mass spectra of whole proteins. To acquire the data, we utilize data-dependent acquisition to select protein precursor ions eluting from a C4-based HPLC column for collision induced dissociation in the linear ion trap of an LTQ-Orbitrap mass spectrometer. Gas-phase fractionation is used to increase the number of acquired tandem mass spectra, all of which are recorded in the Orbitrap mass analyzer. To identify proteins, the PIITA algorithm compares deconvoluted, deisotoped, observed tandem mass spectra to all possible theoretical tandem mass spectra for each protein in a genomic sequence database without regard for measured parent ion mass. Only after a protein is identified, is any difference in measured and theoretical precursor mass used to identify and locate post-translation modifications. We demonstrate the application of PIITA to data generated via our wet-lab approach on a Salmonella typhimurium outer membrane extract and compare these results to bottom-up analysis. From these data, we identify 154 proteins by top-down analysis, 73 of which were not identified in a parallel bottom-up analysis. We also identify 201 unique isoforms of these 154 proteins at a false discovery rate (FDR) of <1%.

MASIC: a software program for fast quantitation and flexible visualization of chromatographic profiles from detected LC-MS(/MS) features.

Quantitative analysis of liquid chromatography (LC)-mass spectrometry (MS) and tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) data is essential to many proteomics studies. We have developed MASIC(2) to accurately measure peptide abundances and LC elution times in LC-MS/MS analyses. This software program uses an efficient processing algorithm to quickly generate mass specific selected ion chromatograms from a dataset and provides an interactive browser that allows users to examine individual chromatograms with a variety of options.

VIPER: an advanced software package to support high-throughput LC-MS peptide identification.

SUMMARY: The accurate mass and time (AMT) tag approach is used for analysis of large scale experiments by combining information generated over multiple datasets and instrument types. The VIPER software package is one of the key components of the data processing pipeline and implements automated algorithms to discover LC-MS features, align and match these LC-MS features to a database of peptides previously identified in LC-MS/MS analyses, and identify and quantify pairs of isotopically labeled peptides. AVAILABILITY: VIPER may be downloaded free of charge at http://ncrr.pnl.gov/software/