Archive for January, 2010
The Convenience of Electric Wheel Chairs
January 18th, 2010 | 
Author: Some people cannot wheel their own chairs and would prefer to get around by themselves without needing a friend or family member to push. The electric wheel chairs eliminate this need altogether and allow those in wheelchairs to live better lives.
There are different types of electric wheel chairs that will be used for different people and for those with differing injuries. You can find that many wheelchairs like Invacare give you options of sizes, features, and more so that you can be totally comfortable with your choice of wheelchair. Most of the time, you can learn about these types of electric wheelchairs from your doctor, but otherwise you can always do an online search which will give you various manufacturers and prices that you can expect to pay for a state of the art machine such as this.
Although it will be quite costly, you have to think about it in the long run. Think about what you will pay for a normal wheelchair and then consider the practicality. With an electric wheel chair, think about the durability and longevity of the chair as well as your lifestyle. Even if you have a partner who is able to push you around every day, wouldn’t it be great to go off and shop on your own for once to get a special surprise for your loved one. If they are with you all the time, this is impossible.
Could Early Symptoms of MS Be Stratified to Give Better Targeted Multiple Sclerosis Treatments? Introduction
Multiple sclerosis presents in various ways and subsequently shows variable disease courses. If we knew early on what the disease course for Multiple Sclerosis would be then we could better target the medication in each individual case. To date it has been unpredictable right from disease onset but, knowing the disease course is of crucial importance in guiding treatment.
Now “The Department of Neurosciences” at Cardiff University has recently been looking into factor H as a biomarker for multiple sclerosis and the findings are promising.
Effective and accessible biomarkers are needed in order to stratify (separate into groups) patients and inform treatment. The team at Cardiff University decided to look into factor H as such a marker. Regulator factor H, has recently been implicated as a biomarker in other chronic inflammatory central nervous system conditions. Could it identify or predict specific pathological processes and outcomes in multiple sclerosis?
Method
They measured factor H in blood serum from 350 patients with multiple sclerosis classified according to disease course and relapse status. Controls were found for variables including disease duration, age, gender, disability and treatment. I have decided not to go into the full method in this document as the details will be somewhat turgid to the average reader. However, the findings are fairly clear and very encouraging.