Impact of COVID-19 on diabetes care: mixed methods study in an Indigenous area of Guatemala.

Introduction: SARS-CoV-2 has impacted globally the care of chronic diseases. However, direct evidence from certain vulnerable communities, such as Indigenous communities in Latin America, is missing. We use observational data from a health district that primarily serves people of Maya K'iche' ethnicity to examine the care of type 2 diabetes in Guatemala during the pandemic.

Schedule-induced alcohol intake during adolescence sex dependently impairs hippocampal synaptic plasticity and spatial memory.

In a previous study, we demonstrated that intermittent ethanol administration in male adolescent animals impaired hippocampus-dependent spatial memory, particularly under conditions of excessive ethanol administration. In this current study, we subjected adolescent male and female Wistar rats an alcohol schedule-induced drinking (SID) procedure to obtain an elevated rate of alcohol self-administration and assessed their hippocampus-dependent spatial memory. We also studied hippocampal synaptic transmission and plasticity, as well as the expression levels of several genes involved in these mechanisms.

Implementation of a Diabetes Self-Management Education and Support Intervention in Rural Guatemala: A Mixed-Methods Evaluation Using the RE-AIM Framework.

Introduction: To address the global diabetes epidemic, lifestyle counseling on diet, physical activity, and weight loss is essential. This study assessed the implementation of a diabetes self-management education and support (DSMES) intervention using a mixed-methods evaluation framework.

Methods: We implemented a culturally adapted, home-based DSMES intervention in rural Indigenous Maya towns in Guatemala from 2018 through 2020.

Effects of Intermittent versus Chronic-Moderate Ethanol Administration during Adolescence in the Adult Hippocampal Phosphoproteome.

Alcohol consumption during adolescence is known to cause different impairments in the hippocampus that could lead to persistent deficits in adulthood. A common pattern of alcohol use in adolescents consists of excessive and intermittent alcohol consumption over a very short period of time (binge drinking). Protein phosphorylation is a mechanism underlying memory processes and we have previously demonstrated changes in the rat hippocampal phosphoproteome after a single dose of ethanol; however, studies showing the phosphoprotein alterations in the hippocampus after repeated exposition to alcohol are limited.

Intermittent-Excessive and Chronic-Moderate Ethanol Intake during Adolescence Impair Spatial Learning, Memory and Cognitive Flexibility in the Adulthood.

Intermittent and excessive ethanol consumption over very short periods of time, known as binge drinking, is common in the adolescence, considered a vulnerable period to the effects of alcohol in terms of cognitive performance. One of the brain functions most drastically affected by ethanol in adolescent individuals seems to be spatial learning and memory dependent on the hippocampus. In the current study we have focused on the long-lasting effects on spatial learning and memory of intermittent and excessive alcohol consumption compared to chronic and moderate alcohol exposure during adolescence.

The intermittent administration of ethanol during the juvenile period produces changes in the expression of hippocampal genes and proteins and deterioration of spatial memory.

Background: Binge drinking is a pattern of alcohol intake characterized by excessive and intermittent alcohol consumption over a very short period of time that is more used during adolescence. We aim to compare the lasting effects of a chronic-moderate vs. this intermittent-excessive way of alcohol intake during adolescence in spatial memory and in the expression of glutamatergic receptors and GSK3β activity.

Complex Care Needs in Multiple Chronic Conditions: Population Prevalence and Characterization in Primary Care. A Study Protocol.

Background: Chronicity, and particularly complex care needs for people with chronic diseases is one of the main challenges of health systems.

Objective: To determine the population prevalence of people with chronic diseases and complex care needs and to characterize these needs considering features of health and social complexity in Primary Care.

Design: Cross-sectional population-based study.

Age-Dependent Effects of Acute Alcohol Administration in the Hippocampal Phosphoproteome.

Alcohol consumption during adolescence is deleterious to the developing brain and leads to persistent deficits in adulthood. Several results provide strong evidence for ethanol-associated alterations in glutamatergic signaling and impaired synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus. Protein phosphorylation is a well-known and well-documented mechanism in memory processes, but information on phosphoprotein alterations in hippocampus after ethanol exposure is limited.

Inhibition of hippocampal long-term potentiation by high-fat diets: is it related to an effect of palmitic acid involving glycogen synthase kinase-3?

