Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Prediction Of Patient Outcomes Through Social Determinants Of Health: The Pulmonary Hypertension Association Registry (Phar) Evaluation, Dan Grinnan, Murali Chakinala, Et Al.

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Outcomes of patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) may be associated with social determinants of health (SDOH) and other baseline patient characteristics. At present, there is no prognostic model to predict important patient outcomes in PAH based on SDOH. Utilizing information from the Pulmonary Hypertension Association Registry (PHAR), we derive a model (PHAR Evaluation or PHARE) to predict an important composite patient outcomes based on SDOH and other patient characteristics. Baseline data regarding SDOH from adult patients with PAH enrolled in the PHAR between 2015 and March 23, 2020, were included for analysis. We performed repeated measures logistic regression modeling …

Unilateral Loss Of Maxillary Molars In Young Mice Leads To Bilateral Condylar Adaptation And Degenerative Disease., Christopher Phillip Chen, Jiehua Zhang, Bin Zhang, Mohamed G Hassan, Kyle Hane, Caroline C Chen, Ana Alejandra Navarro Palacios, Sunil Kapila, Andrew H Jheon, Alice F Goodwin

2020-Current year OA Pubs

The adaptive response of the mandible and temporomandibular joint (TMJ) to altered occlusion in juvenile patients is presently unclear. To address this question, we established a mouse model in which all molars were extracted from the maxillary right quadrant in prepubertal, 3-week-old mice and analyzed morphological, tissue, cellular, and molecular changes in the mandible and condyle 3 weeks later. Unilateral loss of maxillary molars led to significant, robust, bilateral changes, primarily in condylar morphology, including anteroposterior narrowing of the condylar head and neck and increased convexity at the condylar surface, as determined by geometric morphometric analysis. Furthermore, both condyles in …

Caspase-1-Driven Neutrophil Pyroptosis And Its Role In Host Susceptibility To Pseudomonas Aeruginosa, Karin Santoni, Christine T. N. Pham, Et Al

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Multiple regulated neutrophil cell death programs contribute to host defense against infections. However, despite expressing all necessary inflammasome components, neutrophils are thought to be generally defective in Caspase-1-dependent pyroptosis. By screening different bacterial species, we found that several Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa) strains trigger Caspase-1-dependent pyroptosis in human and murine neutrophils. Notably, deletion of Exotoxins U or S in P. aeruginosa enhanced neutrophil death to Caspase-1-dependent pyroptosis, suggesting that these exotoxins interfere with this pathway. Mechanistically, P. aeruginosa Flagellin activates the NLRC4 inflammasome, which supports Caspase-1-driven interleukin (IL)-1β secretion and Gasdermin D (GSDMD)-dependent neutrophil pyroptosis. Furthermore, P. aeruginosa-induced GSDMD activation …

Management Of Histoplasmosis By Infectious Disease Physicians, Patrick B Mazi, Sandra R Arnold, John W Baddley, Nathan C Bahr, Susan E Beekmann, Todd P Mccarty, Philip M Polgreen, Adriana M Rauseo, Andrej Spec

2020-Current year OA Pubs

BACKGROUND: The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) guidelines for the management of histoplasmosis were last revised 15 years ago. Since those guidelines were compiled, new antifungal treatment options have been developed. Furthermore, the ongoing development of immunomodulatory therapies has increased the population at increased risk to develop histoplasmosis.

METHODS: An electronic survey about the management practices of histoplasmosis was distributed to the adult infectious disease (ID) physician members of the IDSA's Emerging Infections Network.

RESULTS: The survey response rate was 37% (551/1477). Only 46% (253/551) of respondents reported seeing patients with histoplasmosis. Regions considered endemic had 82% (158/193) of …

Single-Dose Intrathecal Dorsal Root Ganglia Toxicity Of Onasemnogene Abeparvovec In Cynomolgus Monkeys, Francis Fonyuy Tukov, Keith Mansfield, Mark Milton, Emily Meseck, Kelley Penraat, Deepa Chand, Andreas Hartmann

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Intravenous onasemnogene abeparvovec is approved for the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy in children < 2 years. For later-onset patients, intrathecal onasemnogene abeparvovec may be advantageous over intravenous administration. Recently, microscopic dorsal root ganglion (DRG) changes were observed in nonhuman primates (NHPs) following intrathecal onasemnogene abeparvovec administration. To characterize these DRG findings, two NHP studies evaluating intrathecal onasemnogene abeparvovec administration were conducted: a 12-month study with a 6-week interim cohort and a 13-week study with a 2-week interim cohort. The latter investigated the potential impact of prednisolone or rituximab plus everolimus on DRG toxicity. An additional 6-month, single-dose, intravenous NHP study conducted in parallel evaluated onasemnogene abeparvovec safety (including DRG toxicity) with or without prednisolone coadministration. Intrathecal onasemnogene abeparvovec administration was well tolerated and not associated with clinical observations. Microscopic onasemnogene abeparvovec-related changes were observed in the DRG and trigeminal ganglion (TG) and included mononuclear cell inflammation and/or neuronal degeneration, which was colocalized with high vector transcript expression at 6 weeks postdose. Incidence and severity of DRG changes were generally decreased after 52 weeks compared with 6 weeks postdose. Other onasemnogene abeparvovec-related microscopic findings of axonal degeneration, mononuclear cell infiltrates and/or gliosis in the spinal cord, dorsal spinal nerve root/spinal nerves, and/or peripheral nerves were absent or found at decreased incidences and/or severities after 52 weeks. DRG and/or TG microscopic findings following intravenous onasemnogene abeparvovec dosing included minimal to slight neuronal degeneration and mononuclear cell inflammation at 6 weeks and 6 months postdose. Nervous system microscopic findings following intrathecal onasemnogene abeparvovec (≥1.2 × 10

A Phase 2 Trial Of A Topical Antiseptic Bundle In Head And Neck Cancer Surgery: Effects On Surgical Site Infection And The Oral Microbiome, Joseph Zenga, Sidharth V Puram, Et Al.

2020-Current year OA Pubs

BACKGROUND: Head and neck cancer (HNC) surgery remains an important component of management but is associated with a high rate of surgical site infection (SSI). We aimed to assess the safety and efficacy of a topical mucosal antiseptic bundle in preventing SSI and evaluate microbial predictors of infection through a genomic sequencing approach.

METHODS: This study was an open-label, single-arm, single-center, phase 2 trial of a topical mucosal antiseptic bundle in patients with HNC undergoing aerodigestive tract resection and reconstruction. Patients underwent topical preparation of the oral mucosa with povidone-iodine (PI) and chlorhexidine gluconate (CHG) pre- and intra-operatively followed by …

Community-Based Trial Assessing The Impact Of Annual Versus Semiannual Mass Drug Administration With Ivermectin Plus Albendazole And Praziquantel On Helminth Infections In Northwestern Liberia, Obiora A Eneanya, Lincoln Gankpala, Charles W Goss, Aaron T Momolu, Enoch S Nyan, Emmanuel B Gray, Kerstin Fischer, Kurt Curtis, Fatorma K Bolay, Gary J Weil, Peter U Fischer

2020-Current year OA Pubs

We assessed the impact of three annual vs five semiannual rounds of mass drug administration (MDA) with ivermectin plus albendazole followed by praziquantel for the control or elimination of lymphatic filariasis (LF), onchocerciasis, soil-transmitted helminth (STH) infections and schistosomiasis in Lofa County, Liberia. The study started in 2012 and was interrupted in 2014 during the Ebola virus outbreak. Repeated cross-sectional surveys were conducted in individuals 5 years and older to measure infection markers. Wuchereria bancrofti antigenemia prevalences decreased from 12.5 to 1.2% (90% reduction) and from 13.6 to 4.2% (69% reduction) one year after three rounds of annual or five …

Enabling Hotspot Detection And Public Health Response To The Covid-19 Pandemic, Randi Foraker, Joshua Landman, Ian Lackey, Matthew D Haslam, Alison L Antes, Dennis Goldfarb

2020-Current year OA Pubs

INTRODUCTION: Public-facing maps of COVID-19 cases, hospital admissions, and deaths are commonly displayed at the state, county, and zip code levels, and low case counts are suppressed to protect confidentiality. Public health authorities are tasked with case identification, contact tracing, and canvasing for educational purposes during a pandemic. Given limited resources, authorities would benefit from the ability to tailor their efforts to a particular neighborhood or congregate living facility.

