Publications by authors named "Pauls K"

Article Synopsis
  • LCIG is a treatment for advanced Parkinson's disease, often starting with a nasojejunal tube (NJT) test phase, but some centers have initiated treatment directly with a PEG-J tube.
  • A study compared these two methods in 33 advanced PD patients, evaluating treatment discontinuations, adverse events, and hospital stay length.
  • Results showed no significant differences in complications or discontinuations between the two methods, but direct initiation with PEG-J reduced hospital stays significantly.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Diseases affecting sensorimotor function impair physical independence. Reliable functional clinical biomarkers allowing early diagnosis or targeting treatment and rehabilitation could reduce this burden. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) non-invasively measures brain rhythms such as the somatomotor 'rolandic' rhythm which shows intermittent high-amplitude beta (14-30 Hz) 'events' that predict behavior across tasks and species and are altered by sensorimotor neurological diseases.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Subthalamic deep brain stimulation (STN-DBS) is known to improve motor function in advanced Parkinson's disease (PD) and to enable a reduction of anti-parkinsonian medication. While the levodopa challenge test and disease duration are considered good predictors of STN-DBS outcome, other clinical and neuroanatomical predictors are less established. This study aimed to evaluate, in addition to clinical predictors, the effect of patients' individual brain topography on DBS outcome.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Levodopa-entacapone-carbidopa intestinal gel (LECIG) is a novel device assisted treatment option for advanced Parkinson's disease (PD). It has been available in Finland since 2020. There is paucity of scientific studies considering LECIG treatment in clinical practice.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Common bean (bean) is one of the most important legume crops, and mapping genes for yield and yield-related traits is essential for its improvement. However, yield is a complex trait that is typically controlled by many loci in crop genomes. The objective of this research was to identify regions in the bean genome associated with yield and a number of yield-related traits using a collection of 121 diverse bean genotypes with different yields.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Individuals' phenotypes, including the brain's structure and function, are largely determined by genes and their interplay. The resting brain generates salient rhythmic patterns that can be characterized noninvasively using functional neuroimaging such as magnetoencephalography (MEG). One of these rhythms, the somatomotor (rolandic) beta rhythm, shows intermittent high amplitude "events" that predict behavior across tasks and species.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Fusarium head blight (FHB), caused by Fusarium graminearum, is one of the most destructive wheat diseases worldwide. FHB infection can dramatically reduce grain yield and quality due to mycotoxins contamination. Wheat resistance to FHB is quantitatively inherited and many low-effect quantitative trait loci (QTL) have been mapped in the wheat genome.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

From 2016 to 2021, the National Institutes of Health Stroke Trials Network funded by National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke initiated ten multicenter randomized controlled clinical trials. Optimal subject randomization designs are demanded with 4 critical properties: (1) protection of treatment assignment randomness, (2) achievement of the desired treatment allocation ratio, (3) balancing of baseline covariates, and (4) ease of implementation. For acute stroke trials, it is necessary to minimize the time between eligibility assessment and treatment initiation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Exaggerated subthalamic beta oscillatory activity and increased beta range cortico-subthalamic synchrony have crystallized as the electrophysiological hallmarks of Parkinson's disease. Beta oscillatory activity is not tonic but occurs in 'bursts' of transient amplitude increases. In Parkinson's disease, the characteristics of these bursts are altered especially in the basal ganglia.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Levodopa-carbidopa intestinal gel (LCIG) effectively reduces time and dyskinesia and increases time in advanced Parkinson's disease (PD). However, patients with LCIG-infusion experience frequent complications and some discontinue treatment early on.

Objectives: The objectives of this study were to find predictive factors for early dropout from the LCIG infusion, analyze the treatment burden on the tertiary health care system, and explore changes in medication during the LCIG treatment.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: Levodopa-carbidopa-intestinal-gel (LCIG) infusion is an effective treatment for advanced PD with motor fluctuations. Polyneuropathy occurs as a complication in 10-15% of patients. We wanted to assess the frequency of polyneuropathy in Finnish advanced Parkinson's disease (PD) patients with continuous LCIG infusion, and the value of different clinical monitoring parameters during follow-up.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Plant-derived folates (Vitamin B) are essential components of the human diet. They provide one-carbon units that are required for the synthesis of nucleic acids and proteins, and folate deficiency is associated with numerous adverse health conditions. The development of high-folate cultivars of common bean ( L.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

infects common bean ( L.) causing the disease common bacterial blight (CBB). The aim of this study was to investigate the molecular and metabolic mechanisms underlying CBB resistance in .

