Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy and cardiometabolic outcomes in childhood : A systematic review

BACKGROUND: Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDPs) are among the leading causes of maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality worldwide and have been suggested to increase long-term cardiovascular disease risk in the offspring. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to investigate whether HDPs are associated with cardiometabolic markers in childhood. SEARCH STRATEGY: PubMed, The Cochrane Library and reference lists of included studies up to January 2019. SELECTION CRITERIA: Studies comparing cardiometabolic markers in 2-18-year-old children of mothers with HDP in utero, to children of mothers without HDP. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: Sixteen studies reported in 25 publications were included in this systematic review, of which three were considered as having high risk of bias. Thus 13 studies were included in the evidence synthesis: respectively two and eight reported pregnancy induced hypertension and preeclampsia, and three studies reported on both HDPs. MAIN RESULTS: Most studies (n = 4/5) found a higher blood pressure in children exposed to pregnancy induced hypertension. Most studies (n = 7/10) found no statistically significantly higher blood pressure in children exposed to preeclampsia. No association was found between exposure to HDP and levels of cholesterol, triglycerides or glucose (n = 5/5). No studies investigated an association with (carotid) intima-media thickness, glycated haemoglobin or diabetes mellitus type 2. CONCLUSIONS: Most studies showed that exposure to pregnancy induced hypertension is associated with a higher offspring blood pressure. There is no convincing evidence for an association between exposure to preeclampsia and blood pressure in childhood. Based on current evidence, exposure to HDP is not associated with blood levels of cholesterol, triglycerides and glucose in childhood

Crassulacean acid metabolism in the context of other carbon-concentrating mechanisms in freshwater plants: a review

Inorganic carbon can be in short-supply in freshwater relative to that needed by freshwater plants for photosynthesis because of a large external transport limitation coupled with frequent depleted concentrations of CO2 and elevated concentrations of O2. Freshwater plants have evolved a host of avoidance, exploitation and amelioration strategies to cope with the low and variable supply of inorganic carbon in water. Avoidance strategies rely on the spatial variation in CO2 concentrations within and among lakes. Exploitation strategies involve anatomical and morphological features that take advantage of sources of CO2 outside of the water column such as the atmosphere or sediment. Amelioration strategies involve carbon concentrating mechanisms (CCM) based on uptake of bicarbonate, which is widespread, C4-fixation which is infrequent and Crassulacean Acid Metabolism (CAM) which is of intermediate frequency. CAM enables aquatic plants to take up inorganic carbon in the night. Furthermore, daytime inorganic carbon uptake is generally not inhibited and therefore CAM is considered to be a carbon conserving mechanism. CAM in aquatic plants is a plastic mechanism regulated by environmental variables and is generally down-regulated when inorganic carbon does not limit photosynthesis. CAM is regulated in the long term (acclimation during growth), but is also affected by environmental conditions in the short term (response on a daily basis). In aquatic plants CAM appears to be an ecologically important mechanism for increasing inorganic carbon uptake, since the in situ contribution from CAM to the C-budget generally is high (18-55%)

Electronic Excitations in Guanine Quadruplexes

International audienceGuanine rich DNA strands, such as those encountered at the extremities of human chromosomes, have the ability to form four-stranded structures (G-quadruplexes) whose building blocks are guanine tetrads. G-quadruplex structures are intensively studied in respect of their biological role, as targets for anticancer therapy and, more recently, of their potential applications in the field of molecular electronics. Here we focus on their electronic excited states which are compared to those of non-interacting mono-nucleotides and those of single and double stranded structures. Particular emphasis is given to excited state relaxation processes studied by time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy from femtosecond to nanosecond time scales. They include ultrafast energy transfer and trapping of ππ* excitations by charge transfer states. The effect of various structural parameters, such as the nature of the metal cations located in the central cavity of G-quadruplexes, the number of tetrads or the conformation of the constitutive single strands, are examined

Photoinduced processes in nucleic acids

Photoinduced processes in nucleic acids are phenomena of fundamental interest in diverse fields, from prebiotic studies, through medical research on carcinogenesis, to the development of bioorganic photodevices. In this contribution we survey many aspects of the research across the boundaries. Starting from a historical background, where the main milestones are identified, we review the main findings of the physical-​chemical research of photoinduced processes on several types of nucleic-​acid fragments, from monomers to duplexes. We also discuss a number of different issues which are still under debate