METHODS: We describe the methods of building a real-time visualization of patients with COVID-19-positive tests, which facilitates timely public health response to the pandemic. We developed an interactive street-level visualization that …

All-In-Focus Fine Needle Aspiration Biopsy Imaging Based On Fourier Ptychographic Microscopy, Mingshu Liang, Cory Bernadt, Soon Boon Justin Wong, Changsoon Choi, Richard Cote, Changhuei Yang

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Context: Cytology is the study of whole cells in diagnostic pathology. Unlike standard histologic thinly sliced specimens, cytologic preparations consist of preparations of whole cells where cells commonly cluster and aggregate. As such, cytology preparations are generally much thicker than histologic slides, resulting in large patches of defocus when examined under the microscope. A diagnostic aggregate of cells often cannot be viewed in focus together, requiring pathologists to continually manipulate the focal plane, complicating the task of accurately assessing the entire cellular aggregate and thus in making a diagnosis. Further, it is extremely difficult to acquire useful uniformly in-focus digital …

The Novel Data Collection And Analytics Tools For Remote Patient Monitoring In Heart Failure (Nov-Rpm-Hf) Trial: Protocol For A Single-Center Prospective Trial, Ankit Bhatia, Gregory Ewald, Thomas Maddox

2020-Current year OA Pubs

BACKGROUND: Heart failure remains a leading cause of mortality and a major driver of health care utilization. Despite numerous medical advances in heart failure, associated hospitalizations continue to increase, owing largely to suboptimal outpatient management. Remote patient monitoring (RPM) aims to further address this current need in heart failure care by providing data to clinical teams to act pre-emptively to address clinical decompensation. However, to date, RPM approaches using noninvasive home-based patient sensors have failed to demonstrate clinical efficacy.

OBJECTIVE: The Novel Data Collection and Analytics Tools for Remote Patient Monitoring in Heart Failure (Nov-RPM-HF) Trial aims to address current …

Whole Exome Sequencing Enhanced Imputation Identifies 85 Metabolite Associations In The Alpine Chris Cohort, Eva König, Johannes Rainer, Vinicius Verri Hernandes, Giuseppe Paglia, Fabiola Del Greco M, Daniele Bottigliengo, Xianyong Yin, Lap Sum Chan, Alexander Teumer, Peter P Pramstaller, Adam E Locke, Christian Fuchsberger

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Metabolites are intermediates or end products of biochemical processes involved in both health and disease. Here, we take advantage of the well-characterized Cooperative Health Research in South Tyrol (CHRIS) study to perform an exome-wide association study (ExWAS) on absolute concentrations of 175 metabolites in 3294 individuals. To increase power, we imputed the identified variants into an additional 2211 genotyped individuals of CHRIS. In the resulting dataset of 5505 individuals, we identified 85 single-variant genetic associations, of which 39 have not been reported previously. Fifteen associations emerged at ten variants with >5-fold enrichment in CHRIS compared to non-Finnish Europeans reported in …

Selective Whole-Genome Amplification As A Tool To Enrich Specimens With Low Treponema Pallidum Genomic Dna Copies For Whole-Genome Sequencing, Charles M Thurlow, Sandeep J Joseph, Lilia Ganova-Raeva, Samantha S Katz, Lara Pereira, Cheng Chen, Alyssa Debra, Kendra Vilfort, Kimberly Workowski, Stephanie E Cohen, Hilary Reno, Yongcheng Sun, Mark Burroughs, Mili Sheth, Kai-Hua Chi, Damien Danavall, Susan S Philip, Weiping Cao, Ellen N Kersh, Allan Pillay