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Unlabelled: Pinto bean () is one of the leading market classes of dry beans that is most affected by postharvest seed coat darkening. The process of seed darkening poses a challenge for bean producers and vendors as they encounter significant losses in crop value due to decreased consumer preference for darker beans. Here, we identified a novel allele of the gene, , responsible for the slow darkening seed coat in pintos, and identified trait-specific sequence polymorphisms which are utilized for the development of new gene-specific molecular markers for breeding.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Cooked common beans () improve intestinal health in lean mice and attenuate intestinal dysbiosis and inflammation when consumed concurrent with obesity development. We determined the effects of a high-fat (HF) bean supplemented diet in mice with established obesity (induced by 12 weeks of HF diet (60% fat as kcal)) compared to obese mice consuming a HF or low-fat (LF) weight loss control diet. Obese C57BL/6 male mice remained consuming HF for eight weeks or were randomly switched from HF to an isocaloric HF with 15.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Microspores of can be diverted from normal pollen development into embryogenesis by treating them with a mild heat shock. As microspore embryogenesis closely resembles zygotic embryogenesis, it is used as model for studying the molecular mechanisms controlling embryo formation. A previous study comparing the transcriptomes of three-day-old sorted embryogenic and pollen-like (non-embryogenic) microspores identified a gene homologous to of unknown function that was upregulated 8-fold in the embryogenic cells.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Common bean ( L.) provides critical nutrition and a livelihood for millions of smallholder farmers worldwide. Beans engage in symbiotic nitrogen fixation (SNF) with Rhizobia.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The nitrogen fixing ability of common bean ( L.) in association with rhizobia is often characterized as poor compared to other legumes, and nitrogen fertilizers are commonly used in bean production to achieve high yields, which in general inhibits nitrogen fixation. In addition, plants cannot take up all the nitrogen applied to the soil as a fertilizer leading to runoff and groundwater contamination.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The ventrolateral thalamic nucleus (VL), as part of the 'motor thalamus', is main relay station of cerebellar and pallidal projections. It comprises anterior (VLa) and posterior (VLpd and VLpv) subnuclei. Though the fibre architecture of cerebellar and pallidal projections to of the VL nucleus has already been focus in a numerous amount of in vitro studies mainly in animals, probabilistic tractography now offers the possibility of an in vivo comparison in healthy humans.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The gene Phvul.010G130600 which codes for a MYB was shown to be tightly associated with seed coat darkening in Phaseolus vulgaris and a single nucleotide deletion in the allele in Wit-rood disrupts a transcription activation region that likely prevents its functioning in this non-darkening genotype. The beige and white background colors of the seed coats of conventional pinto and cranberry beans turn brown through a process known as postharvest darkening (PHD).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Although deep brain stimulation of the globus pallidus internus (GPi-DBS) is an established treatment for many forms of dystonia, including generalized as well as focal forms, its effects on brain (dys-)function remain to be elucidated, particularly for focal and segmental dystonia. Clinical response to GPi-DBS typically comes with some delay and lasts up to several days, sometimes even weeks, once stimulation is discontinued.

Objective: This study investigated how neural activity during rest and motor activation is affected by GPi-DBS while excluding the potential confound of altered feedback as a result of therapy-induced differences in dystonic muscle contractions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Importance: Debate continues about the value of event adjudication in clinical trials and whether independent centralized assessments improve reliability and validity of study results in masked randomized trials compared with local, investigator-assessed end points.

Objective: To assess the results of the adjudicated end point process in the Platelet-Oriented Inhibition in New TIA and Minor Ischemic Stroke (POINT) trial by comparing end points assessed by local site investigators with centrally adjudicated end points.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This is an ad hoc secondary analysis of a randomized, double-blind clinical trial comparing safety and effectiveness of clopidogrel bisulphate plus aspirin vs placebo plus aspirin.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Common beans () form a relationship with nitrogen-fixing rhizobia and through a process termed symbiotic nitrogen fixation (SNF) which provides them with a source of nitrogen. However, beans are considered poor nitrogen fixers, and modern production practices involve routine use of N fertilizer, which leads to the down-regulation of SNF. High-yielding, conventionally bred bean varieties are developed using conventional production practices and selection criteria, typically not including SNF efficiency, and may have lost this trait over decades of modern breeding.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Obesity is associated with impaired intestinal epithelial barrier function and an altered microbiota community structure, which contribute to host systemic inflammation and metabolic dysfunction. Fiber-rich common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) promote intestinal health (microbiota and host epithelial barrier integrity) in lean mice. The objective was to assess the intestinal health promoting effects of navy bean supplementation during high-fat (HF)diet-induced obesity.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Data on pediatric DBS is still limited because of small numbers in single center series and lack of systematic multi-center trials.

Objectives: We evaluate short- and long-term adverse events (AEs) of patients undergoing deep brain stimulation (DBS) during childhood and adolescence.

Methods: Data collected by the German registry on pediatric DBS (GEPESTIM) were analyzed according to reversible and irreversible AEs and time of occurrence with relation to DBS-surgery: Intraoperative, perioperative (<4 weeks), postoperative (4 weeks < 6 months) and long term AEs (>6 months).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF