Publications by authors named "Sanne Van den Berg"

Behavioural analysis has been attracting significant attention as a broad indicator of sub-lethal toxicity and has secured a place as an important subdiscipline in ecotoxicology. Among the most notable characteristics of behavioural research, compared to other established approaches in sub-lethal ecotoxicology (e.g.

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Background: An innovative, integrative care model for people with Parkinson (PRIME Parkinson) has gradually been implemented in a selected region of the Netherlands since 2021. A prospective evaluation of this model (PRIME-NL study) was initiated in parallel, spanning the year prior to implementation (baseline) and the implementation period. Following publication of the original study protocol, the COVID-19 crisis delayed implementation of the full PRIME Parkinson care model by two years and hampered the recruitment of study participants.

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Risk assessment for bees is mainly based on data for honey bees; however, risk assessment is intended to protect all bee species. This raises the question of whether data for honey bees are a good proxy for other bee species. This issue is not new and has resulted in several publications in which the sensitivity of bee species is compared based on the values of the 48-h median lethal dose (LD50) from acute test results.

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Translation of environmental science to the practice aims to protect biodiversity and ecosystem services, and our future ability to do so relies on the development of a precision ecotoxicology approach wherein we leverage the genetics and informatics of species to better understand and manage the risks of global pollution. A little over a decade ago, a workshop focusing on the risks of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in the environment identified a priority research question, "What can be learned about the evolutionary conservation of PPCP targets across species and life stages in the context of potential adverse outcomes and effects?" We review the activities in this area over the past decade, consider prospects of more recent developments, and identify future research needs to develop next-generation approaches for PPCPs and other global chemicals and waste challenges. Environ Toxicol Chem 2024;43:526-536.

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Prescribing dopamine replacement therapy remains the most common approach used by physicians who strive to support persons with Parkinson's disease. In this viewpoint, we argue that instead of merely prescribing dopamine, healthcare professionals should particularly encourage and enable persons with Parkinson's disease to draft their own personalized prescription of "hopamine". The term hopamine is a self-invented neologism representing the uniquely personal set of hopes, desires, experiences, and skills of each individual with a dopamine deficit.

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Fluoxetine is one of the worlds most prescribed antidepressant, and frequently detected in surface waters. Once present in the aquatic environment, fluoxetine has been shown to disrupt the swimming behaviour of fish and invertebrates. However, swimming behaviour is also known to be highly variable according to experimental conditions, potentially concealing relevant effects.

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In recent years, considerable computational advancements have been made allowing automated analysis of behavioural endpoints using video cameras. However, the results of such analyses are often confounded by a large variation among individuals, making it problematic to derive endpoints that allow distinguishing treatment effects in behavioural studies. In this study, we quantitatively analysed the effects of light conditions on the swimming behaviour of the freshwater amphipod Gammarus pulex by high-throughput tracking, and attempted to unravel among individual variation using size and sex.

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Article Synopsis
  • Polymyxin B has been used since the 1950s, but research on its pharmacokinetics (PK) and pharmacodynamics (PD) has been limited, particularly regarding its effectiveness against certain bacterial strains.
  • In a study involving neutropenic infected mice, researchers found that the pharmacokinetic profile of polymyxin B was non-linear, with the fAUC/MIC index being the most indicative of efficacy against Klebsiella pneumoniae, while E. coli showed better correlation with fCmax/MIC.
  • The study concluded that polymyxin B's standard dosing regimen may not effectively treat serious infections due to low kill rates against most clinical isolates, suggesting it might not be reliable as a standalone treatment.
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  • Temocillin's effectiveness in treating infections was studied in neutropenic mice, focusing on its pharmacokinetics (PK) and pharmacodynamics (PD) against E. coli and K. pneumoniae.
  • The study revealed that a lower percentage of time the drug concentration exceeds the minimum inhibitory concentration (%T>MIC) is needed for a bacteriostatic effect in lung infections compared to thigh infections.
  • The findings suggest that temocillin can be a valuable treatment option for patients with pneumonia, as it achieved significant bacterial reduction in the lung infection model.
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  • Limited studies have been done on the pharmacodynamic targets of cefepime, a fourth-generation cephalosporin, leading to reliance on conventional targets for analysis.!* -
  • The study used both a murine lung infection model and an in vitro pharmacokinetic model to determine cefepime's target for effective bacterial killing, focusing on the percentage of time unbound drug concentrations exceed the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC).!* -
  • Results showed that cefepime's pharmacodynamic targets (30% for in vivo and 34.2% for in vitro) are lower than typical for cephalosporins, suggesting its unique properties may contribute to this reduced requirement for effectiveness.!*
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  • Flucloxacillin has been a long-standing treatment for methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA), yet its pharmacodynamics are not fully understood.
  • The study measured minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of 305 MSSA isolates to establish wild-type distribution and tested the drug's effectiveness using a neutropenic mouse infection model.
  • The findings revealed that maintaining flucloxacillin concentrations above certain thresholds (specifically, a percentage of time the unbound concentration remains above MIC) correlates with treatment efficacy, suggesting ways to optimize human dosing regimens.
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Monitoring of chemicals in the aquatic environment by chemical analysis alone cannot completely assess and predict the effects of chemicals on aquatic species and ecosystems. This is primarily because of the increasing number of (unknown) chemical stressors and mixture effects present in the environment. In addition, the ability of ecological indices to identify underlying stressors causing negative ecological effects is limited.