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Downstream next-generation sequencing (NGS) of the syphilis spirochete Treponema pallidum subspecies

Loss Of Stathmin-2, A Hallmark Of Tdp-43-Associated Als, Causes Motor Neuropathy, Kelsey L Krus, Amy Strickland, Yurie Yamada, Laura Devault, Robert E Schmidt, A Joseph Bloom, Jeffrey Milbrandt, Aaron Diantonio

2020-Current year OA Pubs

TDP-43 mediates proper Stathmin-2 (STMN2) mRNA splicing, and STMN2 protein is reduced in the spinal cord of most patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). To test the hypothesis that STMN2 loss contributes to ALS pathogenesis, we generated constitutive and conditional STMN2 knockout mice. Constitutive STMN2 loss results in early-onset sensory and motor neuropathy featuring impaired motor behavior and dramatic distal neuromuscular junction (NMJ) denervation of fast-fatigable motor units, which are selectively vulnerable in ALS, without axon or motoneuron degeneration. Selective excision of STMN2 in motoneurons leads to similar NMJ pathology. STMN2 knockout heterozygous mice, which better model the partial loss …

The Translational Landscape Of Sars-Cov-2-Infected Cells Reveals Suppression Of Innate Immune Genes, Maritza Puray-Chavez, Nakyung Lee, Kasyap Tenneti, Yiqing Wang, Hung R Vuong, Yating Liu, Amjad Horani, Tao Huang, Sean P Gunsten, James B Case, Wei Yang, Michael S Diamond, Steven L Brody, Joseph Dougherty, Sebla B Kutluay

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) utilizes a number of strategies to modulate viral and host mRNA translation. Here, we used ribosome profiling in SARS-CoV-2-infected model cell lines and primary airway cells grown at an air-liquid interface to gain a deeper understanding of the translationally regulated events in response to virus replication. We found that SARS-CoV-2 mRNAs dominate the cellular mRNA pool but are not more efficiently translated than cellular mRNAs. SARS-CoV-2 utilized a highly efficient ribosomal frameshifting strategy despite notable accumulation of ribosomes within the slippery sequence on the frameshifting element. In a highly permissive cell line model, …

Infants Later Diagnosed With Autism Have Lower Canonical Babbling Ratios In The First Year Of Life, L D Yankowitz, J R Pruett Jr, N Marrus, K Botteron, J N Constantino, Et Al.

2020-Current year OA Pubs

BACKGROUND: Canonical babbling-producing syllables with a mature consonant, full vowel, and smooth transition-is an important developmental milestone that typically occurs in the first year of life. Some studies indicate delayed or reduced canonical babbling in infants at high familial likelihood for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or who later receive an ASD diagnosis, but evidence is mixed. More refined characterization of babbling in the first year of life in infants with high likelihood for ASD is needed.

METHODS: Vocalizations produced at 6 and 12 months by infants (n = 267) taking part in a longitudinal study were coded for canonical and …

A Human Single-Neuron Dataset For Face Perception, Runnan Cao, Chujun Lin, Nicholas J Brandmeir, Shuo Wang

2020-Current year OA Pubs

The human amygdala and hippocampus have long been associated with face perception. Here, we present a dataset of single-neuron activity in the human amygdala and hippocampus during face perception. We recorded 2082 neurons from the human amygdala and hippocampus when neurosurgical patients with intractable epilepsy performed a one-back task using natural face stimuli, which mimics natural face perception. Specifically, our data include (1) single-neuron activity from the amygdala (996 neurons) and hippocampus (1086 neurons), (2) eye movements (gaze position and pupil), (3) psychological assessment of the patients, and (4) social trait judgment ratings from a subset of patients and a …

Dialysis Service In The Embattled Tigray Region Of Ethiopia: A Call To Action, Ephrem Berhe, Will Ross, Hale Teka, Hiluf Ebuy Abraha, Lewis Wall

