Impact of high-fructose diet and metformin on histomorphological and molecular parameters of reproductive organs and vaginal microbiota of female rat.

There are limited data on the effects of a high-fructose diet on the female reproductive system. Although metformin has some functional effects on female fertility, its reproductive outcome on high fructose diet-induced metabolic syndrome is unclear. The aim of the present study is to evaluate the impact of a high fructose diet on histomorphological and molecular parameters of the reproductive organs and vaginal microbiota as well as the treatment potential of metformin.

Comparison of Optic Nerve Sheath Diameters Measured by Optic Ultrasonography Before and After Lumbar Puncture in Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension Patients.

Introduction: Idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH) symptoms include headache, blurred vision, and papilledema which may lead to permanent vision loss unless diagnosed and treated. Definitive diagnosis of IIH usually requires the measurement of intracranial pressure (ICP) via lumbar puncture (LP) which is an invasive and unwanted technique for patients. In our study, optic nerve sheath diameters (ONSD) were measured before and after lumbar puncture in IIH patients and the relationship of these measurements with ICP changes was evaluated as well as the effect of decreasing cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) pressure after a lumbar puncture on ONSD.

Validation of the Clinical Frailty Scale version 2.0 in Turkish older patients.

Aim: Frailty is a syndrome that affects certain older adults more than others, and it has physical, cognitive, psychological, social and environmental aspects. The aim of our study was to determine the validity and reliability of the Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS) version 2.0 in Turkish.

Bio-clinical evaluation of collateral score in acute middle cerebral artery occlusion.

Background: Acute ischemic stroke (AIS) is characterized as a neurological deficit owing to an acute focal damage to the brain by cerebral infarction. A collateral score is the most significant factor evaluating the prognosis of AIS, its relationship with demographic data, serum biochemical parameters, and clinical disability in this field.

Methods: We conducted a single-center retrospective study with 100 patients with AIS within the first 6 h of ischemic stroke.

Wearable Sensors Detect Movement Differences in the Portable Warrior Test of Tactical Agility After mTBI in Service Members.

Introduction: Assessment of functional recovery of service members following a concussion is central to their return to duty. Practical military-relevant performance-based tests are needed for identifying those who might need specialized rehabilitation, for evaluating the progress of recovery, and for making return-to-duty determinations. One such recently developed test is the 'Portable Warrior Test of Tactical Agility' (POWAR-TOTAL) assessment designed for use following concussion in an active duty population.

Protective Effect of Lutein/Zeaxanthin Isomers in Traumatic Brain Injury in Mice.

Previous studies revealed that oxidative stress and inflammation are the main contributors to secondary injury after traumatic brain injury (TBI). In an earlier study, we reported that lutein/zeaxanthin isomers (L/Zi) exert antioxidative and anti-inflammatory effects by activating the nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB) and nuclear factor-erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) pathways. However, its precise role and underlying mechanisms were largely unknown after TBI.

Migraine and neuroinflammation: the inflammasome perspective.

Background: Neuroinflammation has an important role in the pathophysiology of migraine, which is a complex neuro-glio-vascular disorder. The main aim of this review is to highlight findings of cortical spreading depolarization (CSD)-induced neuroinflammatory signaling in brain parenchyma from the inflammasome perspective. In addition, we discuss the limited data of the contribution of inflammasomes to other aspects of migraine pathophysiology, foremost the activation of the trigeminovascular system and thereby the generation of migraine pain.

Arachidonic Acid Metabolites in Neurologic Disorders.

Background And Objective: Arachidonic acid (ARA) is essential for the fluidity, selective permeability, and flexibility of the cell membrane. It is an important factor for the function of all cells, particularly in the nervous system, immune system, and vascular endothelium. ARA is the second most common polyunsaturated fatty acid in the phospholipids of the nerve cell membrane after docosahexaenoic acid.

The Effects of Exergame on Postural Control in Individuals with Ataxia: a Rater-Blinded, Randomized Controlled, Cross-over Study.

