Publications by authors named "Gopaul K"

There has been a dramatic improvement in mortality rates among children with congenital heart disease with advances in neonatal screening and surgical techniques, resulting in a significant increase in the prevalence of adults living with congenital heart disease. The most common simple lesions of congenital heart disease include atrial and ventricular septal defects, patent ductus arteriosus and coarctation of the aorta, which are typically detected and treated in childhood. However, they may also present in adulthood with non-specific symptoms or incidental findings, such as refractory hypertension.

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Galactic cosmic radiation (GCR) composed of high-energy, heavy particles (HZE) poses potentially serious hazards to long-duration crewed missions in deep space beyond earth's magnetosphere, including planned missions to Mars. Chronic effects of GCR exposure on brain structure and cognitive function are poorly understood, thereby limiting risk reduction and mitigation strategies to protect against sequelae from exposure during and after deep-space travel. Given the selective vulnerability of the hippocampus to neurotoxic insult and the importance of this brain region to learning and memory, we hypothesized that GCR-relevant HZE exposure may induce long-term alterations in adult hippocampal neurogenesis, synaptic plasticity, and hippocampal-dependent learning and memory.

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SNAP-25 is essential to activity-dependent vesicle fusion and neurotransmitter release in the nervous system. During early development and adulthood, SNAP-25 appears to have differential influences on short- and long-term synaptic plasticity. The involvement of SNAP-25 in these processes may be different at hippocampal and neocortical synapses because of the presence of two different splice variants, which are developmentally regulated.

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SNAP-25 exists as two developmentally regulated alternatively spliced isoforms, SNAP-25a and SNAP-25b. We explored the function of SNAP-25a and SNAP-25b at Schaffer collateral-CA1 synapses in hippocampus using 4-week-old wild-type (WT) and SNAP-25b-deficient (MT) mice. Characterizing the protein expression of individual SNAP-25 isoforms revealed that WT females had higher levels of SNAP-25a than WT males, suggesting a sex-dependent delay of the alternative splicing switch from SNAP-25a to SNAP-25b.

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Clinical Introduction: A 23-year-old woman followed at another medical centre for congenital heart disease (CHD) presented to our emergency clinic with 3 weeks of bilateral pleuritic chest pain. She returned from holiday in Greece 6 weeks earlier where a tattoo and nasal piercing had been performed. There was no history of night sweats or fever.

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The mechanisms underpinning concussion, traumatic brain injury, and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and the relationships between these disorders, are poorly understood. We examined post-mortem brains from teenage athletes in the acute-subacute period after mild closed-head impact injury and found astrocytosis, myelinated axonopathy, microvascular injury, perivascular neuroinflammation, and phosphorylated tau protein pathology. To investigate causal mechanisms, we developed a mouse model of lateral closed-head impact injury that uses momentum transfer to induce traumatic head acceleration.

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An extended multilocus sequence analysis (MLSA) scheme applicable to the , an expanding genus that includes zoonotic pathogens that severely impact animal and human health across large parts of the globe, was developed. The scheme, which extends a previously described nine locus scheme by examining sequences at 21 independent genetic loci in order to increase discriminatory power, was applied to a globally and temporally diverse collection of over 500 isolates representing all 12 known species providing an expanded and detailed understanding of the population genetic structure of the group. Over 100 sequence types (STs) were identified and analysis of data provided insights into both the global evolutionary history of the genus, suggesting that early emerging lineages might be confined to Africa while some later lineages have spread worldwide, and further evidence of the existence of lineages with restricted host or geographical ranges.

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Background: Pyrimidines have widespread activity and have shown potent antibacterial and anticancer activity.

Objective: To synthesise a range of pyrimidine diones and test them for their antibacterial and anticancer activity.

Method: The pyranopyrimidin-2,4-dione derivatives (1-7) were synthesized in a one-pot reaction by reacting malononitrile and barbituric acid with several aromatic aldehydes in the presence of 1,4-diazabicyclo[2.

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Mnk1 and Mnk2 are protein kinases responsible for phosphorylating eIF4E, a eukaryotic initiation factor responsible for initiating translation. Inhibiting Mnk1 and Mnk2 could therefore play a role in treating metabolic diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and hyperlipidemia. A wide range of sulfoximine substituted quinazolines were synthesised and evaluated for their Mnk1 and Mnk2 inhibitory activity.

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Background: Cognitive-frailty, defined as the presence of both frailty and cognitive impairment, is proposed as a distinctive entity that predicts dementia. However, it remains controversial whether frailty alone, cognitive-frailty, or the combination of cognitive impairment and slow gait pose different risks of incident dementia.