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Haemodialysis is extremely limited in low-income countries. Access to haemodialysis is further curtailed in areas of active conflict and political instability. Haemodialysis in the Tigray region of Ethiopia has been dramatically affected by the ongoing civil war. Rapid assessment from the data available at Ayder Hospital's haemodialysis unit registry, 2015-2021, shows that enrollment of patients in the haemodialysis service has plummeted since the war broke out. Patient flow has decreased by 37.3% from the previous yearly average. This is in contrary to the assumption that enrollment would increase because patients could not travel to haemodialysis services in the rest of …

The Gut Microbiome-Brain Crosstalk In Neurodegenerative Diseases, Laura Ghezzi, Claudia Cantoni, Emanuela Rotondo, Daniela Galimberti

2020-Current year OA Pubs

The gut-brain axis (GBA) is a complex interactive network linking the gut to the brain. It involves the bidirectional communication between the gastrointestinal and the central nervous system, mediated by endocrinological, immunological, and neural signals. Perturbations of the GBA have been reported in many neurodegenerative diseases, suggesting a possible role in disease pathogenesis, making it a potential therapeutic target. The gut microbiome is a pivotal component of the GBA, and alterations in its composition have been linked to GBA dysfunction and CNS inflammation and degeneration. The gut microbiome might influence the homeostasis of the central nervous system homeostasis through the …

Blocking Cell Cycle Progression Through Cdk4/6 Protects Against Chronic Kidney Disease, Yosuke Osaki, Marika Manolopoulou, Alla V Ivanova, Nicholas Vartanian, Melanie Phillips Mignemi, Justin Kern, Jianchun Chen, Haichun Yang, Agnes B Fogo, Mingzhi Zhang, Cassianne Robinson-Cohen, Leslie S. Gewin

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Acute and chronic kidney injuries induce increased cell cycle progression in renal tubules. While increased cell cycle progression promotes repair after acute injury, the role of ongoing tubular cell cycle progression in chronic kidney disease is unknown. Two weeks after initiation of chronic kidney disease, we blocked cell cycle progression at G1/S phase by using an FDA-approved, selective inhibitor of CDK4/6. Blocking CDK4/6 improved renal function and reduced tubular injury and fibrosis in 2 murine models of chronic kidney disease. However, selective deletion of cyclin D1, which complexes with CDK4/6 to promote cell cycle progression, paradoxically increased tubular injury. Expression …

Vitamin D Treatment Prevents Uremia-Induced Reductions In Aortic Microrna-145 Attenuating Osteogenic Differentiation Despite Hyperphosphatemia, Natalia Carrillo-López, Sara Panizo, Maria Vittoria Arcidiacono, Sandra De La Fuente, Laura Martínez-Arias, Emerenziana Ottaviano, Catalina Ulloa, María Piedad Ruiz-Torres, Isabel Rodríguez, Jorge B Cannata-Andía, Manuel Naves-Díaz, Adriana S Dusso

2020-Current year OA Pubs

In chronic kidney disease, systemic inflammation and high serum phosphate (P) promote the de-differentiation of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMC) to osteoblast-like cells, increasing the propensity for medial calcification and cardiovascular mortality. Vascular microRNA-145 (miR-145) content is essential to maintain VSMC contractile phenotype. Because vitamin D induces aortic miR-145, uremia and high serum P reduce it and miR-145 directly targets osteogenic osterix in osteoblasts, this study evaluated a potential causal link between vascular miR-145 reductions and osterix-driven osteogenic differentiation and its counter-regulation by vitamin D. Studies in aortic rings from normal rats and in the rat aortic VSMC line A7r5 …

A Pathogenic Mechanism Associated With Myopathies And Structural Birth Defects Involves Tpm2-Directed Myogenesis, Jennifer Mcadow, Shuo Yang, Tiffany Ou, Gary Huang, Matthew B. Dobbs, Christina A. Gurnett, Michael J. Greenberg, Aaron N. Johnson

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Nemaline myopathy (NM) is the most common congenital myopathy, characterized by extreme weakness of the respiratory, limb, and facial muscles. Pathogenic variants in Tropomyosin 2 (TPM2), which encodes a skeletal muscle-specific actin binding protein essential for sarcomere function, cause a spectrum of musculoskeletal disorders that include NM as well as cap myopathy, congenital fiber type disproportion, and distal arthrogryposis (DA). The in vivo pathomechanisms underlying TPM2-related disorders are unknown, so we expressed a series of dominant, pathogenic TPM2 variants in Drosophila embryos and found 4 variants significantly affected muscle development and muscle function. Transient overexpression of the 4 variants also …