Exergame trainings might have therapeutic value in ataxic patients. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of exergame training with an exercise program on postural control by comparing it with traditional balance and coordination exercise program. Nineteen patients were randomly allocated to two groups.

Effects of continuous-flow left ventricular assist devices on cerebral hemodynamics.

Continuous-flow left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) reduce peak systolic flow, increase diastolic flow, and eliminate pulsatility of circulation. Altered blood flow may lead to a change in end-organ perfusion. Analysis of the flow dynamics of the arteries of end organs, such as the brain, may indicate whether an organ is perfused sufficiently.

Quantification of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury via Cortical Metrics: Analytical Methods.

Mild traumatic brain injuries are difficult to diagnose or assess with commonly used diagnostic methods. However, the functional state of cerebral cortical networks can be rapidly and effectively probed by measuring tactile-based sensory percepts (called cortical metrics), which are designed to exercise various components of cortical machinery. In this study, such cortical metrics were obtained from 52 college students before and after they experienced sports-related concussions by delivering vibrotactile stimuli to the index and middle fingertips.

Obesity without comorbidity may also lead to non-thyroidal illness syndrome.

Background: Obesity mediates a series of operations in the body by increasing the production of proinflammatory cytokines. Cytokines play an important role in the development of non-thyroidal illness syndrome (NTIS).

Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate the association between obesity and NTIS.

Refractory Lesional Parietal Lobe Epilepsy: Clinical, Electroencephalographic and Neurodiagnostic Findings.

Introduction: Specialized centers, in the management and surgical treatment of medically refractory epilepsy, emphasize the importance of differentiating the varieties of localization related epilepsies. There has been considerable recent interest in temporal and frontal lobe epileptic syndromes and less attention has been paid to parietal and occipital lobe epilepsies.

Methods: Here we report the clinical, electroencephalographic and neuroimaging characteristics of 46 patients with medically refractory lesional parietal lobe epilepsy who have been followed up for 1-10 years.

Path-based connectivity for clustering genome sequences.

Clustering is an unsupervised data mining tool and in bioinformatics, clustering genome sequences is used to group related biological sequences when there is no additional supervision. Sequence clusters are often related with gene/protein families, which can shed some light onto determining tertiary structures. To extract such hidden and valuable structures in a data set of genome sequences can benefit from better clustering methods such as the recently popular Spectral Clustering.

Reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndromes and primary angiitis of the central nervous system: clinical, imaging, and angiographic comparison.

Reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndromes (RCVS) and primary angiitis of the central nervous system (PACNS) are invariably considered in the differential diagnosis of new cerebral arteriopathies. However, prompt and accurate diagnosis remains challenging. Here we compared the features of 159 RCVS to 47 PACNS patients and developed criteria for prompt bedside diagnosis.

Coexisting vascular lesions in reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome.

Background The pathophysiology of reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome (RCVS) is not known. Published cases have documented coexisting cervical artery dissection and unruptured aneurysms, raising the possibility that ultrastructural vessel wall abnormalities underlie the development of vascular lesions as well as RCVS. Methods In this retrospective study we compared the frequency of neurovascular abnormalities in 158 consecutive RCVS patients, 44 patients with primary angiitis of the central nervous system (PACNS, positive controls), and 177 non-stroke patients with acute neurological symptoms (non-arteriopathy controls).

Elevated circulating sST2 associated with subclinical atherosclerosis in newly diagnosed primary hypertension.

The aims of this study were to measure the levels of interleukin-33 (IL-33) and soluble Suppression of Tumorigenicity 2 (sST2) in patients with newly diagnosed primary hypertension (HT) and to determine the relationship between carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT) and IL-33/sST2. Eighty-two patients with newly diagnosed primary HT and ninety healthy volunteers were included in the study. CIMT ⩾0.

Discriminative Feature Extraction by a Neural Implementation of Canonical Correlation Analysis.

