Myofascial trigger points alter the modular control during the execution of a reaching task: a pilot study

Myofascial trigger points (TP) constitute a conundrum in research and clinical practice as their etiopathogenesis is debated. Several studies investigating one or few muscles have shown that both active and latent TP causes an increased muscle activity, however the influence of TP on modular motor control during a reaching task is still unclear. Electromyographic signals, recorded from the muscles of the shoulder girdle and upper arm during a reaching task, were decomposed with Non-Negative Matrix Factorization algorithm. The extracted matrices of motor modules and activation signals were used to label the muscles condition as dominant or non-dominant. The presence of latent and active TP was detected in each muscle with manual examination. Despite a similar muscle activity was observed, we found that muscles with active TP had increased weighting coefficients when labeled in the dominant condition. No influences were found when muscles were in the non-dominant condition. These findings suggest that TP altered the motor control without co-contraction patterns. As a preliminary evidence, the present results suggest that the increased weighting coefficients in presence of TPs are associated with an alteration of the modular motor control without affecting the dimensionality of motor modules for each individual and reciprocal inhibition

Hepatitis C virus production requires apolipoprotein A-I and affects its association with nascent low-density lipoproteins

Background/aims The life cycle of hepatitis C virus (HCV) is intimately linked to the lipid metabolism of the host. In particular, HCV exploits the metabolic machinery of the lipoproteins in several steps of its life cycle such as circulation in the bloodstream, cell attachment and entry, assembly and release of viral particles. However, the details of how HCV interacts with and influences the metabolism of the host lipoproteins are not well understood. A study was undertaken to investigate whether HCV directly affects the protein composition of host circulating lipoproteins. Methods A proteomic analysis of circulating very low-, low- and high-density lipoproteins (VLDL, LDL and HDL), isolated from either in-treatment naive HCV-infected patients or healthy donors (HD), was performed using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis and tandem mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF/TOF). The results obtained were further investigated using in vitro models of HCV infection and replication. Results A decreased level of apolipoprotein A-I (apoA-I) was found in the LDL fractions of HCV-infected patients. This result was confirmed by western blot and ELISA analysis. HCV cellular models (JFH1 HCV cell culture system (HCVcc) and HCV subgenomic replicons) showed that the decreased apoA-I/LDL association originates from hepatic biogenesis rather than lipoprotein catabolism occurring in the circulation, and is not due to a downregulation of the apoA-I protein concentration. The sole non-structural viral proteins were sufficient to impair the apoA-I/LDL association. Functional evidence was obtained for involvement of apoA-I in the viral life cycle such as RNA replication and virion production. The specific siRNA-mediated downregulation of apoA-I led to a reduction in both HCV RNA and viral particle levels in culture. Conclusions This study shows that HCV induces lipoprotein structural modification and that its replication and production are linked to the host lipoprotein metabolism, suggesting apoA-I as a new possible target for antiviral therapy

A fully-discrete scheme for systems of nonlinear Fokker-Planck-Kolmogorov equations

We consider a system of Fokker-Planck-Kolmogorov (FPK) equations, where the dependence of the coefficients is nonlinear and nonlocal in time with respect to the unknowns. We extend the numerical scheme proposed and studied recently by the authors for a single FPK equation of this type. We analyse the convergence of the scheme and we study its applicability in two examples. The first one concerns a population model involving two interacting species and the second one concerns two populations Mean Field Games

The relationship between LGBT executives and firms’ value and financial performance

Drawing on resource-based theory, we analyze the relationship between having LGBT executives in a firm’s leadership positions and its value and financial performance. The existence of LGBT executives is considered to be associated with employee and customer goodwill towards LGBT-friendly policies and practices and to lead to human capital and reputational benefits. Our findings suggest that there is a positive effect of the presence of LBGT executives on a firm’s value, both directly and indirectly, through its effect on the firm’s financial performance. We interpret this as suggesting that besides the direct effect of the existence of LGBT executives on a firm’s value, an indirect effect also exists, mediated through financial performance, presumably through the effect that this has on employee and customer goodwill towards LGBT-friendly policies and practices. As far as we are aware, our study is the first to examine the impacts of the presence of LGBT executives, as well as distinguish between its direct and indirect effects on firm value.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Patients with MACE in the OCT guided arm of the CLI-OPCI study have more often an uncorrected stent deployment

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