Impact of Hormonal Contraceptives on HPV Dynamics in Adolescent Girls and Young Women: Insights from a Randomized Controlled Sub-Study in South Africa.

Objectives: Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the leading cause of cervical cancer, with adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) in sub-Saharan Africa carrying a disproportionately high burden of infection. Hormonal contraceptives may influence HPV acquisition, persistence, and clearance, but evidence remains inconclusive. This sub-study aimed to evaluate the impact of different hormonal contraceptives on HPV prevalence and genotype distribution in AGYW.

Depressive Symptoms and Amyloid Pathology.

Importance: Depressive symptoms are associated with cognitive decline in older individuals. Uncertainty about underlying mechanisms hampers diagnostic and therapeutic efforts. This large-scale study aimed to elucidate the association between depressive symptoms and amyloid pathology.

Cytokine Dynamics in Action: A Mechanistic Approach to Assess Interleukin 6 Related Therapeutic Protein-Drug-Disease Interactions.

Understanding cytokine-related therapeutic protein-drug interactions (TP-DI) is crucial for effective medication management in conditions characterized by elevated inflammatory responses. Recent FDA and ICH guidelines highlight a systematic, risk-based approach for evaluating these interactions, emphasizing the need for a thorough mechanistic understanding of TP-DIs. This study integrates the physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) model for TP (specifically interleukin-6, IL-6) with small-molecule drug PBPK models to elucidate cytokine-related TP-DI mechanistically.

Soluble Fms-like tyrosine kinase-1 polymorphisms associated with severe-spectrum hypertensive disorders of pregnancy.

Background: sFLT-1 has been implicated in the pathogenesis of HDP. We aimed to examine the role of maternal and fetal polymorphisms in risk of HDP and severe-spectrum disease.

Methods: Cases of HDP (143) and controls (169) from mother-baby dyads were recruited at the Los Angeles County Women's and Children's Hospital (WCH).

Tandemly duplicated Rubisco activase genes of cereals show differential evolution and response to heat stress.

Heat stress affects various components of photosynthetic machinery of which Rubisco activation inhibition due to heat sensitive Rubisco activase (RCA) is the most prominent. Detailed comparison of RCA coding genes identified a tandem duplication event in the grass family lineage where the duplicated genes showed very different evolutionary pattern. One of the two genes showed high level of sequence conservation whereas the second copy, although present only 1.