Antigenic Landscapes On Staphylococcus Aureus Pore-Forming Toxins Reveal Insights Into Specificity And Cross-Neutralization, Shweta Kailasan, Ravi Kant, Madeleine Noonan-Shueh, Tulasikumari Kanipakala, Grant Liao, Sergey Shulenin, Daisy W Leung, Richard A Alm, Rajan P Adhikari, Gaya K Amarasinghe, Michael L Gross, M Javad Aman

2020-Current year OA Pubs

No abstract provided.

Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Infection Drives A Type I Ifn Signature In Lung Lymphocytes, Sadia Akter, Kuldeep S Chauhan, Micah D Dunlap, José Alberto Choreño-Parra, Lan Lu, Ekaterina Esaulova, Joaquin Zúñiga, Maxim N Artyomov, Deepak Kaushal, Shabaana A Khader

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) infects 25% of the world's population and causes tuberculosis (TB), which is a leading cause of death globally. A clear understanding of the dynamics of immune response at the cellular level is crucial to design better strategies to control TB. We use the single-cell RNA sequencing approach on lung lymphocytes derived from healthy and Mtb-infected mice. Our results show the enrichment of the type I IFN signature among the lymphoid cell clusters, as well as heat shock responses in natural killer (NK) cells from Mtb-infected mice lungs. We identify Ly6A as a lymphoid cell activation marker and …

Mitochondrial Cyclophilin D Promotes Disease Tolerance By Licensing Nk Cell Development And Il-22 Production Against Influenza Virus, Jeffrey Downey, Haley E Randolph, Erwan Pernet, Kim A Tran, Shabaana A Khader, Irah L King, Luis B Barreiro, Maziar Divangahi

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Severity of pulmonary viral infections, including influenza A virus (IAV), is linked to excessive immunopathology, which impairs lung function. Thus, the same immune responses that limit viral replication can concomitantly cause lung damage that must be countered by largely uncharacterized disease tolerance mechanisms. Here, we show that mitochondrial cyclophilin D (CypD) protects against IAV via disease tolerance. CypD

Mrna Vaccine Boosting Enhances Antibody Responses Against Sars-Cov-2 Omicron Variant In Individuals With Antibody Deficiency Syndromes, Ofer Zimmerman, Alexa Michelle Altman Doss, Paulina Kaplonek, Chieh-Yu Liang, Laura A. Vanblargan, Rita E. Chen, Jennifer Marie Monroy, H. James Wedner, Anthony Kulczycki, Tarisa L. Mantia, Caitlin C. O'Shaughnessy, Hannah G. Davis-Adams, Harry L. Bertera, Lucas J. Adams, Saravanan Raju, Fang R. Zhao, Christopher J. Rigell, Tiffany Biason Dy, Andrew L. Kau, Zhen Ren, Jackson S. Turner, Jane A. O'Halloran, Rachel M. Presti, Daved H. Fremont, Peggy L. Kendall, Ali H. Ellebedy, Galit Alter, Michael S. Diamond

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Individuals with primary antibody deficiency (PAD) syndromes have poor humoral immune responses requiring immunoglobulin replacement therapy. We followed individuals with PAD after severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccination by evaluating their immunoglobulin replacement products and serum for anti-spike binding, Fcγ receptor (FcγR) binding, and neutralizing activities. The immunoglobulin replacement products tested have low anti-spike and receptor-binding domain (RBD) titers and neutralizing activity. In coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-naive individuals with PAD, anti-spike and RBD titers increase after mRNA vaccination but wane by 90 days. Those vaccinated after SARS-CoV-2 infection develop higher and more sustained responses comparable with healthy donors. …