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Staphylococcus aureus is an opportunistic pathogen causing high morbidity and mortality. Since multi-drug resistant S. aureus lineages are nowadays omnipresent, alternative tools for preventive or therapeutic interventions, like immunotherapy, are urgently needed.

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For decades, we have known that chemicals affect human and wildlife behavior. Moreover, due to recent technological and computational advances, scientists are now increasingly aware that a wide variety of contaminants and other environmental stressors adversely affect organismal behavior and subsequent ecological outcomes in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. There is also a groundswell of concern that regulatory ecotoxicology does not adequately consider behavior, primarily due to a lack of standardized toxicity methods.

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Background: The treatment success rate of drug-resistant (DR) tuberculosis is alarmingly low. Therefore, more effective and less complex regimens are urgently required.

Methods: We compared the efficacy of an all oral DR tuberculosis drug regimen consisting of bedaquiline (25 mg/kg), delamanid (2.

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Objective: Psychosocial interventions can reduce cancer-related fatigue effectively. However, it is still unclear if intervention effects differ across subgroups of patients. These meta-analyses aimed at evaluating moderator effects of (a) sociodemographic characteristics, (b) clinical characteristics, (c) baseline levels of fatigue and other symptoms, and (d) intervention-related characteristics on the effect of psychosocial interventions on cancer-related fatigue in patients with non-metastatic breast and prostate cancer.

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Ecosystems are usually populated by many species. Each of these species carries the potential to show a different sensitivity towards all of the numerous chemical compounds that can be present in their environment. Since experimentally testing all possible species-chemical combinations is impossible, the ecological risk assessment of chemicals largely depends on cross-species extrapolation approaches.

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Current chemical risk assessment approaches rely on a standard suite of test species to assess toxicity to environmental species. Assessment factors are used to extrapolate from single species to communities and ecosystem effects. This approach is pragmatic, but lacks resolution in biological and environmental parameters.

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Significance testing for genome-wide association study (GWAS) with increasing SNP density up to whole-genome sequence data (WGS) is not straightforward, because of strong LD between SNP and population stratification. Therefore, the objective of this study was to investigate genomic control and different significance testing procedures using data from a commercial pig breeding scheme. A GWAS was performed in GCTA with data of 4,964 Large White pigs using medium density, high density or imputed whole-genome sequence data, fitting a genomic relationship matrix based on a leave-one-chromosome-out approach to account for population structure.

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In this study, a trait-based macroinvertebrate sensitivity modeling tool is presented that provides two main outcomes: (1) it constructs a macroinvertebrate sensitivity ranking and, subsequently, a predictive trait model for each one of a diverse set of predefined Modes of Action (MOAs) and (2) it reveals data gaps and restrictions, helping with the direction of future research. Besides revealing taxonomic patterns of species sensitivity, we find that there was not one genus, family, or class which was most sensitive to all MOAs and that common test taxa were often not the most sensitive at all. Traits like life cycle duration and feeding mode were identified as important in explaining species sensitivity.

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Background: Use of whole-genome sequence data (WGS) is expected to improve identification of quantitative trait loci (QTL). However, this requires imputation to WGS, often with a limited number of sequenced animals for the target population. The objective of this study was to investigate imputation to WGS in two pig lines using a multi-line reference population and, subsequently, to investigate the effect of using these imputed WGS (iWGS) for GWAS.

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Antimicrobial resistance is increasing and few new antibiotics are in the development pipeline. Alternative strategies to treat infectious diseases, such as combination therapy, are urgently needed. Polymyxin B is a neglected and disused antibiotic with moderate antibacterial activity.

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The immunodominant staphylococcal antigen A (IsaA) is a potential target for active or passive immunization against the important human pathogen Staphylococcus aureus. Consistent with this view, monoclonal antibodies against IsaA were previously shown to be protective against S. aureus infections in mouse models.

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