Background And Objectives: HTLV-1-associated myelopathy (HAM) is a chronic progressive inflammatory disease of the spinal cord. This study assesses the diagnostic accuracy of the neuroinflammatory biomarkers neopterin and cysteine-X-cysteine motif chemokine ligand 10 (CXCL-10) in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) for HAM.
Methods: CSF samples from 75 patients with neurological disorders-33 with HAM (Group A), 19 HTLV-1-seronegative with other neuroinflammatory diseases (Group B), and 23 HTLV-1-seronegative with non-neuroinflammatory diseases (Group C)-were retrospectively evaluated.
Anaesthesia is sometimes required for the effective restraint of laboratory pigs for sample collection. Yet, anaesthesia can initiate a range of physiological disruptions that can increase variability in study data and lead to poorer animal welfare. Judicious use of anaesthesia can mitigate experimental, human safety, and animal welfare concerns, but it does not eliminate the potential for adverse effects.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFirst permanent molars (FPMs) remain the most affected teeth by dental conditions in childhood. Maintaining the health of FPMs should be prioritised by dental professionals. However, if subjected to unfavourable circumstances, FPMs can become compromised and impact the child negatively.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: From January 2020 to the end of August 2020, preliminary research gathered data about the need for and the feasibility of an ADEA-led joint Climate Study of dental schools and allied dental programs in the United States and Canada. Informed by these findings, the first ever ADEA-led joint Climate Study took place in 2022. The objectives of this manuscript were to describe the timeline of this climate study and provide information about its methodology, specifically about (a) who participated in this research, (b) what was assessed, (c) how the study was conducted, and (d) how the results were communicated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) may cause spinal cord inflammation, leading to HTLV-1-associated myelopathy (HAM). HAM is a chronic and progressive neurological disorder that is associated with increased mortality and impaired quality of life. There are limited data on the incidence of HAM, with higher rates seen in Latin America and the Caribbean compared to Japan.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Future breeding and selection of Cannabis sativa L. for both drug production and industrial purposes require a source of germplasm with wide genetic variation, such as that found in wild relatives and progenitors of highly cultivated plants. Limited directional selection and breeding have occurred in this crop, especially informed by molecular markers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFvariants cause a range of epilepsy syndromes, including Dravet syndrome, leading to early cognitive and functional impairment. Despite advances in medical management, drug-resistant epilepsy remains common. Vagal nerve stimulation (VNS) has been suggested reducing seizure frequency in these patients but there is a lack of long-term follow-up, quantitative analysis that corrected for confounding factors such as antiseizure medications (ASMs) and the impact of VNS settings on response.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: The BIC-T&T study aimed to determine the efficacy of bictegraviremtricitabine/tenofovir alafenamide (BIC/F/TAF) and darunavir/cobicistat/emtricitabinetenofovir alafenamide (DRV/c/F/TAF) at suppressing viral load in a two-arm, open-label, multi-centre, randomised trial under a UK test-and-treat setting. This sub-study aimed to evaluate potential off-target cardiovascular impact by examining platelet function.
Methods: Platelets were isolated by centrifugation of citrated blood from participants attending Chelsea and Westminster Hospital or St Mary's Hospital at Week 48 following enrolment.
