Urinary incontinence (UI) in older women in low- and middle-income countries: a rapid review and case study from Burkina Faso.

The prevalence of urinary incontinence (UI) in older women in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is not well understood. We conducted a rapid literature review to assess the burden of UI in this population and contextualize findings from a household survey of women aged 40 and older in Nouna, in northwestern Burkina Faso. The rapid review included 21 survey articles.

Effects of defined voluntary running distances coupled with high-fat diet consumption on the skeletal muscle transcriptome of male mice.

Exercise counters many adverse health effects of consuming a high-fat diet (HFD). However, complex molecular changes that occur in skeletal muscle in response to exercising while consuming a HFD are not yet known. We investigated the interplay between diverse exercise regimes and HFD consumption on the adaptation of skeletal muscle transcriptome.

Animal and vegetal materials of mouse oocytes segregate at first zygotic cleavage: a simple mechanism that makes the two-cell blastomeres differ reciprocally from the start.

Recent advances in embryology have shown that the sister blastomeres of two-cell mouse and human embryos differ reciprocally in potency. An open question is whether the blastomeres became different as opposed to originating as different. Here we wanted to test two relevant but conflicting models: one proposing that each blastomere contains both animal and vegetal materials in balanced proportions because the plane of first cleavage runs close to the animal-vegetal axis of the fertilized oocyte (meridional cleavage); and the other model proposing that each blastomere contains variable proportions of animal and vegetal materials because the plane of the first cleavage can vary - up to an equatorial orientation - depending on the topology of fertilization.

Strawberry dietary intervention influences diversity and increases abundances of SCFA-producing bacteria in healthy elderly people.

The gut microbiome is amenable to dietary interventions, and polyphenol-rich diets have been shown to enhance abundances of bacteria associated with short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) production. We examined the effects of a strawberry-based intervention on the gut microbiome of 69 healthy elderly German adults. Participants in five groups consumed varying amounts of strawberries, freeze-dried strawberries, and capers in olive oil over 10 weeks as part of a randomized controlled trial.

Structurally distinct manganese-sensing riboswitch aptamers regulate diverse expression platform architectures.

Manganese (Mn)-sensing riboswitches protect bacteria from Mn toxicity by upregulating expression of Mn exporters. The Mn aptamers share key features but diverge in other important elements, including within the metal-binding core. Although X-ray crystal structures of isolated aptamers exist, these structural snapshots lack crucial details about how the aptamer communicates the presence or absence of ligand to the expression platform.