Health technology assessment aims to enable the prioritisation of efficient and equitable services enhance responsiveness population preferences. Resting on foundations distributive procedural justice, it is a fundamental component universal health coverage system. The required decision-making for COVID-19 response stimulated demand evidence-informed processes provides an opportunity demonstrat...

A combined objective-oriented and subjective-oriented method for evaluating accessibility and usability of web pages for students with disability was tested. The objective-oriented approach is devoted to verifying the conformity of interfaces to standard rules stated by national and international organizations responsible for web technology standardization, such as W3C. Conversely, the subjecti...

OBJECTIVE To standardize an experimental model of chronic monoarthritis induced by complete Freund's adjuvant appropriate for the analysis of the effect of walking on nociception and on joint edema. METHODS The following factors were evaluated as to monoarthritis induction: route and site of administration, number and interval of inoculations, Mycobacterium species, and animal gender. Wistar ...

Alcohol use disorders (AUDs) may be associated with several psychological and affective disorders. It is controversial, however, if these symptoms are a cause or rather a consequence of alcohol dependence. There are few data testing simultaneously psychosocial and affective disorders before and after a period of alcohol abstinence. The aim of this study was to perform multiple psychometric eval...

OBJECTIVE Epidemiological studies have reported an association between smoking and mental disorders. However, little is known about the impairment associated with nicotine dependence. METHOD The authors assessed health-related quality of life, disability, and psychiatric comorbidity in adults with and without nicotine dependence. The analysis was based on data from 3,293 respondents, ages 18 ...

BACKGROUND Caregiver productivity costs are an important component of the overall cost of care for individuals with birth defects and developmental disabilities, yet few studies provide estimates for use in economic evaluations. OBJECTIVE This study estimates labor market productivity costs for caregivers of children and adolescents with spina bifida. METHODS Case families were recruited fr...

OBJECTIVE To assess the efficacy of bilateral deep brain stimulation of the internal pallidum in patients with myoclonus-dystonia due to genetically proved ε-sarcoglycan (SGCE-M-D) deficiency. DESIGN Patients with documented SGCE-M-D undergoing bilateral deep brain stimulation of the internal pallidum were recruited. Standardized assessments of M-D were videorecorded before surgery and 6 to 9...

BACKGROUND The challenges of today's society call for more knowledge about how to maintain all aspects of cognitive health, such as speed/attention, memory/learning, visuospatial ability, language, executive capacity and social cognition during the life course. MAIN TEXT Medical advances have improved treatments of numerous diseases, but the cognitive implications have not been sufficiently a...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to assess the psychometric properties of the Multiple Sclerosis Impact Scale (MSIS-29) for patients in the community and in a hospital setting. METHODS During an epidemiological study, 172 people with multiple sclerosis (MS) were examined and completed the MSIS-29, the London Handicap Scale, and Beck's Depression Inventory; disability was assessed by the Ku...

BACKGROUND Osteoarthritis is the most prevalent joint disease and a frequent cause of joint pain, functional loss, and disability. Osteoarthritis often becomes chronic, and conventional treatments have demonstrated only modest clinical benefits without lesion reversal. Cell-based therapies have shown encouraging results in both animal studies and a few human case reports. We designed a pilot st...