High-energy nuclear collisions create a quark-gluon plasma, whose initial condition and subsequent expansion vary from event to event, impacting the distribution of the eventwise average transverse momentum [P([p_{T}])]. Disentangling the contributions from fluctuations in the nuclear overlap size (geometrical component) and other sources at a fixed size (intrinsic component) remains a challenge. This problem is addressed by measuring the mean, variance, and skewness of P([p_{T}]) in ^{208}Pb+^{208}Pb and ^{129}Xe+^{129}Xe collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=5.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOutdoor microcosms, metabarcoding with next-generation sequencing of the 16S rRNA bacterial gene, total body score (TBS) and physicochemical analyses were used to monitor Mus musculus decomposition aboveground (A) and in the subsurface (S), and compared to soil-only controls (C). As determined by MaAsLin2 analysis, significant shifts in bacterial communities at 30 cm depths within the A, S and C treatments distinguished control from experimental soils, and between aboveground and subsurface deposition, demonstrating the potential for gravesoil discrimination during the first 90 days. For example, Dokdonella (p = 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnderstanding how ecological communities assemble in relation to natural and human-induced environmental changes is critical, particularly for communities of pollinators that deliver essential ecosystem services. Despite widespread attention to interactions between functional traits and community responses to environmental changes, the importance of sensory traits has received little attention. To address this, we asked whether visual traits of bumblebee communities varied at large geographical scales along a habitat gradient of increased tree cover.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAccounting for the cost of repairing the degradation of Earth's biosphere is critical to guide conservation and sustainable development decisions. Yet the costs of repairing nature through the recovery of a continental suite of threatened species across their range have never been calculated. We estimated the cost of in situ recovery of nationally listed terrestrial and freshwater threatened species (n = 1,657) across the megadiverse continent of Australia by combining the spatially explicit costs of all strategies required to address species-specific threats.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Proteomics is routinely used to type clinical amyloid deposits, and offers additional benefit of identifying genetic variants, which can be diagnostically useful. Reviewing the proteomics data for ATTR patients attending our Centre revealed an unusually large number of samples containing a rare pathogenic H90D TTR variant alongside the more common H90N variant.
Methods: These findings raised questions to their source.
Mammalian hearing operates on three basic steps: 1) sound capturing, 2) impedance conversion, and 3) frequency analysis. While these canonical steps are vital for acoustic communication and survival in mammals, they are not unique to them. An equivalent mechanism has been described for katydids (Insecta), and it is unique to this group among invertebrates.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: A proportion of individuals exposed to respiratory viruses avoid contracting detectable infection. We tested the hypothesis that early innate immune responses associate with resistance to detectable infection in close contacts of COVID-19 cases.
Methods: 48 recently-exposed household contacts of symptomatic COVID-19 cases were recruited in London, UK between May 2020 and March 2021 through a prospective, longitudinal observational study.
There is limited evidence to support optimal patient-centered management for compromised first permanent molars (cFPM) in children. Based on an online discrete choice experiment (DCE), this study elicits UK adult general population preferences and calculates willingness to pay (WTP) for pathways to manage cFPM. The DCE was designed with information from semistructured interviews and literature reviews, as well as focus groups with an expert panel of dentists, citizens, and policy makers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe diversity of the psyllids of Australia reflects that of the plants of this country, with large radiations and ecological dominance of Myrtaceae (e.g., Eucalyptus), Fabaceae (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIncreasingly, people attending HIV services are requesting long-acting injectable (LAI) antiretroviral treatment (ART). However, without HIV RNA resistance-associated mutation results, individuals are considered unsuitable for LAI ART. We present our experience of sequencing proviral HIV DNA in 30 individuals to inform suitability for LAI ART, of whom 23 were considered suitable.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProgranulin (PGRN) deficiency is linked to neurodegenerative diseases, including frontotemporal dementia (FTD), Alzheimer's disease, and Parkinson's disease. Proper PGRN levels are critical for brain health; however, the function of PGRN is unclear. PGRN is composed of 7.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Our goal was to compare the original conceptualization of the alexithymia construct with the attention-appraisal model, focusing primarily on the removal of the reduced imaginal activity component, a seminal aspect of the construct in the original model. We also examined associations between alexithymia and emotional distress and emotion regulation, attachment, and trauma, and whether alexithymia is a transdiagnostic risk factor. We discuss differences between the models in the treatment of alexithymia and also differences in measurement.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEpigenetic measures of aging derived from DNA methylation are promising biomarkers associated with prospective morbidity and mortality, but require validation in real-world medical settings. Using data from 2,216 post-9/11 veterans, we examined whether accelerated DunedinPACE aging scores were associated with chronic disease morbidity, predicted healthcare costs, and mortality assessed over an average of 13.1 years of follow up in VA electronic health records.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF