Browsing by Author "Van Wyk, H."

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    The clinical effect of hippotherapy on gross motor function of children with cerebral palsy
    (AOSIS Publishing, 2013-12-11) Little, K.; Nel, N.; Ortell, V.; Van Wyk, H.; Badenhorst, M.; Louw, Q. A.
    Background: Cerebral palsy (CP) is the most common cause of physical disability affecting gross motor function (GMF ) in early childhood. Hippotherapy is a treatment approach aimed at improving GMF in children with CP. Several systematic reviews have been published showing an improvement in Dimension E of the Gross Motor Function Measure (GMFM ) after hippotherapy. However, these reviews failed to evaluate the clinical effect of hippotherapy in improving GMF in children with CP. Objective: To critically appraise the evidence of hippotherapy to ascertain whether it is a clinically meaningful approach for children with CP. Methodology: Five computerised bibliographic databases were searched. Predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria were set. The PEDro scale was used to assess the quality of the studies. A revised JBI Data extraction tool was used to extract data from the selected articles. Revman© Review Manager Software was used to create forest plots for comparisons of results. Results: All studies used the GMFM as an outcome measure for gross motor function. The added benefit of hippotherapy is a minimum 1% and a maximum 7% increase on the GMFM scores. However, all 95% confidence intervals (CI ) around all the mean differences were insignificant. Conclusion: The clinical effect of hippotherapy on the GMF of children with CP is small. Larger studies are required to provide evidence of the effect of hippotherapy within this population.
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    From biological control to controlling biology
    (Academy of Science of South Africa, 2016) Van Wyk, H.
    No abstract available
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    Recovery of endo-polygalacturonase activity in wine yeast and its effect on wine aroma
    (2010) Van Wyk, H.; Divol, Benoit
    The PGU1 gene, which encodes an endo-polygalacturonase, is present in most strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In some strains that lack activity, the PGU1 gene was replaced by a partial transposon. In an attempt to restore enzyme activity, the PGU1 gene was successfully reintroduced into its native position in five of these strains. Polygalacturonase activity was recovered in strains UCLMS-1, -3 and -4, while Collection Cépage Cabernet and L2226 did not show any transcription of the gene after integration. Small-scale fermentations, under conditions mimicking those of winemaking, were carried out with the recombinant strains to determine the effect of an endo-polygalacturonase- producing wine strain on the wine aroma. Some statistically significant tendencies were observed for the production of certain compounds whose concentrations were higher in the wine made from the recombinant strains than that from their respective wild types. These differences might therefore induce a slight change in the aroma profile of the wines. Moreover, recovery of endo-polygalacturonase activity in certain wine strains did, however, provide an insight into the regulation of PGU1 in these strains. © 2009 Federation of European Microbiological Societies.