Relationships between physical activities performed under free-living conditions and non-motor symptoms in people with Parkinson's: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: Physical activities performed under free-living conditions that are unsupervised in the home or community have the potential to modulate non-motor symptoms in people with Parkinson's disease.

Objective: This systematic review investigates the relationships between physical activities performed in free-living conditions and non-motor symptoms in people with Parkinson's disease: cognition, anxiety, apathy, depression, sleep disturbances, fatigue, and pain.

Data Sources: A database search was performed on Scopus, Web of Science, Ovid (PsycINFO), CINAHL, PubMed, and ProQuest (Health and Medicine).

Self-regulation training for people with knee osteoarthritis: a protocol for a feasibility randomised control trial (MiNT trial).

Introduction: Knee osteoarthritis (OA) is a chronic secondary musculoskeletal pain condition resulting in disability, reduced quality of life, and high societal costs. Pain associated with knee OA is linked to increased sensitivity in sensory, cognitive, and emotional areas of the brain. Self-regulation training targeting brain functioning related to pain experience could reduce pain and its associated disability.

A pilot investigation of reliability and validity of balance and gait assessments using telehealth with healthy older adults.

Background: The use of telehealth has increased since the COVID-19 pandemic; however, the lack of reliable and valid tools to measure balance and gait remotely makes assessing these outcomes difficult. Thus, we investigated whether balance and gait measures used in clinical practice are reliable and valid when assessed remotely through telehealth.

Method: In this pilot study, we investigated 15 healthy older adults who performed validated tests: Timed Up and Go simple, dual cognitive and motor tasks; Berg Balance Scale; Functional Gait Assessment and Dynamic Gait Index.

Duodenal diverticulum at the site of the major papilla may be a risk factor for biliary stent migration.

Stent migration is a well-documented complication following biliary stent insertion. The majority of cases demonstrate passage through the bowel without incident; however, migration may also result in complications, including bowel obstruction or perforation requiring urgent intervention. Risk factors for stent migration comprise of disease pathology as well as stent characteristics including dimension, material and number.

How to do a handsewn reversal of ileostomy: a systematic technique for new surgical trainees.

A straightforward, systematic and reproducible framework for junior registrars to adopt when learning the handsewn ileostomy closure technique.

Acquired segmental colonic hypoganglionosis in an adult Caucasian male: A case report.

Background: Hypoganglionosis is a rare condition that most often presents with abnormal gastrointestinal transit and usually arises in early childhood or adolescence. Two types have been described (Type I and Type II). The adult-onset form (acquired hypoganglionosis) is extremely uncommon and is thought to arise due to cellular remodelling as a result of chronic inflammation.

A Controlled Impact of Optic Nerve as a New Model of Traumatic Optic Neuropathy in Mouse.

Purpose: Traumatic optic neuropathy (TON) is the most feared visual consequence of head and ocular trauma in both military and civilian communities, for which standard treatment does not exist. Animal models are critical for the development of novel TON therapies as well as the understanding of TON pathophysiology. However, the models currently used for TON have some limitations regarding consistency and mirroring the exact pathological progression of TON in closed ocular trauma.

Multifocal Electroretinography in the Presence of Temporal and Spatial Correlations and Eye Movements.

Releasing patients from the fixation task, and permitting them to view natural stimuli such as movies, would provide increased comfort, and potentially additional signs of retinal function, when recording multifocal electroretinograms (mfERGs). Techniques must be developed to handle the difficulties that arise from these alternative stimulation strategies. Multifocal stimuli were presented to volunteer human subjects with and without fixation.

Quantification of mitochondrial acetylation dynamics highlights prominent sites of metabolic regulation.

Lysine acetylation is rapidly becoming established as a key post-translational modification for regulating mitochondrial metabolism. Nonetheless, distinguishing regulatory sites from among the thousands identified by mass spectrometry and elucidating how these modifications alter enzyme function remain primary challenges. Here, we performed multiplexed quantitative mass spectrometry to measure changes in the mouse liver mitochondrial acetylproteome in response to acute and chronic alterations in nutritional status, and integrated these data sets with our compendium of predicted Sirt3 targets.

Neutron-encoded mass signatures for multiplexed proteome quantification.

We describe a protein quantification method called neutron encoding that exploits the subtle mass differences caused by nuclear binding energy variation in stable isotopes. These mass differences are synthetically encoded into amino acids and incorporated into yeast and mouse proteins via metabolic labeling. Mass spectrometry analysis with high mass resolution (>200,000) reveals the isotopologue-embedded peptide signals, permitting quantification.

US screening of international travelers for radioactive contamination after the Japanese nuclear plant disaster in March 2011.

