Objective: When people receive information about the benefits and harms of mammography screening, they do not always accept it at face value and instead express skepticism. The purpose of this research was to identify the psychological drivers of this skepticism. Two theory-driven hypotheses were considered: One hypothesis proposes that skeptical reactions reflect a psychological defense against information that is emotionally aversive.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: This study investigated inequalities in the distribution of green space (GS) and the association between inequalities in amounts of GS and preventable deaths across urban neighbourhoods with different Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) scores in the UK.
Methods: Data on preventable deaths, IMD, percentage of grassland and woodland, urban/rural, population size, and density were sourced for each of 6791 middle-layer super output areas (MSOAs) in England, 410 MSOAs in Wales, 1279 intermediate zones (IZs) in Scotland, and 890 super output areas (SOAs) in Northern Ireland (NI). While appreciating the potential for ecological fallacy we related area-based measures of deprivation to deaths.
Extracellular signals perceived by 7-transmembrane (7TM)-spanning receptors initiate desensitization that involves the removal of these receptors from the plasma membrane. Agonist binding often evokes phosphorylation in the flexible C-terminal region and/or intracellular loop 3 of many 7TM G-protein-coupled receptors in animal cells, which consequently recruits a cytoplasmic intermediate adaptor, β-arrestin, resulting in clathrin-mediated endocytosis (CME) and downstream signaling such as transcriptional changes. Some 7TM receptors undergo CME without recruiting β-arrestin, but it is not clear how.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhosphorylation of myofilament proteins critically regulates beat-to-beat cardiac contraction and is typically altered in heart failure (HF). β-Adrenergic activation induces phosphorylation in numerous substrates at the myofilament. Nevertheless, how cardiac β-adrenoceptors (βARs) signal to the myofilament in healthy and diseased hearts remains poorly understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIncivility is a major concern in healthcare, and it is vital that uncivil behaviour is recognised and addressed. Manifestations of incivility are wide ranging and can take the form of microaggressions, which are difficult to pinpoint but have significant repercussions. Research has demonstrated the negative effects of incivility on staff and patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThere are two main families of G protein-coupled receptors that detect odours in humans, the odorant receptors (ORs) and the trace amine-associated receptors (TAARs). Their amino acid sequences are distinct, with the TAARs being most similar to the aminergic receptors such as those activated by adrenaline, serotonin, dopamine and histamine. To elucidate the structural determinants of ligand recognition by TAARs, we have determined the cryo-EM structure of a murine receptor, mTAAR7f, coupled to the heterotrimeric G protein G and bound to the odorant N,N-dimethylcyclohexylamine (DMCHA) to an overall resolution of 2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) is a non-invasive modality that utilizes electrical currents to modulate pain in populations with acute and chronic pain. TENS has been demonstrated to produce hypoalgesic effects in postoperative pain, fibromyalgia, knee osteoarthritis, and healthy subjects. Transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (TaVNS) is a non-invasive modality that modulates the vagus nerve by stimulating its auricular branches.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recently changed its recommendation for mammography screening from informed decision making to biennial screening for women aged 40 to 49 years.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Examine the prospective association among diet with adolescent cardiometabolic risk (CMR) and anthropometrics.
Methods: Secondary analysis of an observational study of adolescents aged 10-16 years. Twenty-four-hour food recalls were used to calculate Healthy Eating Index-2015 (HEI-2015) scores.
