BACKGROUND Non-pharmacological options for symptomatic management of cough are desired. Although chest wall mechanical vibration is known to ameliorate cough reflex sensitivity, the effect of mechanical vibrations on perceptions of urge-to-cough has not been studied. Therefore, we investigated the effect of mechanical vibration of cervical trachea, chest wall and femoral muscle on cough reflex ...

A variety of seemingly diverse pain syndromes are characterized by movement-induced pain radiating in the distribution of a peripheral nerve or nerve root. This could be explained by the induction of ectopic mechanical sensitivity in intact sensory axons. Here we show that inflammation led to mechanical sensitivity of the axons of a subset of mechanically sensitive primary sensory neurons. Dors...

Virtual colonoscopy (VC) allows a user to virtually navigate within a reconstructed 3D colon model searching for colorectal polyps. Though VC is widely recognized as a highly sensitive and specific test for identifying polyps, one limitation is the reading time, which can take on average 30 minutes per patient. Large amounts of the colon are often devoid of polyps, and a way of identifying thes...

An important aspect of context in medical reasoning is the notion of "variation" of a chunk of knowledge according to various contingencies, such as course of patient's disease, response to therapies, or team specificity. Our position is to represent these variations implicitly, by proposing mechanisms to factor knowledge and to refine it. We propose three mutually compatible mechanisms that ef...

To study the neuropathic pain mechanism, various behavioral responses of animals in to different neuropathic models were considered. Adult male Sprague-Dawley rats weighing 230-280 g were used. Anesthesia was initially induced with pentobarbital I.P. (50 mg/kg). These models included (1): chronic constriction injury (CCI) by loose ligation of the sciatic nerve (2) Spared nerve injury (SNI) by a...

To study the neuropathic pain mechanism, various behavioral responses of animals in to different neuropathic models were considered. Adult male Sprague-Dawley rats weighing 230-280 g were used. Anesthesia was initially induced with pentobarbital I.P. (50 mg/kg). These models included (1): chronic constriction injury (CCI) by loose ligation of the sciatic nerve (2) Spared nerve injury (SNI) by a...

OBJECTIVE To compare changes in subbasal nerve density and corneal sensitivity after laser in situ keratomileusis (LASIK) with the flap created by a femtosecond laser (bladeless) vs a mechanical microkeratome. DESIGN In a randomized paired-eye study, 21 patients received myopic LASIK with the flap created by a femtosecond laser in one eye and by a mechanical microkeratome in the fellow eye. E...

Alterations in neural activity due to pain and injury in early development may produce long-term effects on sensory processing and future responses to pain. To investigate persistent alterations in sensory perception, we performed quantitative sensory testing (QST) in extremely preterm (EP) children (n=43) recruited from the UK EPICure cohort (born less than 26 weeks gestation in 1995) and in a...