Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is an exceptionally deadly form of pancreatic cancer with an extremely low survival rate. From diagnosis to treatment, PDAC is highly challenging to manage. Studies have demonstrated that PDAC tumors in distinct regions of the pancreas exhibit unique characteristics, influencing symptoms, treatment responses, and survival rates.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRetinoic acid-induced 1 (RAI1) encodes a transcriptional regulator critical for brain development and function. RAI1 haploinsufficiency in humans causes a syndromic autism spectrum disorder known as Smith-Magenis syndrome (SMS). The neuroanatomical distribution of RAI1 has not been quantitatively analyzed during the development of the prefrontal cortex, a brain region critical for cognitive function and social behaviors and commonly implicated in autism spectrum disorders, including SMS.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF() haploinsufficiency causes Smith-Magenis syndrome (SMS), a genetic disorder with symptoms including hyperphagia, hyperlipidemia, severe obesity, and autism phenotypes. RAI1 is a transcriptional regulator with a pan-neural expression pattern and hundreds of downstream targets. The mechanisms linking neural to body weight regulation remain unclear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProbiotics are known to possess strain- and species-specific functional properties, of which hypocholesteremia is of major interest. Bile salt hydrolase (BSH) activity is one of the key mechanisms involved in the hypocholesterolemic effect. The study was designed to genetically characterize probiotics obtained from human milk on the basis of simple sequence repeat (SSR), isolate potent hypocholesterolemic strains, and detect BSH activity, deconjugation of bile salts, and bsh polymorphism.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEarly detection of Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is complicated as PDAC remains asymptomatic until cancer advances to late stages when treatment is mostly ineffective. Stratifying the risk of developing PDAC can improve early detection as subsequent screening of high-risk individuals through specialized surveillance systems reduces the chance of misdiagnosis at the initial stage of cancer. Risk stratification is however challenging as PDAC lacks specific predictive biomarkers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHaploinsufficiency in retinoic acid induced 1 (RAI1) causes Smith-Magenis syndrome (SMS), a severe neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by neurocognitive deficits and obesity. Currently, curative treatments for SMS do not exist. Here, we take a recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV)-clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats activation (CRISPRa) approach to increase expression of the remaining intact Rai1 allele.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe accurate segmentation of pancreatic subregions (head, body, and tail) in CT images provides an opportunity to examine the local morphological and textural changes in the pancreas. Quantifying such changes aids in understanding the spatial heterogeneity of the pancreas and assists in the diagnosis and treatment planning of pancreatic cancer. Manual outlining of pancreatic subregions is tedious, time-consuming, and prone to subjective inconsistency.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To emphasize the importance of pancreatic imaging and the application of artificial intelligence (AI) for enhanced risk prediction of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC).
Background: Detecting PDAC at the early stage is challenging as the disease either remains asymptomatic or presents nonspecific symptoms. Risk prediction of PDAC is an efficient strategy as subsequent targeted screening can assist in diagnosing cancer at the early stage even before the symptoms appear.
Haploinsufficiency of retinoic acid-induced 1 (RAI1) is responsible for Smith-Magenis syndrome (SMS), a childhood neurodevelopmental disorder associated with hyperphagia, obesity and autistic features. We previously showed that constitutive inactivation of one or both copies of Rai1 in the germline or developing brain induces SMS-like neurobehavioral deficits and obesity in mice. By contrast, the postnatal function of Rai1 is unclear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeurosci Biobehav Rev
November 2020
Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are a group of heterogenous neurodevelopmental disorders affecting 1 in 59 children. Syndromic ASDs are commonly associated with chromosomal rearrangements or dosage imbalance involving a single gene. Many of these genes are dosage-sensitive and regulate transcription, protein homeostasis, and synaptic function in the brain.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOur study aims to contribute to developing antibiotics prescription guidelines at a national and a regional level directed by the antibiotics susceptibility patterns and rapidly emerging resistant organisms. This study is designed to observe the antimicrobial susceptibility in sputum culture isolates and drug resistance patterns against various antimicrobials. This was a retrospective cohort study; data was collected from two laboratories from 1st Jan to 15 July 2007.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlzheimer's disease (AD) is the leading cause of dementia in the elderly and is characterized by progressive cognitive and memory deficits. The pathological hallmarks of AD include extracellular senile plaques and intracellular neurofibrillary tangles. Although several mechanisms have been used to explain the underlying pathogenesis of AD, current treatment regimens remain inadequate.
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