The canonical correlation analysis (CCA) aims at measuring linear relationships between two sets of variables (views) that can be used for feature extraction in classification problems with multiview data. However, the correlated features extracted by the CCA may not be class discriminative, since CCA does not utilize the class labels in its traditional formulation. Although there is a method called discriminative CCA (DCCA) that aims to increase the discriminative ability of CCA inspired from the linear discriminant analysis (LDA), it has been shown that the extracted features with this method are identical to those by the LDA with respect to an orthogonal transformation.

Analysis of shared miRNAs of different species using ensemble CCA and genetic distance.

MicroRNA is a type of single stranded RNA molecule and has an important role for gene expression. Although there have been a number of computational methodologies in bioinformatics research for miRNA classification and target prediction tasks, analysis of shared miRNAs among different species has not yet been addressed. In this article, we analyzed miRNAs that have the same name and function but have different sequences and belong to different (but closely related) species which are constructed from the online miRBase database.

Single-molecule correlated chemical probing of RNA.

Complex higher-order RNA structures play critical roles in all facets of gene expression; however, the through-space interaction networks that define tertiary structures and govern sampling of multiple conformations are poorly understood. Here we describe single-molecule RNA structure analysis in which multiple sites of chemical modification are identified in single RNA strands by massively parallel sequencing and then analyzed for correlated and clustered interactions. The strategy thus identifies RNA interaction groups by mutational profiling (RING-MaP) and makes possible two expansive applications.

Collection and analysis of a Parkinson speech dataset with multiple types of sound recordings.

There has been an increased interest in speech pattern analysis applications of Parkinsonism for building predictive telediagnosis and telemonitoring models. For this purpose, we have collected a wide variety of voice samples, including sustained vowels, words, and sentences compiled from a set of speaking exercises for people with Parkinson's disease. There are two main issues in learning from such a dataset that consists of multiple speech recordings per subject: 1) How predictive these various types, e.

Mitochondrial DNA profiling via genomic analysis in mesial temporal lobe epilepsy patients with hippocampal sclerosis.

Introduction: Mitochondria have an essential role in neuronal excitability and neuronal survival. In addition to energy production, mitochondria also play a crucial role in the maintenance of intracellular calcium homeostasis, generation of reactive oxygen species and mechanisms of cell death. There is a relative paucity of data about the role of mitochondria in epilepsy.

Combining multiple clusterings for protein structure prediction.

Computational annotation and prediction of protein structure is very important in the post-genome era due to existence of many different proteins, most of which are yet to be verified. Mutual information based feature selection methods can be used in selecting such minimal yet predictive subsets of features. However, as protein features are organised into natural partitions, individual feature selection that ignores the presence of these views, dismantles them, and treats their variables intermixed along with those of others at best results in a complex un-interpretable predictive system for such multi-view datasets.

The utility of middle cerebral artery clot density and burden assessment by noncontrast computed tomography in acute ischemic stroke patients treated with thrombolysis.

Background: Quantitative and qualitative evaluation of middle cerebral artery (MCA) density, together with extent of thrombi, was assessed on plain computerized tomography (CT) to delineate better the prognostic value of the hyperdense MCA sign (HMCAS) in a cohort of patients who underwent intravenous or intra-arterial thrombolysis.

Methods: Density of MCA was quantified by maximum pixel-sized measurement of Hounsfield unit (HU) in 105 patients with acute MCA proximal segment occlusion, 15 patients with vertebrobasilar circulation stroke (VBS) and 44 nonstroke control subjects. Predictive value of HMCAS, absolute HU value of within MCA, side-to-side HU ratio, and difference along with a newly introduced hyperdense MCA burden score in early dramatic recovery (EDR) and third-month favorable prognosis were determined with multivariate adjustment for age, baseline stroke severity, and thrombus length as measured on CT angiography.

Comparison of aggregators for multi-objective SNP selection.

SNPs (Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms) are genomic variants that associate with many genetic characteristics. These variants can also be utilized to track the on-going mutation in population genetics. The goal of this study was to select the most relevant SNP subsets for discriminating ethnic groups.