Attenuation processes in positive social emotion upregulation: Disentangling functional role of ventrolateral prefrontal cortex.

Positive emotions determine individual well-being and sustainable social relationships. Here, we examined the neural processes mediating upregulation of positive social emotions using functional magnetic resonance imaging in healthy female volunteers. We identified brain regions engaged in upregulation of positive social emotions and applied a parametric empirical Bayes approach to isolate modulated network connectivity patterns and assess how these effects relate to individual measures of social perception.

Inflammation-Associated Tubulopathy in Patients with Acute Bacterial Infections.

Background: Acute kidney injury associated with the underlying inflammatory process of an acute bacterial infection affects patient morbidity and mortality. Clinicians use creatinine and estimated glomerular filtration rate (EGFR) to assess this renal injury, however, these measures may lag behind and change only once significant kidney injury has occurred. Neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL) is up-regulated by inflammation and infection and may serve as an early detection biomarker of kidney injury.

Early signaling of inflammation in patients following traumatic injury with accurately estimated time of injury by profiling C-reactive protein levels.

Background: Despite its widespread use, the precise dynamics of CRP response in clinical practice remain poorly defined. We employed a novel quadratic model to explore the time-course analysis of CRP values in trauma patients with known precise time of injury.

Methods: Relevant data on all adult patients admitted to our hospital following traumatic incidents between January 1st 2010 to December 31, 2020 were retrospectively collected.

Effective Connectivity of the Bilateral Amygdala, Dorsomedial Prefrontal, and Subgenual Anterior Cingulate Cortices: Feasibility of Positive Social Emotion Regulation Models for Real-Time Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

Effective connectivity based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) allows assessing directions of interaction between brain regions. For real-time fMRI, we compared models of positive social emotion regulation based on a network involving the bilateral amygdala, dorsomedial prefrontal, and subgenual anterior cingulate cortex. The top-down regulation model implied modulation of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex exerted onto other regions, while the bottom-up model implied the inverse modulation.

Normoferremia in Patients with Acute Bacterial Infections-A Hitherto Unexplored Field of the Dichotomy between CRP and Ferritin Expression in Patients with Hyper Inflammation and Failure to Increase Ferritin.

Ferritin is an acute phase response protein, which may not rise as expected in acute bacterial infections. This could be due to the time required for its production or to a lack of response of ferritin to the bacterial inflammatory process. Medical records of hospitalized patients with acute hyper inflammation were retrieved and studied, looking closely at two acute phase proteins: C-reactive protein (CRP) and ferritin.