Publications by authors named "Fatima Meza-Urzua"

Article Synopsis
  • Sunlight helps our skin make vitamin D through UVB radiation, but some places don't get enough UVB in winter, which can affect brain health.
  • A study looked at 6,972 people with bipolar I disorder from over 70 countries to see if not getting enough UVB was related to when they first had symptoms.
  • The results suggested that people in areas with less UVB tended to show symptoms of bipolar disorder about 1.66 years earlier, but more research is needed to understand the role of vitamin D and UVB in this condition.
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Objective: Circadian rhythm disruption is commonly observed in bipolar disorder (BD). Daylight is the most powerful signal to entrain the human circadian clock system. This exploratory study investigated if solar insolation at the onset location was associated with the polarity of the first episode of BD I.

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Valproate compositions are frequently used to treat bipolar disorder (BD); however, 87% of patients do not report full response in the long-term. There is scarce information about the clinical features and brain structural characteristics of long-term treatment response (LTTR) to this medication. In this study, we aim to evaluate the clinical characteristics and prefrontal cortical thickness (CT) of LTTR to valproate in BD.

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Purpose: Bipolar disorder (BD) is a condition associated with structural alterations in the prefrontal cortex (PFC); some genetic variants and mood stabilizer medications like lithium or valproate are associated with these changes. is a gene involved in BD pathology and brain function; carriers of the A allele of rs1006737 are reported to have increased risk for BD and increased cortical thickness (CT) in the PFC compared to non-carriers. Lithium is also associated with increased CT in the PFC of BD subjects compared to the ones on valproate.

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Cellular adhesion enables communication between cells and their environment. Adhesion can be achieved throughout focal adhesions and its components influence osteoblast differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs). Because cell adhesion and osteoblast differentiation are closely related, this article aimed to analyze the expression profiles of adhesion-related proteins during osteoblastic differentiation of two hMSCs subpopulations (CD105(+) and CD105(-)) and propose a strategy for assembling bone grafts based on its adhesion ability.

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