Loss of electrical β-cell to δ-cell coupling underlies impaired hypoglycaemia-induced glucagon secretion in type-1 diabetes.

Diabetes mellitus involves both insufficient insulin secretion and dysregulation of glucagon secretion. In healthy people, a fall in plasma glucose stimulates glucagon release and thereby increases counter-regulatory hepatic glucose production. This response is absent in many patients with type-1 diabetes (T1D), which predisposes to severe hypoglycaemia that may be fatal and accounts for up to 10% of the mortality in patients with T1D.

GLP-1 metabolite GLP-1(9-36) is a systemic inhibitor of mouse and human pancreatic islet glucagon secretion.

Aims/hypothesis: Diabetes mellitus is associated with impaired insulin secretion, often aggravated by oversecretion of glucagon. Therapeutic interventions should ideally correct both defects. Glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) has this capability but exactly how it exerts its glucagonostatic effect remains obscure.

Valuing the future at different temporal points: The role of time framing on discounting.

The rate of delay discounting exhibited by individuals has been experimentally altered by manipulating the way in which time is described, a specific application of the framing effect. Previous research suggests that using specific dates to describe delays tends to lower temporal discounting and change the shape of the discounting function. The main purpose of this study was to assess the influence of framing on discounting in different temporal contexts.

Genome-wide association study of cassava starch paste properties.

An understanding of cassava starch paste properties (CSPP) can contribute to the selection of clones with differentiated starches. This study aimed to identify genomic regions associated with CSPP using different genome-wide association study (GWAS) methods (MLM, MLMM, and Farm-CPU). The GWAS was performed using 23,078 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs).

Similar attention and performance in female and male CD1 mice in the peak procedure.

Inaccurate and distorted timing are associated with neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia in humans, which generates interest in the discovery and understanding of the factors behind such timing difficulties. Timing research in mice has taken an important role, because the availability of genetically-altered strains allows establishing the causal role of specific genes on such neurodegenerative disorders. Nevertheless, few studies have considered mice's sex and some have found sex differences in timing, although results are not yet conclusive.

The vascular architecture of the pancreatic islets: A homage to August Krogh.

The vascular network supporting the islets of Langerhans represents a highly specialised system of arterioles, capillaries and venules. Several features of the islet vasculature (density and fenestration of the capillaries) ensure rapid exchange of nutrients and hormones, which is central to the islets' capacity to control of systemic metabolism via reciprocal changes of insulin and glucagon secretion. Here we discuss how changes in islet blood flow may underlie pulsatile insulin secretion, which becomes impaired in type-2 diabetes.

Therapeutic Efficacy of a Mixed Formulation of Conventional and PEGylated Liposomes Containing Meglumine Antimoniate, Combined with Allopurinol, in Dogs Naturally Infected with Leishmania infantum.

The treatment of dogs naturally infected with using meglumine antimoniate (MA) encapsulated in conventional liposomes (LC) in association with allopurinol has been previously reported to promote a marked reduction in the parasite burden in the main infection sites. Here, a new assay in naturally infected dogs was performed using a novel liposome formulation of MA consisting of a mixture of conventional and long-circulating (PEGylated) liposomes (LCP), with expected broader distribution among affected tissues of the mononuclear phagocyte system. Experimental groups of naturally infected dogs were as follows: LCP plus Allop, receiving LCP intravenously as 2 cycles of 6 doses (6.

Implementation of a Brazilian Cardioprotective Nutritional (BALANCE) Program for improvement on quality of diet and secondary prevention of cardiovascular events: A randomized, multicenter trial.

Background: Appropriate dietary recommendations represent a key part of secondary prevention in cardiovascular disease (CVD). We evaluated the effectiveness of the implementation of a nutritional program on quality of diet, cardiovascular events, and death in patients with established CVD.

Methods: In this open-label, multicenter trial conducted in 35 sites in Brazil, we randomly assigned (1:1) patients aged 45 years or older to receive either the BALANCE Program (experimental group) or conventional nutrition advice (control group).

Uncontrollable chronic stress affects eating behavior in rats.

The issue of whether the decrease in food intake induced by inescapable shock is due to the uncontrollability of the stressor or the shock per se has not yet been settled. Besides, whether food intake is differentially affected by an uncontrollable chronic stressor has been explored only by a few studies. Thus, we evaluated the effects of chronic escapable or inescapable electric shocks on eating behavior.

Sources of hepatic glycogen synthesis in mice fed with glucose or fructose as the sole dietary carbohydrate.

Purpose: The positional analysis of hepatic glycogen enrichment from deuterated water ( H O) by H NMR has been applied previously to resolve the contributions of glucose and fructose to glycogen synthesis in rodents fed a high sucrose diet. To further validate this method, this analysis was applied to mice fed with synthetic diets whose carbohydrate components consisted solely of either glucose or fructose.

Methods: Eight glucose-fed and 12 fructose-fed mice were given H O followed by ad libitum feeding overnight.

Canine Leishmaniasis: An Overview of the Current Status and Strategies for Control.

