Development of a yeast-based sensor platform for evaluation of ligands recognized by the human Free Fatty Acid 2 Receptor.

Yeast-based sensors have shown great applicability for deorphanization of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and screening of ligands targeting these. A GPCR of great interest is free fatty acid 2 receptor (FFA2R), for which short-chain fatty acids such as propionate and acetate are agonists. FFA2R regulates a wide array of downstream receptor signaling pathways in both adipose tissue and immune cells and has been recognized as a promising therapeutic target, having been implicated in several metabolic and inflammatory diseases.

Novel Entropy-Based Metrics for Long-Term Atrial Fibrillation Recurrence Prediction Following Surgical Ablation: Insights from Preoperative Electrocardiographic Analysis.

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a prevalent cardiac arrhythmia often treated concomitantly with other cardiac interventions through the Cox-Maze procedure. This highly invasive intervention is still linked to a long-term recurrence rate of approximately 35% in permanent AF patients. The aim of this study is to preoperatively predict long-term AF recurrence post-surgery through the analysis of atrial activity (AA) organization from non-invasive electrocardiographic (ECG) recordings.

A Novel Signal Restoration Method of Noisy Photoplethysmograms for Uninterrupted Health Monitoring.

Health-tracking from photoplethysmography (PPG) signals is significantly hindered by motion artifacts (MAs). Although many algorithms exist to detect MAs, the corrupted signal often remains unexploited. This work introduces a novel method able to reconstruct noisy PPGs and facilitate uninterrupted health monitoring.

Improved Hypertension Risk Assessment with Photoplethysmographic Recordings Combining Deep Learning and Calibration.

Hypertension, a primary risk factor for various cardiovascular diseases, is a global health concern. Early identification and effective management of hypertensive individuals are vital for reducing associated health risks. This study explores the potential of deep learning (DL) techniques, specifically GoogLeNet, ResNet-18, and ResNet-50, for discriminating between normotensive (NTS) and hypertensive (HTS) individuals using photoplethysmographic (PPG) recordings.

Identification of clinical and pharmacogenetic factors influencing metformin response in Type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Metformin, a hypoglycemic drug for Type 2 diabetes mellitus, shows variability in pharmacokinetics and response due to membrane transporters. This study followed 34 Type 2 diabetes mellitus patients on metformin treatment. Genetic variants in 11 metformin transport-related genes were analyzed, revealing associations.

Bortezomib Pharmacogenetic Biomarkers for the Treatment of Multiple Myeloma: Review and Future Perspectives.

Multiple myeloma (MM) is a hematological neoplasm for which different chemotherapy treatments are used with several drugs in combination. One of the most frequently used drugs for the treatment of MM is the proteasome inhibitor bortezomib. Patients treated with bortezomib are at increased risk for thrombocytopenia, neutropenia, gastrointestinal toxicities, peripheral neuropathy, infection, and fatigue.

Pharmacogenetics in the Treatment of Huntington's Disease: Review and Future Perspectives.

Huntington's disease (HD) is an autosomal dominant progressive brain disorder, caused by a pathological expansion of a CAG repeat that encodes the huntingtin gene. This genetic neurodegenerative rare disease is characterized by cognitive, motor, and neuropsychiatric manifestations. The aim of the treatment is symptomatic and addresses the hyperkinetic disorders (chorea, dystonia, myoclonus, tics, etc.

Preoperative Prediction of Catheter Ablation Outcome in Persistent Atrial Fibrillation Patients through Spectral Organization Analysis of the Surface Fibrillatory Waves.

Catheter ablation (CA) is a commonly used treatment for persistent atrial fibrillation (AF). Since its medium/long-term success rate remains limited, preoperative prediction of its outcome is gaining clinical interest to optimally select candidates for the procedure. Among predictors based on the surface electrocardiogram, the dominant frequency (DF) and harmonic exponential decay (γ) of the fibrillatory waves (-waves) have reported promising but clinically insufficient results.

Comparative Study of Methods for Cycle Length Estimation in Fractionated Electrograms of Atrial Fibrillation.

Atrial cycle length (CL) is an important feature for the analysis of electrogram (EGM) characteristics acquired during catheter ablation (CA) of atrial fibrillation (AF), the commonest cardiac arrhythmia. Nevertheless, a robust ACL estimator requires the precise detection of local activation waves (LAWs), which still remains a challenge. This work aims to compare the performance in (CL) estimation, especially under fractionated EGMs, of three different LAW detection methods relying on different operation strategies.

Monitoring System of the Mar Menor Coastal Lagoon (Spain) and Its Watershed Basin Using the Integration of Massive Heterogeneous Data.

The tool created aims at the environmental monitoring of the Mar Menor coastal lagoon (Spain) and the monitoring of the land use of its watershed. It integrates heterogeneous data sources ranging from ecological data obtained from a multiparametric oceanographic sonde to agro-meteorological data from IMIDA's network of stations or hydrological data from the SAIH network as multispectral satellite images from Sentinel and Landsat space missions. The system is based on free and open source software and has been designed to guarantee maximum levels of flexibility and scalability and minimum coupling so that the incorporation of new components does not affect the existing ones.

An Efficient Hybrid Methodology for Local Activation Waves Detection under Complex Fractionated Atrial Electrograms of Atrial Fibrillation.