High-fat diets (HFD) impair hippocampal-dependent learning and memory and produce important changes in synaptic transmission by enhancing glutamate uptake, decreasing synaptic efficacy, and inhibiting plasticity mechanisms such as N-methyl-D-aspartate-mediated long-term depression (LTD) within the hippocampus. Adolescent animals seem to be particularly susceptible to the detrimental effect of HFD as dietary treatments carried out between weaning and early adulthood are much more efficient in terms of hippocampal damage that those carried out during the adult period. As palmitic acid is the most abundant saturated fatty acid in HFD, its effect on hippocampal function needs to be studied.

Lewis and Fischer 344 rats as a model for genetic differences in spatial learning and memory: Cocaine effects.

Lewis (LEW) and Fischer 344 (F344) rats are considered a model of genetic vulnerability to drug addiction. We previously showed important differences in spatial learning and memory between them, but in contrast with previous experiments demonstrating cocaine-induced enhanced learning in Morris water maze (MWM) highly demanding tasks, the eight-arm radial maze (RAM) performance was not modified either in LEW or F344 rats after chronic cocaine treatment. In the present work, chronically cocaine-treated LEW and F344 adult rats have been evaluated in learning and memory performance using the Y-maze, two RAM protocols that differ in difficulty, and a reversal protocol that tests cognitive flexibility.

Effect of high-fat diets on mood and learning performance in adolescent mice.

Recent studies point to dietary factors as important effectors in the brain and epidemiological studies suggest a direct relationship between mood and anxiety disorders, cognitive impairment and obesity. Nevertheless the link between the consumption of high-fat diets (HFD) and emotional disorders still remains unclear. This issue is of particular interest during adolescence, which is an important period for shaping learning and memory acquisition that can be particularly sensitive to the detrimental effects of HFD.

Free-choice high-fat diet alters circadian oscillation of energy intake in adolescent mice: role of prefrontal cortex.

Purpose: Our aim was to characterize the effect of an unfamiliar high-fat diet (HFD) on circadian feeding behaviour, plasma parameters, body weight (BW), and gene expression in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) of adolescent male mice. To this end, mice were allowed to consume a HFD during 48 h, but one group was allowed a free choice of HFD or normal chow (FC-HFD), while the other was restricted to a non-optional unfamiliar HFD feeding (NOP-HFD).

Methods: Energy intake was monitored at 6-h intervals during 48 h.

Decreased rates of operant food self-administration are associated with reward deficits in high-fat feeding mice.

Purpose: Highly palatable foods behave as appetitive reinforcers and tend to be consumed compulsively. Nevertheless, the motivation for this kind of diets in experimental diet-induced obesity models has not been well established. Our hypothesis is that obesity caused by a regular consumption of high-fat diet (HFD) occurs concomitantly with the inhibition of food reward.

Involvement of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex in high-fat food conditioning in adolescent mice.

Our hypothesis is that direct targeting of brain areas involved in the perception of food as a rewarding stimulus accounts for initial hyperphagia caused by high-fat food (HFD). Because adolescents are more sensitive than adults to HFD, studies were performed in five-week old male mice. We analyzed the effect of acute exposition to HFD on c-Fos immunolabeling and we observed that this diet selectively increased c-Fos immunolabeling in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (PFC).

Assessing addiction vulnerability with different rat strains and place preference procedures: the role of the cocaine and amphetamine-regulated transcript.

Validated biomarkers of addiction vulnerability are unavailable despite their potential value in diagnostics and therapeutics. As cocaine and amphetamine-regulated transcript (CART) peptides can be considered candidates for such biomarkers, we have studied the acute regulation of CART gene expression in the nucleus accumbens of rats with different drug-seeking behaviors. Two subgroups of Sprague-Dawley rats with different persistences of cocaine-induced and morphine-induced place preference showed a similar regulation of CART mRNA irrespective of their behavioral differences: CART gene expression was unaffected by acute cocaine and downregulated by acute morphine to a similar extent in both subgroups.

Spatial memory impairment and changes in hippocampal morphology are triggered by high-fat diets in adolescent mice. Is there a role of leptin?

Recent evidence has established that consumption of high-fat diets (HFD) is associated with deficits in hippocampus-dependent memory. Adolescence is an important period for shaping learning and memory acquisition that could be particularly sensitive to the detrimental effects of HFD. In the current study we have administered this kind of diets to both adolescent (5-week old) and young adult (8-week old) male C57BL mice during 8 weeks and we have evaluated its effect on (i) spatial memory performance in the novel location recognition (NLR) paradigm, and (ii) spine density and neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM) expression in hippocampal CA1 pyramidal neurons.

Shift of circadian feeding pattern by high-fat diets is coincident with reward deficits in obese mice.

