Objective: To perform a clinical trial to evaluate human embryos generated in the protein-free medium (PFM). Materials and methods: The quality of embryos generated in medium with (control; Medi-Cult) and without protein (test; ART-7b) and their viability were compared. Sperm was prepared in control or test media as appropriate. Effect of different antibiotic supplements in the PFM was investig...

OBJECTIVE Muscles such as adductor magnus (AM), gluteus maximus (GM), rectus abdominis (RA), and abdominal external and internal oblique muscles are considered to play an important role in the treatment of stress urinary incontinence (SUI), and the relationship between contraction of these muscles and pelvic floor muscles (PFM) has been established in previous studies. Synergistic muscle activa...

The pelvic floor muscles (PFM) are part of the trunk stability mechanism. Their function is interdependent with other muscles of this system. They also contribute to continence, elimination, sexual arousal and intra-abdominal pressure. This paper outlines some aspects of function and dysfunction of the PFM complex and describes the contribution of other trunk muscles to these processes. Muscle ...

OBJECTIVE To assess the efficacy of physical therapies for first-line use in the treatment and prevention of stress urinary incontinence (SUI) in women, using a systematic review of randomized clinical trials (RCTs). MATERIALS AND METHODS A computer-aided and manual search for published RCTs investigating treatment and prevention of SUI using physical therapies, e.g. pelvic floor muscle (PFM)...

[Purpose] The purpose of this study was to devise a new urinary incontinence exercise using co-contraction of both the transverse abdominal muscle (TA) and pelvic floor muscle (PFM) and examine the intervention effect in middle-aged women with stress urinary incontinence (SUI). [Subjects] The subjects were fifteen women with SUI who were divided into two groups: the TA and PFM co-contraction ex...

OBJECTIVE To demonstrate the application of the constructs of treatment fidelity for research and clinical practice for motor speech disorders, using the Prompts for Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Targets (PROMPT) Fidelity Measure (PFM). Treatment fidelity refers to a set of procedures used to monitor and improve the validity and reliability of behavioral intervention. While the concept o...

AIMS Due to their contribution to modulation of intra-abdominal pressure (IAP) and stiffness of the sacroiliac joints, the pelvic floor muscles (PFM) have been argued to provide a contribution to control of the lumbar spine and pelvis. Furthermore, as IAP is modulated during respiration this is likely to be accompanied by changes in PFM activity. METHODS In order to evaluate the postural and ...

Piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) is a powerful scanning-probe technique used to characterize important aspects of the microstructure in ferroelectrics. It has been widely applied to understand domain patterns, domain nucleation and the structure of domain walls. In this paper, we apply a real-space phasefield model to consistently simulate various PFM configurations. We model the PFM tip as...

This study was an attempt to examine the phenotypic, genetic, and environmental correlations between percent fat mass (PFM) and bone parameters, especially hip geometry, among 786 males and 618 females aged 13 to 21 years from a Chinese twin cohort. PFM, bone area (BA), bone mineral content (BMC), cross-sectional area (CSA), and section modulus (SM) were obtained by dual-energy X-ray absorptiom...

Where and why do Public Financial Management (PFM) reforms succeed? Where and how does donor support to PFM reform contribute most effectively to results? This report summarises the findings and conclusions of an evaluation based on studies of the PFM reforms in Burkina Faso, Ghana and Malawi. The evaluation also draws on a global quantitative review. It is found that results tend to be good wh...