Purpose: Overdiagnosis is a concept central to making informed breast cancer screening decisions, and yet some people may react to overdiagnosis with doubt and skepticism. The present research assessed 4 related reactions to overdiagnosis: reactance, self-exemption, disbelief, and source derogation (REDS). The degree to which the concept of overdiagnosis conflicts with participants' prior beliefs and health messages (information conflict) was also assessed as a potential antecedent of REDS.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Adolescent smoking is associated with significant health and social risks. Previous research has demonstrated the effectiveness of interventions based on behavior change theories in preventing adolescent smoking uptake. However, evidence from the theory-based perspective of evaluation is limited, especially for how such complex interventions work, and how they work when implemented in different contextual settings.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe tested a novel hospice-specific patient decision aid to determine whether the decision aid could improve hospice knowledge, opinions of hospice, and decision self-efficacy in making decisions about hospice. Two patient-level randomized studies were conducted using two different cohorts. Recruitment was completed from March 2019 through May 2020.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThere are two main families of G protein-coupled receptors that detect odours in humans, the odorant receptors (ORs) and the trace amine-associated receptors (TAARs). Their amino acid sequences are distinct, with the TAARs being most similar to the aminergic receptors such as those activated by adrenaline, serotonin and histamine. To elucidate the structural determinants of ligand recognition by TAARs, we have determined the cryo-EM structure of a murine receptor, mTAAR7f, coupled to the heterotrimeric G protein G and bound to the odorant N,N-dimethylcyclohexylamine (DMCH) to an overall resolution of 2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe first structure of an adrenoceptor (AR), the human β-adrenoceptor (hβAR) was published in 2007 and since then a total of 78 structures (up to June 2022) have been determined by X-ray crystallography and electron cryo-microscopy (cryo-EM) of all three βARs (β, β and β) and four out of six αARs (α, α, α, α). The structures are in a number of different conformational states, including the inactive state bound to an antagonist, an intermediate state bound to agonist and active states bound to agonist and an intracellular transducer (G protein or arrestin) or transducer mimetic (nanobody). The structures identify molecular details of how ligands bind in the orthosteric binding pocket (OBP; 19 antagonists, 18 agonists) and also how three different small molecule allosteric modulators bind.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCurr Opin Struct Biol
June 2023
Over the past three years (2020-2022) more structures of GPCRs have been determined than in the previous twenty years (2000-2019), primarily of GPCR complexes that are large enough for structure determination by single-particle cryo-EM. This review will present some structural highlights that have advanced our molecular understanding of promiscuous G protein coupling, how a G protein receptor kinase and β-arrestins couple to GPCRs, and GPCR dimerisation. We will also discuss advances in the use of gene fusions, nanobodies, and F fragments to facilitate the structure determination of GPCRs in the inactive state that, on their own, are too small for structure determination by single-particle cryo-EM.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTrends Pharmacol Sci
March 2023
Up to 1.5 million people die yearly from fungal disease, but the repertoire of antifungal drug classes is minimal and the incidence of drug resistance is rising rapidly. This dilemma was recently declared by the World Health Organization as a global health emergency, but the discovery of new antifungal drug classes remains excruciatingly slow.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMed Clin North Am
September 2022
Primary care providers encounter significant time and resource constraints in their efforts to provide patients with behavioral nutrition counseling. Here, several evidence-based and low-burden strategies are identified that may be used in the primary care setting to assist patients in making dietary changes toward improved health. These strategies include brief dietary intake screening, core elements of motivational interviewing and cognitive behavioral therapy, and recommendation for normalized eating.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLittle is known about the personality and cognitive traits that shape adolescents' sensitivity to social norms. Further, few studies have harnessed novel empirical tools to elicit sensitivity to social norms among adolescent populations. This paper examines the association between sensitivity to norms and various personality and cognitive traits using an incentivised rule-following task grounded in Game Theory.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Perseverance rover landed in Jezero crater, Mars, to investigate ancient lake and river deposits. We report observations of the crater floor, below the crater's sedimentary delta, finding that the floor consists of igneous rocks altered by water. The lowest exposed unit, informally named Séítah, is a coarsely crystalline olivine-rich rock, which accumulated at the base of a magma body.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMisconceptions about hospice are prevalent and create barriers to hospice enrollment. These misconceptions may be a result of the confusing language around hospice care. To conduct a content analysis exploring the language used and accuracy in which older adults describe hospice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMethods Mol Biol
July 2022
The thyroid-stimulating hormone receptor (TSHR) is a Class A G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) that mediates signalling through the hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid axis. Inappropriate activation of TSHR by autoantibodies or mutations, results in human disease such as Grave's disease and Hashimito's thyroiditis. Therefore, there is a need to develop novel therapeutics targeting the TSHR.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDespite the importance of sand and dust to Mars geomorphology, weather, and exploration, the processes that move sand and that raise dust to maintain Mars' ubiquitous dust haze and to produce dust storms have not been well quantified in situ, with missions lacking either the necessary sensors or a sufficiently active aeolian environment. Perseverance rover's novel environmental sensors and Jezero crater's dusty environment remedy this. In Perseverance's first 216 sols, four convective vortices raised dust locally, while, on average, four passed the rover daily, over 25% of which were significantly dusty ("dust devils").
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis review aims to provide an expert consensus statement to address the role of gene-panel testing in the diagnosis, prognosis and management of adult myelodysplastic syndrome/myeloproliferative neoplasm overlap syndromes (MDS/MPN) in Australia. This consensus statement was developed by an expert group, actively involved in gene panel testing in the area of MDS/MPN in Australia. This work was led by the chairs of the MDS (A/Prof A.
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