Biomarkers for the diagnosis and clinical management of psychiatric disorders are currently lacking. Extracellular vesicles (EVs), lipid membrane-encapsulated vesicles released by cells, hold promise as a source of biomarkers due to their ability to carry molecules that reflect the status of their donor cells and their ubiquitous presence in biofluids. This review examines the literature on EVs in biofluids from psychiatric disorder patients, and discuss how the published studies contribute to our understanding of the pathophysiology of these conditions and to the discovery of potential biomarkers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Eating disorders (EDs) are serious psychiatric disorders with an estimated 3.3 million healthy life-years lost worldwide yearly. Understanding the course of illness, diagnostic transitions and remission, and their associated genetic correlates could inform both ED etiology and treatment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAmyloid fibrils are highly stable misfolded protein assemblies that play an important role in several neurodegenerative and systemic diseases. Although structural information of the amyloid state is now abundant, mechanistic details about the misfolding process remain elusive. Inspired by the Φ-value analysis of protein folding, we combined experiments and molecular simulations to resolve amino-acid contacts and determine the structure of the transition-state ensemble-the rate-limiting step-for fibril elongation of PI3K-SH3 amyloid fibrils.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this paper, an improved version of the classical equivalent radiated power (ERP) approximation is proposed based on principled physical arguments. A geometry-, frequency-, and vibration pattern-dependent approximation of radiation efficiency is developed and used as a corrective factor for the classical ERP approximation. The proposed method called "radiation efficiency varying equivalent radiated power" (revERP), is shown to greatly improve the accuracy of classical ERP at low Helmholtz numbers, while attaining the accuracy of classical ERP at high Helmholtz numbers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a syndrome with high mortality and morbidity in part due to delayed recognition based on changes in creatinine. A marker for AKI based on a single measurement is needed and therefore the performance of a single measurement of plasma neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (pNGAL) to predict AKI in patients admitted to the emergency department was tested.
Methods: Samples from the Triage study which included 6005 consecutive adult patients admitted to the emergency department were tested for pNGAL.