Methods: Two hundred and fifty-two older adults free of dementia at baseline (mean age 76.

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Background: The annual Scientific Meeting of the Canadian Association on Gerontology was held on October 24 and 25, 2008 in London, Ontario. Prior to the annual meeting, mobility and cognition experts met on October 23, 2008 to engage in a pre-conference workshop.

Methods: Discussions during the workshop addressed novel areas of research and knowledge and research gaps pertaining to the interaction between mobility and cognition in seniors.

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Although Malta is historically linked with the zoonosis brucellosis, there had not been a case of the disease in either the human or livestock population for several years. However, in July 2013 a case of human brucellosis was identified on the island. To determine whether this recent case originated in Malta, four isolates from this case were subjected to molecular analysis.

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Quinolines substituted at C-2 on the quinoline scaffold have shown interesting anticancer activity in a number of anticancer assays such as breast (MCF-7, MDA-MB 231), human cervical epithelioid (HeLa), oral squamous cell carcinoma (SAS), human stomach adenocarcinoma (AGS, MKN45), hepatocellular (SKHep, HepG-2, Hep-3B), prostate (PC-3, DU145), lung (A549, H-460), gastric (HGC, MNK-74), leukemia (K562, U937, REH, NALM6, CEM/ADR 5000), colon (Colo-205, HCT 116, SW620, Caco-2, HT29), neuroblastoma (IMR32), CNS (SF-268), oesophageal (EAC) and melanoma (A-375). They have been synthesised by a number of strategies starting with isatin, anilines, nitrobenzenes and benzamides and some even with cyclohexanone and cyclohexa-1,3-diones with ammonium acetate. Many of the synthetic strategies employ the derivatisation of quinoline precursors itself.

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Background: The zoonosis brucellosis causes economically significant reproductive problems in livestock and potentially debilitating disease of humans. Although the causative agent, organisms from the genus Brucella, can be differentiated into a number of species based on phenotypic characteristics, there are also significant differences in genotype that are concordant with individual species. This paper describes the development of a five target multiplex assay to identify five terrestrial Brucella species using real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and subsequent high resolution melt curve analysis.

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Background: Early motor changes associated with aging predict cognitive decline, which suggests that a "motor signature" can be detected in predementia states. In line with previous research, we aim to demonstrate that individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) have a distinct motor signature, and specifically, that dual-task gait can be a tool to distinguish amnestic (a-MCI) from nonamnestic MCI.

Methods: Older adults with MCI and controls from the "Gait and Brain Study" were assessed with neurocognitive tests to assess cognitive performance and with an electronic gait mat to record temporal and spatial gait parameters.

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Background: Gait deficits are prevalent in people with dementia and increase their fall risk and future disability. Few treatments exist for gait impairment in Alzheimer's disease (AD) but preliminary studies have shown that cognitive enhancers may improve gait in this population.

Objective: To determine the efficacy of donepezil, a cognitive enhancer that improves cholinergic activity, on gait in older adults newly diagnosed with AD.

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In the title compound, C16H11NO4, the dihedral angle between the ten-membered chromen-4-one ring system (r.m.s.

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In the biologically active title compound, C26H26O5, the pyran ring of the chromene unit adopts a half-chair conformation. The C=C double bond of the propenone unit exhibits a trans conformation and the carbonyl group is syn conformation to the double bond. The dihedral angle between the benzene ring and the benzopyran-one moiety is 31.

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In the title compound, C16H11NO4, the dihedral angle between the 10-membered coplanar chromone ring system and the benzene ring is 77.83 (3)°. In the crystal, weak C-H⋯O hydrogen bonds link the mol-ecules into a three-dimensional network.

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The distinctive feature of the structure of the title compound, C(16)H(10)Cl(2)O(2), is the formation of a zigzag chain along [100] via Cl⋯Cl inter-actions [3.591 (1) and 3.631 (1) Å].

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This study compared the fatty-acid profiles of Brucella canis blood culture isolates obtained from infected dogs in the UK, Germany, Japan, South Africa, Peru, Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina, and from a human clinical case in Argentina, to a bank of isolates obtained from canine outbreaks in the USA. Analysis of a total of 42 B. canis isolates and one reference strain found a marked variation within the species.

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The title compound, C(22)H(21)FO(2), exhibits substitutional disorder of the F atom and a H atom in the asymmetric unit with different occupancies, the refined F:H ratio being 0.80 (2):0.20 (2).

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