BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES The effects of different hemoglobin targets when using erythropoiesis-stimulating agents on quality of life are somewhat controversial, and predictors of change in quality of life in endstage renal disease have not been well characterized. DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS, & MEASUREMENTS Five hundred ninety-six incident hemodialysis patients without symptomatic cardiac ...

In this thesis, a simplified narrow-band approximation model is proposed to estimate fatigue damage of ship structures, and an efficient method for extreme response predictions is also developed using upcrossing spectrums of ship responses. The proposed fatigue model includes two main parameters, significant stress range hs and zero upcrossing frequency fz. The first parameter is assumed to be ...

BACKGROUND Studies on Health Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) of chronic liver patients were performed in clinical populations. These studies included various disease stages but small variations in aetiology and no transplanted patients. We performed a large HRQoL study in non-cirrhotic, cirrhotic and transplanted liver patients with sufficient variety in aetiology. We compared the generic HRQoL...

Interferon-alpha (IFN-α) is an important mediator of antiviral immune responses. It is also used clinically in the treatment of hepatitis-C infection. Though effective, IFN-α-based therapies can often impair mood, motivation and cognition, which when severe can appear indistinguishable from major depression. In susceptible patients, fatigue and motivational impairment emerge early and have been...

Our purpose was to demonstrate that 30-s tethered swimming test can be a useful tool to estimate swimming performance in short distance freestyle events. Thirteen high level adolescent swimmers (7 male and 6 female of 16.6 ± 1.0 and 15.8 ± 0.8 years old) performed a 30-s maximum effort in front crawl tethered swimming. Afterward, subjects completed 50-m and 100-m freestyle events at the Nationa...

Motor fatigue is an exercise-induced reduction in the force-generating capacity. The underlying mechanisms can be separated into factors residing in the periphery or in the central nervous system. We designed an experiment in which we investigated central processes underlying motor fatigue by means of magnetic resonance imaging in combination with the twitch interpolation technique. Subjects pe...