Research trends in gamification have shown a significant diversity in various areas of e-health, particularly in addressing the issues of rehabilitation and physical activity. Rehabilitation requires better engaging tools that help to increase the patient’s motivation and engagement in particular forms of rehabilitation training. Adopting gamification in rehabilitation offers different treatment and care environments when implementing rehabilitation training. As gamification is increasingly being explored in rehabilitation, one might not realize that using various techniques in gamified applications yields a different effect on gameplay. To date, varied gamification techniques have been utilized to provide useful experiences from the perspective of health applications. However, a limited number of surveys have investigated the gamification of rehabilitation and the use of suitable game techniques for rehabilitation in the literature. The objective of this paper is to examine and analyze the existing gamification techniques for rehabilitation applications. A classification of rehabilitation gamification is developed based on the rehabilitation gamifying requirements and the gamification characteristics that are commonly applied in rehabilitation applications. This classification is the main contribution of this paper. It provides insight for researchers and practitioners into suitable techniques to design and apply gamification with increased motivation and sustainable engagement for rehabilitation treatment and care. In addition, different game elements, selection blocks, and gamification techniques are identified for application in rehabilitation. In conclusion, several challenges and research opportunities are discussed to improve gamification deployment in rehabilitation in the future.

This study aimed to compare the effects of intensity (I) and duration (D) on the oxidative stress marker (malondialdehyde, MDA) and the responses of the antioxidant enzymes (catalase, CAT; glutathione peroxidase, GPx; superoxide dismutase, SOD) among sedentary adults. In a crossover design, 25 sedentary adults performed nine cycling exercise sessions with a constant load of 50%, 60%, and 70% VO₂peak for 10-, 20-, and 30-min each. Plasma MDA, CAT, GPx, and SOD activity were measured before and immediately after each exercise session. Results show that MDA concentration and SOD activity increased significantly immediately after exercise at all intensities and durations, except SOD decreased significantly at 70% $\dot{\mathrm{V}}$O₂pk for 30 min. CAT activities also increased significantly after exercise at 50% $\dot{\mathrm{V}}$O₂pk for 10 and 20 min but decreased at 60% $\dot{\mathrm{V}}$O₂pk for 30 min and at 70% $\dot{\mathrm{V}}$O₂pk for all durations. GPx activity decreased significantly after 20 and 30 min at all intensity levels. In conclusion, our results show that cycling at 50%, 60%, and 70% $\dot{\mathrm{V}}$O₂pk for 10, 20, and 30 min increased oxidative stress and antioxidant activities, but with different responses. These findings suggest that the starting exercise intensity for sedentary adults should not exceed 70% $\dot{\mathrm{V}}$O₂pk.

Pregnancy is linked to a higher incidence of severe Covid-19. It's critical to find safe vaccinations that elicit protective pregnant and fetal immune responses. This review summarises the rate of COVID-19 infection, maternal antibodies responsiveness, placenta antibody transmission, and adverse events after COVID-19 vaccination in pregnancy studied in epidemiological studies evaluating mRNA vaccines. Potential COVID-19 infection in pregnant women can be prevented using mRNA-based vaccinations. Gestation, childbirth, and perinatal mortality were proven unaffected by COVID-19 vaccination. Injection-site discomfort, tiredness, and migraine are the most prevalent side effects, but these are temporary. After the first dosage of vaccinations, fast antibody responses were demonstrated. The adaptive immunity is found to be more significant after booster vaccination, and is linked to improved placental antigen transmission. Two vaccination doses are associated with more robust maternal and fetal antibody levels. Longer delays between the first immunization dosage and birth are linked to greater fetal IgG antibody levels with reduction in antigen transmission proportion. The mRNA vacciness are effective in reducing the severity of COVID-19 infection and these vaccinations are regarded to be safe options for pregnant women and their unborn fetus.

Retinal image registration is important to assist diagnosis and monitor retinal diseases, such as diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma. However, registering retinal images for various registration applications requires the detection and distribution of feature points on the low-quality region that consists of vessels of varying contrast and sizes. A recent feature detector known as Saddle detects feature points on vessels that are poorly distributed and densely positioned on strong contrast vessels. Therefore, we propose a multiresolution difference of Gaussian pyramid with Saddle detector (D-Saddle) to detect feature points on the low-quality region that consists of vessels with varying contrast and sizes. D-Saddle is tested on Fundus Image Registration (FIRE) Dataset that consists of 134 retinal image pairs. Experimental results show that D-Saddle successfully registered 43% of retinal image pairs with average registration accuracy of 2.329 pixels while a lower success rate is observed in other four state-of-the-art retinal image registration methods GDB-ICP (28%), Harris-PIIFD (4%), H-M (16%), and Saddle (16%). Furthermore, the registration accuracy of D-Saddle has the weakest correlation (Spearman) with the intensity uniformity metric among all methods. Finally, the paired t-test shows that D-Saddle significantly improved the overall registration accuracy of the original Saddle.

Spinal tuberculosis often leads to neurological deficit and subsequent deterioration in functional outcomes. This review assesses the recent evidence on functional outcomes in spinal tuberculosis, highlighting functional recovery, assessment tools for functional measures, and associative factors for functional recovery. Using PubMed, a literature search was done using the terms “spinal tuberculosis,” “tuberculous spondylitis,” “tuberculous spondylodiscitis,” and “functional outcome” for original articles published between January 2010 and December 2019. A total of 191 search results were found. Detailed screening showed that 19 articles met the eligibility criteria: 13 of these focused on surgical methods, four on conservative management, and two on rehabilitation approaches. The outcome measures used for functional assessment were the Oswestry Disability Index (11 articles), Japanese Orthopaedic Association score (n=3), modified Barthel Index (n=2), Functional Independence Measure (n=2), and 36-item Short-Form Health Survey (n=1). Functional outcome was mainly affected by pain, spinal cord compression, and inpatient rehabilitation. No significant difference in functional outcome was found between conservative management and surgery for cases with uncomplicated spinal tuberculosis. Most studies focused on surgery as the mode of treatment and used pain-related functional measures; however, these assessed functional limitations secondary to pain, and not neurological deficits. Further studies may consider examining functional outcomes in spinal tuberculosis by utilizing spinal cord-specific functional outcome measures, to evaluate outcome measures as a prognostic tool, and to measure functional outcomes from specific rehabilitation interventions.