Recent studies provide evidence that high-fat diets (HF) trigger both i) a deficit of reward responses linked to a decrease of mesolimbic dopaminergic activity, and ii) a disorganization of circadian feeding behavior that switch from a structured meal-based schedule to a continuous snacking, even during periods normally devoted to rest. This feeding pattern has been shown to be a cause of HF-induced overweight and obesity. Our hypothesis deals with the eventual link between the rewarding properties of food and the circadian distribution of meals.

Implementation and progress of an inclusive primary health care model in Guatemala: coverage, quality, and utilization.

Objective: To describe a primary health care model designed specifically for Guatemala that has been implemented in two demonstration sites since 2004 and present results of a process evaluation of utilization, service coverage, and quality of care from 2005 to 2009.

Methods: Coverage, utilization, and quality were assessed by using an automated database linking census and clinical records and were reported over time. Key maternal and child health coverage measures were compared with national-level measures.

Gene expression analysis of heat shock proteins in the nucleus accumbens of rats with different morphine seeking behaviours.

Heat-shock proteins play functional roles on brain regulatory processes which are deeply involved in drug addiction, such as synaptic plasticity. However, few studies have been focused on gene expression of heat-shock proteins (Hsp) as potential diagnostic tools for addiction risk. This work tries to provide new knowledge on this field by using two rat models of differential vulnerability to morphine addiction in order to study differential gene expression of a selected group of Hsp genes in the nucleus accumbens (NAc).

Bioactive properties of Tynanthus panurensis (Bureau) Sanwith bark extract, the Amazonian "clavo huasca".

Tynanthus panurensis (Bureau) Sanwith (Bignoniaceae) is a liana vine used in traditional Amazonian medicine as a tonic and energizer as well as a treatment for rheumatism. These traditional indications prompted this study of the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities of T. panurensis bark extract (ETP).

Proteomic analysis of the nucleus accumbens of rats with different vulnerability to cocaine addiction.

Vulnerability to the addictive effects of drugs of abuse varies among individuals, but the biological basis of these differences are poorly known. This work tries to increase this knowledge by comparing the brain proteome of animals with different rate of extinction of cocaine-seeking behaviour. To achieve this goal, we used a place-preference paradigm to separate Sprague Dawley rats in two groups: rats that extinguished (E) and rats that did not extinguish (NE) cocaine-seeking behaviour after a five-day period of drug abstinence.

Behavioral and in vitro evaluation of tetrodotoxin tolerability for therapeutic applications.

Tetrodotoxin (TTX) injection is currently being studied in clinical trials for potential antinociceptive applications. This work tries to increase the knowledge of its biological tolerability by using a behavioral procedure that can detect aversive effects of drug treatments, as well as in vitro cytotoxicity studies in non-excitable cell systems. Place conditioning studies with Sprague-Dawley male rats showed that pharmacologically active TTX injections (2.

Comparative study of alpha2-adrenoceptors in Fischer 344 and Lewis rats. Evidence for clonidine-induced place aversion.

Fischer 344 (F344) and Lewis rat strains have been shown to exhibit different vulnerability to development or maintenance of opioid seeking behaviours probably due to differences in the endogenous opioid system. Since opioid and alpha(2)-adrenergic mechanisms closely interact in nociception and substance abuse, strain differences may be expected to affect alpha(2)-adrenoceptor-mediated events. The sensitivity of these two strains to alpha(2)-adrenoceptor-mediated antinociception has been reported to be markedly different.

Morphine differentially regulates hsp90beta expression in the nucleus accumbens of Lewis and Fischer 344 rats.

We have comparatively studied hsp90beta gene and protein expression in the nucleus accumbens of Lewis and Fischer 344 (F344) rats, two inbred strains that exhibit prominent behavioural differences in drug-seeking behaviours. Phenotypical studies confirmed that Lewis rats developed a higher preference for morphine-paired environments after conditioning. RT-PCR assays did not reveal strain-related differences in hsp90beta gene expression in basal conditions; however, acute morphine treatment provoked an increase of hsp90beta mRNA 2h after injection only in the case of Lewis rats.

Place conditioning in a two- or three-conditioning compartment apparatus: a comparative study with morphine and U-50,488.

We have comparatively studied the effects of two opioids in the rat place conditioning paradigm in identical experimental conditions (including double drug/saline conditioning daily sessions for 3 days), with the only exception of using either a two- or three-conditioning compartment apparatus. Morphine-induced place preference appeared to be similar with two- and three-conditioning compartments, but U-50,488-induced place aversion was consistently more prominent when a two-conditioning compartment apparatus was used. It is suggested that, when the results of conditioning are being tested, the presence of neutral environments decreases the sensitivity of the procedure to quantify place aversions.