Activation Of The Rat Α1Β2Ε Gabaa Receptor By Orthosteric And Allosteric Agonists, Allison L Germann, Ariel B Burbridge, Spencer R Pierce, Gustav Akk

2020-Current year OA Pubs

GABA

Mechanism Of Voltage Sensing In Ca2+- And Voltage-Activated K + (Bk) Channels, Willy Carrasquel-Ursulaez, Ignacio Segura, Ignacio Díaz-Franulic, Felipe Echeverría, Yenisleidy Lorenzo-Ceballos, Nicolás Espinoza, Maximiliano Rojas, Jose Antonio Garate, Eduardo Perozo, Osvaldo Alvarez, Fernando D Gonzalez-Nilo, Ramón Latorre, Valeria Marquez-Miranda

2020-Current year OA Pubs

In neurosecretion, allosteric communication between voltage sensors and Ca

Fine-Tuning Cardiac Insulin-Like Growth Factor 1 Receptor Signaling To Promote Health And Longevity, Mahmoud Abdellatif, Tobias Pendl, Sebastian J Hofer, Moydul Islam, Abhinav Diwan, Tobias Eisenberg, Frank Madeo, Et Al

2020-Current year OA Pubs

BACKGROUND: The insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1) pathway is a key regulator of cellular metabolism and aging. Although its inhibition promotes longevity across species, the effect of attenuated IGF1 signaling on cardiac aging remains controversial.

METHODS: We performed a lifelong study to assess cardiac health and lifespan in 2 cardiomyocyte-specific transgenic mouse models with enhanced versus reduced IGF1 receptor (IGF1R) signaling. Male mice with human IGF1R overexpression or dominant negative phosphoinositide 3-kinase mutation were examined at different life stages by echocardiography, invasive hemodynamics, and treadmill coupled to indirect calorimetry. In vitro assays included cardiac histology, mitochondrial respiration, ATP synthesis, autophagic …

Mechanisms Of Transcranial Doppler Ultrasound Phenotypes In Paediatric Cerebral Malaria Remain Elusive., Nicole F O'Brien, Yudy Fonseca, Hunter C Johnson, Douglas Postels, Gretchen L Birbeck, Yamikani Chimalizeni, Karl B Seydel, Montfort Bernard Gushu, Tusekile Phiri, Sylvester June, Karen Chetcuti, Lorenna Vidal, Manu S Goyal, Terrie E Taylor

2020-Current year OA Pubs

BACKGROUND: Cerebral malaria (CM) results in significant paediatric death and neurodisability in sub-Saharan Africa. Several different alterations to typical Transcranial Doppler Ultrasound (TCD) flow velocities and waveforms in CM have been described, but mechanistic contributors to these abnormalities are unknown. If identified, targeted, TCD-guided adjunctive therapy in CM may improve outcomes.

METHODS: This was a prospective, observational study of children 6 months to 12 years with CM in Blantyre, Malawi recruited between January 2018 and June 2021. Medical history, physical examination, laboratory analysis, electroencephalogram, and magnetic resonance imaging were undertaken on presentation. Admission TCD results determined phenotypic grouping following a …

Homotopic Contralesional Excitation Suppresses Spontaneous Circuit Repair And Global Network Reconnections Following Ischemic Stroke, Annie R Bice, Qingli Xiao, Justin Kong, Ping Yan, Zachary Pollack Rosenthal, Andrew W Kraft, Karen P Smith, Tadeusz Wieloch, Jin-Moo Lee, Joseph P Culver, Adam Q Bauer

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Understanding circuit-level manipulations that affect the brain's capacity for plasticity will inform the design of targeted interventions that enhance recovery after stroke. Following stroke, increased contralesional activity (e.g. use of the unaffected limb) can negatively influence recovery, but it is unknown which specific neural connections exert this influence, and to what extent increased contralesional activity affects systems- and molecular-level biomarkers of recovery. Here, we combine optogenetic photostimulation with optical intrinsic signal imaging to examine how contralesional excitatory activity affects cortical remodeling after stroke in mice. Following photothrombosis of left primary somatosensory forepaw (S1FP) cortex, mice either recovered spontaneously or received …