Transplacental signals involved in the programming effects of prenatal psychosocial stress on neurodevelopment.

Exposure to psychosocial stress during pregnancy has been associated with the emergence of neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders in offspring. The placenta is known to orchestrate various functions that are essential for normal fetal development, including the brain. It has therefore been postulated that alterations in such functions, and downstream signaling, have the potential to dramatically affect brain developmental trajectories and contribute to adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes.

Associations between maternal plasma concentrations of corticotrophin releasing hormone and the placental transcriptome.

Introduction: The placenta produces corticotrophin releasing hormone (CRH), which rises exponentially in maternal plasma across pregnancy. CRH plays a functional role in fetal development, labor initiation, and the regulation of gestational length. We aimed to understand how maternal plasma CRH during pregnancy reflects placental physiology during parturition by characterizing placental transcriptomic signatures of maternal plasma CRH and comparing to transcriptomic signatures of gestational age at birth.

Associations between plasma osteopontin, sex, and 2-year global and cardiorenal outcomes in older outpatients screened for CKD: a secondary analysis of the SCOPE study.

Background: Plasma osteopontin (pOPN) is a promising aging-related biomarker among individuals with and without kidney disease. The interaction between sex, pOPN levels, and global and cardiorenal outcomes among older individuals was not previously evaluated.

Methods: In this study we investigated the association of pOPN with 24-month global mortality, major cardiovascular events (MACEs), MACEs + cardiovascular (CV) mortality, and renal decline among older individuals; we also evaluated whether sex modified observed associations.

The emerging links between immunosenescence in innate immune system and neurocryptococcosis.

Immunosenescence refers to the age-related progressive decline of immune function contributing to the increased susceptibility to infectious diseases in older people. Neurocryptococcosis, an infectious disease of central nervous system (CNS) caused by and , has been observed with increased frequency in aged people, as result of the reactivation of a latent infection or community acquisition. These opportunistic microorganisms belonging to kingdom of fungi are capable of surviving and replicating within macrophages.