Canine leishmaniasis (CanL) is a vector-borne disease caused by and is transmitted by female phlebotomine sand flies primarily between animals and secondarily to humans. The course of infection may be different from one individual dog to another, ranging from spontaneous cure to acute evolution that leads to death, if proper management and therapy are not adopted. A parasitological cure is rarely achieved and clinical recurrences in CanL are frequent.

Impulsive mechanisms influencing relapse in alcohol drinking.

Impulsivity has been related to different features of addictive behaviors. Growing data, generated in separated lines of research, suggest that different processes underlying impulsivity are associated to relapse in alcohol drinking. Considering the evidence, relapse can be understood as an impulsive choice or as an impulsive action.

Toward a Unifying Account of Impulsivity and the Development of Self-Control.

Impulsivity has traditionally been thought to involve various behavioral traits that can be measured using different laboratory protocols. Whereas some authors regard different measures of impulsivity as reflecting fundamentally distinct and unrelated behavioral tendencies (fragmentation approach), others regard those different indexes as analogue forms of the same behavioral tendency, only superficially different (unification approach). Unifying accounts range from mere intuitions to more sophisticated theoretical systems.

Reinforcement value and fixed-interval performance.

The concept of reinforcement value summarizes the effect of different variables, such as reinforcement delay, reinforcement magnitude, and deprivation level, on behavior. In the present set of experiments, we evaluated the effect of reinforcement devaluation on performance under FI schedules. The literature on timing and reinforcement value suggests that devaluation generates longer expected times to reinforcement than the same intervals trained under control conditions.

Telenursing Intervention for Clean Intermittent Urinary Catheterization Patients: A Pilot Study.

Telenursing is a promising strategy to make nursing care feasible in different health situations, mainly to help patients with chronic illnesses. The aim in this study was to test the feasibility (acceptability and usability) of a telenursing intervention in care delivery to patients using clean intermittent urinary catheterization. This descriptive study focused on an intervention involving urology outpatients.

The absence of numbers to express the amount may affect delay discounting with humans.

Human delay discounting is usually studied with experimental protocols that use symbols to express delay and amount. In order to further understand discounting, we evaluated whether the absence of numbers to represent reward amounts affects discount rate in general, and whether the magnitude effect is generalized to nonsymbolic situations in particular. In Experiment 1, human participants were exposed to a delay-discounting task in which rewards were presented using dots to represent monetary rewards (nonsymbolic); under this condition the magnitude effect did not occur.

Temporal discrimination and delayed reinforcement.

We attempted to determine the effect of reinforcement delay on time discrimination in an interval bisection task. Three groups of rats were exposed to immediate, delayed reinforcement and longer signals with immediate reinforcement in acquisition and test. Results show differences in the amount of training necessary to reach the acquisition criteria, the Weber fraction and the range or overall stimulus control.

PUFA-induced cell death is mediated by Yca1p-dependent and -independent pathways, and is reduced by vitamin C in yeast.

Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) such as linoleic acid (LA, n-6, C18:2) and γ-linolenic acid (GLA, n-6, C18:3) are essential and must be obtained from the diet. There has been a growing interest in establishing a bio-sustainable production of PUFA in several microorganisms, e.g.

The Brazilian Cardioprotective Nutritional Program to reduce events and risk factors in secondary prevention for cardiovascular disease: study protocol (The BALANCE Program Trial).

This article reports the rationale for the Brazilian Cardioprotective Nutritional Program (BALANCE Program) Trial. This pragmatic, multicenter, nationwide, randomized, concealed, controlled trial was designed to investigate the effects of the BALANCE Program in reducing cardiovascular events. The BALANCE Program consists of a prescribed diet guided by nutritional content recommendations from Brazilian national guidelines using a unique nutritional education strategy, which includes suggestions of affordable foods.

[The scientific nursing production about the clinic: an integrativa review].

The objective of this study was to learn about the production of nursing knowledge in Brazil associated with the clinic theme. This is a qualitative study performed by means of an integrative review. Data collection was performed on the SciELO database using the keywords nursing and clinic, present in the abstracts of articles.

Training a new response using conditioned reinforcement.

Some of the most frequently used methods in the study of conditioned reinforcement seem to be insufficient to demonstrate the effect. The clearest way to assess this phenomenon is the training of a new response. In the present study, rats were exposed to a situation in which a primary reinforcer and an arbitrary stimulus were paired and subsequently the effect of this arbitrary event was assessed by presenting it following a new response.

Learned helplessness in the rat: effect of response topography in a within-subject design.

Three experiments investigated learned helplessness in rats manipulating response topography within-subject and different intervals between treatment and tests among groups. In Experiment 1, rats previously exposed to inescapable shocks were tested under an escape contingency where either jumping or nose poking was required to terminate shocks; tests were run either 1, 14 or 28 days after treatment. Most rats failed to jump, as expected, but learned to nose poke, regardless of the interval between treatment and tests and order of testing.

Variation, repetition, and choice.

Experiment 1 investigated the controlling properties of variability contingencies on choice between repeated and variable responding. Pigeons were exposed to concurrent-chains schedules with two alternatives. In the REPEAT alternative, reinforcers in the terminal link depended on a single sequence of four responses.