Plasmodium co-infection protects against chikungunya virus-induced pathologies.

Co-infection with Plasmodium and chikungunya virus (CHIKV) has been reported in humans, but the impact of co-infection on pathogenesis remains unclear. Here, we show that prior exposure to Plasmodium suppresses CHIKV-associated pathologies in mice. Mechanistically, Plasmodium infection induces IFNγ, which reduces viraemia of a subsequent CHIKV infection and suppresses tissue viral load and joint inflammation.

Awake Craniotomy for Resection of Brain Metastases: A Systematic Review.

Background: Surgery for brain metastases aims to reduce mass effect and achieve local control through maximizing resection. There is increasing recognition that awake craniotomy (AC) is especially relevant for resection of brain metastases in eloquent areas. This study seeks to examine the neurologic outcomes of using AC for brain metastases resection.

Effect of Skilled Dancers' Focus of Attention on Pirouette Performance.

Extant attentional focus research has largely examined movement tasks that are outcome-focused (e.g., height of jumps, force production, and number of successful turns) with fewer studies of the movement quality or form of an aesthetic discipline (e.

Establishing normal metabolism and differentiation in hepatocellular carcinoma cells by culturing in adult human serum.

Tissue culture medium routinely contains fetal bovine serum (FBS). Here we show that culturing human hepatoma cells in their native, adult serum (human serum, HS) results in the restoration of key morphological and metabolic features of normal liver cells. When moved to HS, these cells show differential transcription of 22-32% of the genes, stop proliferating, and assume a hepatocyte-like morphology.

Antenatal depression programs cortisol stress reactivity in offspring through increased maternal inflammation and cortisol in pregnancy: The Psychiatry Research and Motherhood - Depression (PRAM-D) Study.

Introduction: Antenatal depression is associated with a broad range of suboptimal outcomes in offspring, although the underlying mechanisms are not yet understood. Animal studies propose inflammation and glucocorticoids as mediators of the developmental programming effect of prenatal stress on offspring stress responses, but studies in humans are not yet at this stage. Indeed, to date no single study has examined the effects of a rigorously defined, clinically significant Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) in pregnancy on maternal antenatal inflammatory biomarkers and hypothalamic-pituitary (HPA) axis, as well as on offspring HPA axis, behavior and developmental outcomes in the first postnatal year.

More is Better: Precise and Detailed Image Captioning Using Online Positive Recall and Missing Concepts Mining.

Recently, a great progress in automatic image captioning has been achieved by using semantic concepts detected from the image. However, we argue that existing concepts-to-caption framework, in which the concept detector is trained using the image-caption pairs to minimize the vocabulary discrepancy, suffers from the deficiency of insufficient concepts. The reasons are two-fold: 1) the extreme imbalance between the number of occurrence positive and negative samples of the concept and 2) the incomplete labeling in training captions caused by the biased annotation and usage of synonyms.

Real-Time Multimedia Social Event Detection in Microblog.

Detecting events from massive social media data in social networks can facilitate browsing, search, and monitoring of real-time events by corporations, governments, and users. The short, conversational, heterogeneous, and real-time characteristics of social media data bring great challenges for event detection. The existing event detection approaches rely mainly on textual information, while the visual content of microblogs and the intrinsic correlation among the heterogeneous data are scarcely explored.

Discrimination, Bullying and Harassment in Surgery: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

Background: In 2015, the public media in Australia reported a series of life stories of victims who had been subjected to inappropriate behaviors in their surgical careers, bringing the profession into disrepute. Currently, limited data are available in the medical literature on discrimination, bullying and harassment (DBH) in surgery. This significant information gap prompted a systematic review to compile relevant information about DBH in surgical practice and training, in particular, its prevalence and impact.

The Aer2 receptor from Vibrio cholerae is a dual PAS-heme oxygen sensor.

The diarrheal pathogen Vibrio cholerae navigates complex environments using three chemosensory systems and 44-45 chemoreceptors. Chemosensory cluster II modulates chemotaxis, whereas clusters I and III have unknown functions. Ligands have been identified for only five V.

Allometric Relationships for Cardiac Size and Longitudinal Function in Healthy Chinese Adults - Normal Ranges and Clinical Correlates.

Background: Cardiac size measurements require indexing to body size. Allometric indexing has been investigated in Caucasian populations but a range of different values for the so-called allometric power exponent () have been proposed, with uncertainty as to whether allometry offers clinical utility above body surface area (BSA)-based indexing. We derived optimal values for in normal echocardiograms and validated them externally in cardiac patients.

