Attention Test Assessment from a Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial of Caregiver Training for Ugandan Preschool Children Living with Perinatal HIV.

Fifty-six Ugandan mothers/caregivers received Mediational Intervention for Sensitizing Caregivers (MISC) biweekly for one year; 46 mothers received treatment-as-usual. Preschool PHIV child attention was measured by proportion of time viewing a 7-min animation (early childhood vigilance test or ECVT) at enrollment, 6 and 12 months. Analysis of covariance compared ECVT outcomes for the two intervention groups, controlling for baseline ECVT performance, age and weight-for-age z scores.

Autophagy impairment and lifespan reduction caused by Atg1 RNAi or Atg18 RNAi expression in adult fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster).

Autophagy, an autophagosome and lysosome-based eukaryotic cellular degradation system, has previously been implicated in lifespan regulation in different animal models. In this report, we show that expression of the RNAi transgenes targeting the transcripts of the key autophagy genes Atg1 or Atg18 in adult fly muscle or glia does not affect the overall levels of autophagosomes in those tissues and does not change the lifespan of the tested flies but the lifespan reduction phenotype has become apparent when Atg1 RNAi or Atg18 RNAi is expressed ubiquitously in adult flies or after autophagy is eradicated through the knockdown of Atg1 or Atg18 in adult fly adipocytes. Lifespan reduction was also observed when Atg1 or Atg18 was knocked down in adult fly enteroblasts and midgut stem cells.