Effect of Unloading Condition on the Healing Process and Effectiveness of Platelet Rich Plasma as a Countermeasure: Study on In Vivo and In Vitro Wound Healing Models.

Wound healing is a very complex process that allows organisms to survive injuries. It is strictly regulated by a number of biochemical and physical factors, mechanical forces included. Studying wound healing in space is interesting for two main reasons: (i) defining tools, procedures, and protocols to manage serious wounds and burns eventually occurring in future long-lasting space exploration missions, without the possibility of timely medical evacuation to Earth; (ii) understanding the role of gravity and mechanical factors in the healing process and scarring, thus contributing to unravelling the mechanisms underlying the switching between perfect regeneration and imperfect repair with scarring.

Body composition and metabolic changes during a 520-day mission simulation to Mars.

Purpose: The "Mars-500 project" allowed to evaluate the changes in psychological/physiological adaptation over a prolonged confinement, in order to gather information for future missions. Here, we evaluated the impact of confinement and isolation on body composition, glucose metabolism/insulin resistance and adipokine levels.

Methods: The "Mars-500 project" consisted of 520 consecutive days of confinement from June 3, 2010 to Nov 4, 2011.

Effects of caloric restriction and low glycemic index diets associated with metformin on glucose metabolism and cortisol response in overweight/obese subjects: a case series study.

Background: To determine whether cortisol secretion and glucocorticoid receptors in lymphocytes and monocytes are altered in patients with impaired glucose tolerance, and whether treatment with a hypocaloric diet and metformin could interfere with these aspects.

Methods: This is an analytical, interventional, case series study. Patients with impaired glucose tolerance were included.

Endocrine disrupters: the new players able to affect the epigenome.

Epigenetics represents the way by which the environment is able to program the genome; there are three main levels of epigenetic control on genome: DNA methylation, post-translational histone modification and microRNA expression. The term Epigenetics has been widened by NIH to include "both heritable changes in gene activity and expression but also stable, long-term alterations in the transcriptional potential of a cell that are not necessarily heritable." These changes might be produced mostly by the early life environment and might affect health influencing the susceptibility to develop diseases, from cancer to mental disorder, during the entire life span.

Learning and memory: Steroids and epigenetics.

Memory formation and utilization is a complex process involving several brain structures in conjunction as the hippocampus, the amygdala and the adjacent cortical areas, usually defined as medial temporal lobe structures (MTL). The memory processes depend on the formation and modulation of synaptic connectivity affecting synaptic strength, synaptic plasticity and synaptic consolidation. The basic neurocognitive mechanisms of learning and memory are shortly recalled in the initial section of this paper.