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There is a widespread belief among osteoarthritis patients that weather conditions influence their pain intensity. Barometric pressure, temperature and humidity are the weather conditions that are found to be correlated most to the worsening of pain complaints, but an analysis of studies regarding this topic shows conflicting results. This may be due to the difficulty of measuring the impact of these variables and the great diversity in study protocols. Central sensitization mechanisms and the function of a Transient Receptor Potential channel might explain the pain hypersensitivity to cold weather. Joint pain, caused by central sensitization mechanisms, cannot always be treated with joint arthroplasty. When pain remains present after joint arthroplasty, centrally mediated pain constitutes an important role. A study protocol is suggested to examine the influence of weather conditions on osteoarthritis patients’ joint pain in relation to sensitization mechanisms. The study protocol furthermore compares the presence of pain caused by central sensitization mechanisms both pre-operative and after joint arthroplasty.
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As autism research is becoming a hot topic, mouse models are often used to test new hypothesis or possible genetic causes. Two important behavioral conditions of autism are difficulties with social skills and communication. Since mice also produce sounds, mouse ultrasonic vocalizations are increasingly used as a model for vocal communication deficits in humans. However not enough is known about why mice produce these ultrasonic vocalizations. To be able to form a good mice model there needs to be a good understanding of the gender differences in this type of vocalizations as well as a good understanding of how they relate to the rest of the mice’s behavioral repertoire. For this reason, the current research focused on recording and scoring these ultrasonic vocalizations mice produce to get a better idea of how they relate to gender and socio-emotional differences. Specifically, the research wanted to find possible gender differences in ultrasonic vocalization production and how this could relate to the mice’s socio-emotional characteristics. To understand how the ultrasonic vocalizations relate to the mice’s behavioral repertoire a test battery of commonly used behavioral tests was used. In the literature there are some authors who tried to create mouse models for human speech and these usually claim that mice who score higher on social tests produce more ultrasonic vocalizations. Non-social behavior relations with later ultrasonic vocalization productions are thus far not mentioned in the literature. Using two different setups to measure the ultrasonic vocalizations we got a good view of how much vocalizations mice produce. It was measured twice to add tracking to setup. As tracking was measured in the second measurement we got a good understanding of what the mice does while vocalizing. For the other behavioral tests ANOVA’s were calculated to consult the effect of gender on these behavioral tests as well as the ultrasonic vocalization production. In the next part ANOVA’s were used to look into the predictive value of ultrasonic vocalizations and gender interaction on these behavioral tests. Most of the results showed no relation between the behavioral tests and ultrasonic vocalizations, but gender usually had a very big influence. Gender plays a very big role in ultrasonic vocalization production and therefore care must be taken when selecting which gender to use in a mouse model. There seems to be no link to socio-emotional measures however. It is possible that this is because less social mice do not produce less vocalizations but produce different vocalizations, future research should look into this difference.
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