Cytokine and T cell responses in post-chikungunya viral arthritis: A cross-sectional study.

Objective: To define the relationship between chronic chikungunya post-viral arthritis disease severity, cytokine response and T cell subsets in order to identify potential targets for therapy.

Methods: Participants with chikungunya arthritis were recruited from Colombia from 2019-2021. Arthritis disease severity was quantified using the Disease Activity Score-28 and an Arthritis-Flare Questionnaire adapted for chikungunya arthritis.

Cycle threshold predicted mortality in a cohort of patients with hematologic malignancies infected with SARS-CoV-2.

When a SARS-CoV-2 RT-qPCR test is performed, it may determine an indirect measure of viral load called cycle threshold (Ct). Respiratory samples with Ct <25.0 cycles are considered to contain a high viral load.

Regulatory T-cells and GARP expression are decreased in exercise-associated chikungunya viral arthritis flares.

Objective: Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) causes persistent arthritis, and our prior study showed that approximately one third of CHIKV arthritis patients had exacerbated arthritis associated with exercise. The underlying mechanism of exercise-associated chikungunya arthritis flare (EACAF) is unknown, and this analysis aimed to examine the regulatory T-cell immune response related to CHIKV arthritis flares.

Methods: In our study, 124 Colombian patients with a history of CHIKV infection four years prior were enrolled and 113 cases with serologically confirmed CHIKV IgG were used in this analysis.

Sleep Disturbances are a Significant Predictor of Chikungunya Arthritis Flare Severity.

Objective: The primary objective of this research was to explore the link between sleep and flare pain associated with chikungunya virus (CHIKV) infection. The secondary objective was to investigate if cytokines and T regulatory (Treg) cells have an influence on this relationship.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed using data collected in Barranquilla, Colombia, which enrolled patients with and without chronic arthritis with a history of chikungunya infection.

Handwritten Geometrical Patterns in the Evaluation of Motor Symptoms in Psychotic Disorders.

The analysis of handwriting has been used in several contexts. For example, handwriting has shown to be of value in the study of motor symptoms in neurological and mental disorders. In the present work, the geometric analysis of handwriting patterns is proposed as a tool to evaluate motor symptoms in psychotic disorders.

Evaluation of the synergistic effects of antioxidant activity on mixtures of the essential oil from L., L. and L. using simplex-lattice design.

Essential oils (EOs) are known for their antioxidant properties, and are widely employed in the food industry as preservatives. They can be used as condiments or as preservatives to achieve certain organoleptic effects for consumers. The aim of this research was to evaluate antioxidant activity in mixtures of three EOs: L.

Handwriting movements for assessment of motor symptoms in schizophrenia spectrum disorders and bipolar disorder.

The main aim of the present study was to explore the value of several measures of handwriting in the study of motor abnormalities in patients with bipolar or psychotic disorders. 54 adult participants with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder or bipolar disorder and 44 matched healthy controls, participated in the study. Participants were asked to copy a handwriting pattern consisting of four loops, with an inking pen on a digitizing tablet.

Spatial Analysis of Handwritten Texts as a Marker of Cognitive Control.

We explore the idea that cognitive demands of the handwriting would influence the degree of automaticity of the handwriting process, which in turn would affect the geometric parameters of texts. We compared the heterogeneity of handwritten texts in tasks with different cognitive demands; the heterogeneity of texts was analyzed with lacunarity, a measure of geometrical invariance. In Experiment 1, we asked participants to perform two tasks that varied in cognitive demands: transcription and exposition about an autobiographical episode.

Characterizing the local solvation environment of OH(-) in water clusters with AIMD.

In this work, we use ab initio molecular dynamics coupled with metadynamics to explore and characterize the glassy potential energy landscape of the OH(-) in a 20 and 48 water cluster. The structural, energetic, and topological properties of OH(-) are characterized for both clusters and the molecular origins of the IR signatures are examined. We find that in both the small and large clusters, the OH(-) can donate or accept a varying number of hydrogen bonds confirming that the amphiphilic character does not depend on cluster size.

Unveiling the Janus-Like Properties of OH(-).

Using ab initio simulations, we explore the glassy landscape of the OH(-)(H2O)20 cluster and its infrared spectrum. We show that the OH(-) has an amphiphilic Janus-type behavior like the hydronium ion induced by the ability of its O-H bond to be buried inside of the cluster or exposed at the surface with different coordination numbers. Recent infrared experiments of aqueous NaOH have found two pronounced peaks at 2000 and 2850 cm(-1) [Mandal, A.

Collective spin 1 singlet phase in high-pressure oxygen.

Oxygen, one of the most common and important elements in nature, has an exceedingly well-explored phase diagram under pressure, up to and beyond 100 GPa. At low temperatures, the low-pressure antiferromagnetic phases below 8 GPa where O2 molecules have spin S = 1 are followed by the broad apparently nonmagnetic ε phase from about 8 to 96 GPa. In this phase, which is our focus, molecules group structurally together to form quartets while switching, as believed by most, to spin S = 0.

The California Kaiser Permanente Health System: evolving to meet the needs of people with disabilities.

This review documents the history of one large health system's approach to the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act, following the settlement of a lawsuit. This paper represents the various activities within the Kaiser Permanente health system from 2001 to the present that were conducted to improve access and remove architectural, attitudinal, and other barriers for people with disabilities, to educate and train providers concerning culturally competent care for people with disabilities, and to develop patient-centered best practices and models of care for people with disabilities. Health systems can improve care for people with disabilities through organized, multifaceted, and ongoing approaches to removal of barriers, provider education and training in culturally competent care, and establishment of patient-centered best practices and models of care.

Metadynamics convergence law in a multidimensional system.

Metadynamics is a powerful sampling technique that uses a nonequilibrium history-dependent process to reconstruct the free-energy surface as a function of the relevant collective variables s . In Bussi [Phys. Rev.

Calculating thermodynamics properties of quantum systems by a non-Markovian Monte Carlo procedure.

We present a history-dependent Monte Carlo scheme for the efficient calculation of the free energy of quantum systems inspired by Wang-Landau and metadynamics. In the two-dimensional quantum Ising model, chosen here for illustration, the accuracy of free energy, critical temperature, and specific heat is demonstrated as a function of simulation time and successfully compared with the best available approaches. The approach is based on a path integral formulation of the quantum problem and can be applied without modifications to quantum Hamiltonians of any level of complexity.