Advanced analyses of computed tomography coronary angiography can help discriminate ischemic lesions.

Background: Computed tomography coronary angiography (CTCA) image analysis enables plaque characterization and non-invasive fractional flow reserve (FFR) calculation. We analyzed various parameters derived from CTCA images and evaluated their associations with ischemia.

Methods: 49 (61 lesions) patients underwent CTCA and invasive FFR.

Longitudinal Study of Cellular and Systemic Cytokine Signatures to Define the Dynamics of a Balanced Immune Environment During Disease Manifestation in Zika Virus-Infected Patients.

Background: Since its unexpected reemergence, Zika virus (ZIKV) has caused numerous outbreaks globally. This study characterized the host immune responses during ZIKV infection.

Methods: Patient samples were collected longitudinally during the acute, convalescence and recovery phases of ZIKV infection over 6 months during the Singapore outbreak in late 2016.

Investigation of variants in estrogen receptor genes and perinatal depression.

Objectives: Depressive symptoms are common during pregnancy and after childbirth. Estrogen levels fluctuate greatly during the course of pregnancy and may contribute to mood instability. The first aim of this case-control study was to investigate whether variants in the two estrogen receptor genes might contribute to the genetic susceptibility to pregnancy-related depression using controls that were screened for postnatal depression.

Zika Virus Infection Preferentially Counterbalances Human Peripheral Monocyte and/or NK Cell Activity.

Zika virus (ZIKV) has reemerged in the population and caused unprecedented global outbreaks. Here, the transcriptomic consequences of ZIKV infection were studied systematically first in human peripheral blood CD14 monocytes and monocyte-derived macrophages with high-density RNA sequencing. Analyses of the ZIKV genome revealed that the virus underwent genetic diversification, and differential mRNA abundance was found in host cells during infection.

Triaging Primary Care Patients Referred for Chest Pain to Specialist Cardiology Centres: Efficacy of an Optimised Protocol.

Introduction: Patients referred for chest pain from primary care have increased, along with demand for outpatient cardiology consultations. We evaluated 'Triage Protocol' that implements standardised diagnostic testing prior to patients' first cardiology consultation.

Materials And Methods: Under the 'Triage Protocol', patients referred for chest pain were pretriaged using a standardised algorithm and subsequently referred for relevant functional diagnostic cardiology tests before their initial cardiology consultation.

Therapeutic modulation of the bile acid pool by Cyp8b1 knockdown protects against nonalcoholic fatty liver disease in mice.

Bile acids (BAs) are surfactant molecules that regulate the intestinal absorption of lipids. Thus, the modulation of BAs represents a potential therapy for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), which is characterized by hepatic accumulation of fat and is a major cause of liver disease worldwide. Cyp8b1 is a critical modulator of the hydrophobicity index of the BA pool.

From renal salt wasting to SIADH.

Hyponatraemia is common following major head injury and is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. A 20-year-old man presented with reduced consciousness after head trauma and was found to have a fractured skull base with bilateral frontal contusions. On day 3 of his admission, he developed hyponatraemia with raised urine sodium and osmolality, despite receiving dexamethasone and intravenous fluid therapy.

The beneficial effect of weight reduction on adverse cardiovascular outcomes following bariatric surgery is attenuated in patients with obstructive sleep apnea.

Weight loss after bariatric surgery is associated with reduction in adverse cardiovascular outcomes; however, the impact of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) on reduction of cardiovascular outcomes after bariatric surgery in morbidly obese patients is not known. We retrospectively assessed differences in cardiovascular events after laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding (LAGB)-induced weight loss in patients with and without OSA before and after propensity score matching for age, sex, body mass index (BMI), and major comorbidities between the two groups and determined predictors of poor outcomes. OSA was present in 222 out of 830 patients (27 per cent) who underwent LAGB between 2001 and 2011.

Circulating and disseminated tumor cells in pancreatic cancer and their role in patient prognosis: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: Disseminated tumor cells (DTCs) and circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have been postulated to seed metastases and contribute to poorer patient outcomes in many types of solid cancer. To date, no systematic reviews have examined the role of both DTCs and CTCs in pancreatic cancer. We aimed to determine the prognostic value of DTCs/CTCs in pancreatic cancer using a systematic review and meta-analysis.