Local activation waves (LAWs) detection in complex fractionated atrial electrograms (CFAEs) during catheter ablation (CA) of atrial fibrillation (AF), the commonest cardiac arrhythmia, is a complicated task due to their extreme variability and heterogeneity in amplitude and morphology. There are few published works on reliable LAWs detectors, which are efficient for regular or low fractionated bipolar electrograms (EGMs) but lack satisfactory results when CFAEs are analyzed. The aim of the present work is the development of a novel optimized method for LAWs detection in CFAEs in order to assist cardiac mapping and catheter ablation (CA) guidance.

The Relevance of Heart Rate Fluctuation When Evaluating Atrial Substrate Electrical Features in Catheter Ablation of Paroxysmal Atrial Fibrillation.

Coronary sinus (CS) catheterization is critical during catheter ablation (CA) of atrial fibrillation (AF). However, the association of CS electrical activity with atrial substrate modification has been barely investigated and mostly limited to analyses during AF. In sinus rhythm (SR), atrial substrate modification is principally assessed at a global level through P-wave analysis.

Evaluation of Brain Functional Connectivity from Electroencephalographic Signals Under Different Emotional States.

The identification of the emotional states corresponding to the four quadrants of the valence/arousal space has been widely analyzed in the scientific literature by means of multiple techniques. Nevertheless, most of these methods were based on the assessment of each brain region separately, without considering the possible interactions among different areas. In order to study these interconnections, this study computes for the first time the functional connectivity metric called cross-sample entropy for the analysis of the brain synchronization in four groups of emotions from electroencephalographic signals.

Role of Pharmacogenetics in the Treatment of Acute Myeloid Leukemia: Systematic Review and Future Perspectives.

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a heterogeneous disease characterized by remarkable toxicity and great variability in response to treatment. Plenteous pharmacogenetic studies have already been published for classical therapies, such as cytarabine or anthracyclines, but such studies remain scarce for newer drugs. There is evidence of the relevance of polymorphisms in response to treatment, although most studies have limitations in terms of cohort size or standardization of results.

The Dissimilar Impact in Atrial Substrate Modificationof Left and Right Pulmonary Veins Isolation after Catheter Ablation of Paroxysmal Atrial Fibrillation.

Since the discovery of pulmonary veins (PVs) as foci of atrial fibrillation (AF), the commonest cardiac arrhythmia, investigation revolves around PVs catheter ablation (CA) results. Notwithstanding, CA process itself is rather neglected. We aim to decompose crucial CA steps: coronary sinus (CS) catheterization and the impact of left and right PVs isolation (LPVI, RPVI), separately.

Hypocalcemia-Induced Reversible Psychosis.

Hypocalcemia can manifest as a variety of presentations, ranging from neuromuscular irritability to seizures, and psychiatric manifestations such as emotional instability, anxiety, and depression. Here, we present a unique case of hypocalcemia-induced acute psychosis. A 24-year-old woman presented to the emergency department (ED) with confusion and agitation for four to five days.

Splitting the P-Wave: Improved Evaluation of Left Atrial Substrate Modification after Pulmonary Vein Isolation of Paroxysmal Atrial Fibrillation.

Atrial substrate modification after pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (pAF) can be assessed non-invasively by analyzing P-wave duration in the electrocardiogram (ECG). However, whether right (RA) and left atrium (LA) contribute equally to this phenomenon remains unknown. The present study splits fundamental P-wave features to investigate the different RA and LA contributions to P-wave duration.

Use of Azacitidine or Decitabine for the Up-Front Setting in Acute Myeloid Leukaemia: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Irruption of decitabine and azacitidine has led to profound changes in the upfront management of older acute myeloid leukaemia (AML). However, they have not been directly compared in a randomised clinical trial. In addition, there are no studies comparing the optimal treatment schedule of each drug in AML.

Detection of Negative Stress through Spectral Features of Electroencephalographic Recordings and a Convolutional Neural Network.

In recent years, electroencephalographic (EEG) signals have been intensively used in the area of emotion recognition, partcularly in distress identification due to its negative impact on physical and mental health. Traditionally, brain activity has been studied from a frequency perspective by computing the power spectral density of the EEG recordings and extracting features from different frequency sub-bands. However, these features are often individually extracted from single EEG channels, such that each brain region is separately evaluated, even when it has been corroborated that mental processes are based on the coordination of different brain areas working simultaneously.

Optimal Control of Time-Delay Fractional Equations via a Joint Application of Radial Basis Functions and Collocation Method.

A novel approach to solve optimal control problems dealing simultaneously with fractional differential equations and time delay is proposed in this work. More precisely, a set of global radial basis functions are firstly used to approximate the states and control variables in the problem. Then, a collocation method is applied to convert the time-delay fractional optimal control problem to a nonlinear programming one.

Multi-scale Entropy Evaluates the Proarrhythmic Condition of Persistent Atrial Fibrillation Patients Predicting Early Failure of Electrical Cardioversion.

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is nowadays the most common cardiac arrhythmia, being associated with an increase in cardiovascular mortality and morbidity. When AF lasts for more than seven days, it is classified as persistent AF and external interventions are required for its termination. A well-established alternative for that purpose is electrical cardioversion (ECV).