On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami damaged nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi complex in Japan, resulting in radionuclide release. In response, US officials augmented existing radiological screening at its ports of entry (POEs) to detect and decontaminate travelers contaminated with radioactive materials.

Arginase 2 deletion reduces neuro-glial injury and improves retinal function in a model of retinopathy of prematurity.

Background: Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is a major cause of vision impairment in low birth weight infants. While previous work has focused on defining the mechanisms of vascular injury leading to retinal neovascularization, recent studies show that neurons are also affected. This study was undertaken to determine the role of the mitochondrial arginine/ornithine regulating enzyme arginase 2 (A2) in retinal neuro-glial cell injury in the mouse model of ROP.

Determinants of the HIV-1 core assembly pathway.

Based on structural information, we have analyzed the mechanism of mature HIV-1 core assembly and the contributions of structural elements to the assembly process. Through the use of several in vitro assembly assay systems, we have examined details of how capsid (CA) protein helix 1, ß-hairpin and cyclophilin loop elements impact assembly-dependent protein interactions, and we present evidence for a contribution of CA helix 6 to the mature assembly-competent conformation of CA. Additional experiments with mixtures of proteins in assembly reactions provide novel analyses of the mature core assembly mechanism.

Second-site compensatory mutations of HIV-1 capsid mutations.

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) capsid (CA) protein assembles into a hexameric lattice that forms the mature virus core. Contacts between the CA N-terminal domain (NTD) of one monomer and the C-terminal domain (CTD) of the adjacent monomer are important for the assembly of this core. In this study, we have examined the effects of mutations in the NTD region associated with this interaction.

Analysis of the N-terminal region of the murine leukemia virus nucleocapsid protein.

Lentiviruses such as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) and alpharetroviruses such as Rous Sarcoma virus encode an element that spans the precursor Gag (PrGag) protein capsid (CA) C-terminus, a spacer peptide (SP), and the N-terminus of nucleocapsid (NC). Perturbation of this element causes the assembly of aberrant, non-infectious virus particles. To determine whether this element is conserved in gammaretroviruses such as the Moloney murine leukemia virus (MLV), we examined the effects of insertion mutations in the N-terminal portion of the MLV NC coding region.

Analysis of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 matrix binding to membranes and nucleic acids.

The human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) matrix (MA) protein targets HIV-1 precursor Gag (PrGag) proteins to assembly sites at plasma membrane (PM) sites that are enriched in cholesterol and phosphatidylinositol-(4,5)-bisphosphate [PI(4,5)P(2)]. MA is myristoylated, which enhances membrane binding, and specifically binds PI(4,5)P(2) through headgroup and 2' acyl chain contacts. MA also binds nucleic acids, although the significance of this association with regard to the viral life cycle is unclear.

Characterization of the in vitro HIV-1 capsid assembly pathway.

During the morphogenesis of mature human immunodeficiency virus-1 cores, viral capsid proteins assemble conical or tubular shells around viral ribonucleoprotein complexes. This assembly step is mimicked in vitro through reactions in which capsid proteins oligomerize to form long tubes, and this process can be modeled as consisting of a slow nucleation period, followed by a rapid phase of tube growth. We have developed a novel fluorescence microscopy approach to monitor in vitro assembly reactions and have employed it, along with electron microscopy analysis, to characterize the assembly process.

Analysis of human immunodeficiency virus matrix domain replacements.

The matrix (MA) domain of the HIV-1 structural precursor Gag (PrGag) protein targets PrGag proteins to membrane assembly sites, and facilitates incorporation of envelope proteins into virions. To evaluate the specific requirements for the MA membrane-binding domain (MBD) in HIV-1 assembly and replication, we examined viruses in which MA was replaced by alternative MBDs. Results demonstrated that the pleckstrin homology domains of AKT protein kinase and phospholipase C delta1 efficiently directed the assembly and release of virus-like particles (VLPs) from cells expressing chimeric proteins.

Sultam thiourea inhibition of West Nile virus.

We have identified sultam thioureas as novel inhibitors of West Nile virus (WNV) replication. One such compound inhibited WNV, with a 50% effective concentration of 0.7 microM, and reduced reporter expression from cells that harbored a WNV-based replicon.

Analysis of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 Gag dimerization-induced assembly.

The nucleocapsid (NC) domains of retrovirus precursor Gag (PrGag) proteins play an essential role in virus assembly. Evidence suggests that NC binding to viral RNA promotes dimerization of PrGag capsid (CA) domains, which triggers assembly of CA N-terminal domains (NTDs) into hexamer rings that are interconnected by CA C-terminal domains. To examine the influence of dimerization on human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) Gag protein assembly in vitro, we analyzed the assembly properties of Gag proteins in which NC domains were replaced with cysteine residues that could be linked via chemical treatment.