Calcium imaging allows recording from hundreds of neurons in vivo with the ability to resolve single cell activity. Evaluating and analyzing neuronal responses, while also considering all dimensions of the data set to make specific conclusions, is extremely difficult. Often, descriptive statistics are used to analyze these forms of data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEpilepsy is a major neurological disorder characterized by recurrent, spontaneous seizures. For patients with drug-resistant epilepsy, treatments include neurostimulation or surgical removal of the epileptogenic zone (EZ), the brain region responsible for seizure generation. Precise targeting of the EZ requires reliable biomarkers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Patients with hemophilia have a life-long risk of developing neutralizing antibodies (inhibitors) against clotting factor concentrates. After the first 50 exposure days (EDs), ie, in previously treated patients (PTPs), data on inhibitor development are limited.
Objectives: To report inhibitor development according to factor (F)VIII or FIX concentrate use in PTPs with severe hemophilia A and B.
Calcium imaging allows recording from hundreds of neurons with the ability to resolve single cell activity. Evaluating and analyzing neuronal responses, while also considering all dimensions of the data set to make specific conclusions, is extremely difficult. Often, descriptive statistics are used to analyze these forms of data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGiven the role that informal caregivers play in caring for older adults and the importance of understanding the variables that may predict the burden that they experience due to caregiving, the aim of this article is to examine the relationship between different variables and the caregiver's subjective burden. Authors examined the relationship between caregivers' sociodemographic characteristics (age and gender), the context in which the care is provided (cohabiting or not), duty as a reason for taking on the role of caregiver, the evaluation of the preexisting relationship between caregiver and care recipient, as well as coping strategies and social support as predictor variables of subjective burden. For this purpose, 161 caregivers of older Spanish adults completed a questionnaire containing information on the corresponding variables.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Multicellular platforms and linked multi organ on chip devices are powerful tools for drug discovery, and basic mechanistic studies. Often, a critical constraint is defining a culture medium optimal for all cells present in the system. In this study, we focused on the key cells of the neuromuscular junction i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe report a water-soluble and non-toxic method to incorporate additional extracellular matrix proteins into gelatin hydrogels, while obviating the use of chemical crosslinkers such as glutaraldehyde. Gelatin hydrogels were fabricated using a range of gelatin concentrations (4%-10%) that corresponded to elastic moduli of approximately 1 kPa-25 kPa, respectively, a substrate stiffness relevant for multiple cell types. Microbial transglutaminase was then used to enzymatically crosslink a layer of laminin on top of gelatin hydrogels, resulting in 2-component gelatin-laminin hydrogels.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA standard culture of cardiac cells as unorganized monolayers on tissue culture plastic or glass does not recapitulate the architectural or the mechanical properties of native myocardium. We investigated the physical and protein cues from the extracellular matrix to engineer anisotropic cardiac tissues as highly aligned monolayers on top of the microelectrode array (MEA). The MEA platform allows non-invasive measurement of beating rate and conduction velocity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThrough the use of stem cell-derived cardiac myocytes, tissue-engineered human myocardial constructs are poised for modeling normal and diseased physiology of the heart, as well as discovery of novel drugs and therapeutic targets in a human relevant manner. This review highlights the recent bioengineering efforts to recapitulate microenvironmental cues to further the maturation state of newly differentiated cardiac myocytes. These techniques include long-term culture, co-culture, exposure to mechanical stimuli, 3D culture, cell-matrix interactions, and electrical stimulation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCholesterol pericarditis is an uncommon, specific form of pericardial disease that is characterized by the presence of cholesterol crystals in pericardial fluid. The etiology may be either idiopathic or in association with systemic disorders such as tuberculosis, rheumatoid arthritis, myxedema or hypercholesterolemia. We report a case of cholesterol pericarditis in a 51-year-old male who was diagnosed with chronic renal failure due to polycystic kidney disease.
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