Activation of peroxisome proliferator nuclear receptors regulates lipid metabolism in the placenta

OBJECTIVE: Peroxisome proliferator activated receptors (PPARs), known regulators of lipid homeostasis in different tissues, are crucial during placental development. In this work we aim to determine whether PPARs activation modulates lipid metabolism in the placenta from control and diabetic experimental models at midgestation. MATERIALS-METHODS: Placental explants obtained from control and neonatal-streptozotocin-induced- diabetic rats on day 13.5 of gestation were cultured in the presence or absence of ligands of the three PPARs isoforms (clofibrate, 15deoxydelta12,14prostaglandin J2 and carbaprostacyclin; which are PPARα, PPARγ and PPARδ agonists respectively) for further analysis of lipid metabolism. Lipid levels (triglycerides, cholesterol, cholesteryl esters and phospholipids) were analysed by thin layer chromatography, de novo lipid synthesis was assessed by incorporation of 14C-acetate as a tracer, and lipid catabolism was studied through the evaluation of glycerol release. RESULTS: Placental tissues from diabetic rats showed increased triglycerides and cholesteryl ester levels, decreased de novo lipid synthesis and enhanced lipid catabolism when compared to controls. PPARα activation reduced lipid levels and synthesis, and increased lipid catabolism in the placenta. PPARγ activation did not modify placental lipid mass and catabolism, but significantly reduced de novo lipid synthesis. PPARδ ligands reduced phospholipid levels and de novo lipid synthesis, and increased placental lipid catabolism. CONCLUSIONS: These results provide evidence of novel PPARs functions as regulators of placental lipid metabolism, a first step in the understanding of pathways that may allow the regulation of placental lipid metabolism and the prevention of the lipid overload transferred to the developing fetus in maternal diabetes.Fil: Jawerbaum, Alicia Sandra. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Centro de Estudios Farmacológicos y Botánicos. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Centro de Estudios Farmacológicos y Botánicos; ArgentinaFil: Capobianco, Evangelina Lorena. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Centro de Estudios Farmacológicos y Botánicos. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Centro de Estudios Farmacológicos y Botánicos; ArgentinaFil: Martinez, Nora Alicia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Centro de Estudios Farmacológicos y Botánicos. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Centro de Estudios Farmacológicos y Botánicos; ArgentinaFil: White, Verónica. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Centro de Estudios Farmacológicos y Botánicos. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Centro de Estudios Farmacológicos y Botánicos; ArgentinaFil: Pustovrh, María Carolina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Centro de Estudios Farmacológicos y Botánicos. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Centro de Estudios Farmacológicos y Botánicos; ArgentinaFil: Higa, Romina Daniela. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Centro de Estudios Farmacológicos y Botánicos. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Centro de Estudios Farmacológicos y Botánicos; ArgentinaFil: Gonzalez, Élida Teresa. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Centro de Estudios Farmacológicos y Botánicos. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Centro de Estudios Farmacológicos y Botánicos; Argentin

Thermoluminescent response of C-modified Al2O3 thin films deposited by parallel laser ablation plasmas

Aluminium oxide thin films modified with different amounts of carbon were prepared using a parallel laser ablation plasmas configuration. The effect of the amount of carbon incorporated in the films on their compositional, morphological, structural, and thermoluminescent properties was studied. The results showed that films with different C content, from 11 to 33 at. %, were obtained. The structural characterization revealed the growth of an amorphous material. Surface morphology of the obtained thin films showed smooth surfaces. The films were exposed to UV and gamma radiation (Co-60) in order to study their thermoluminescence response. The results tend to indicate that carbon incorporation into the alumina favours the increase of a high temperature TL peak.CONACyT CB 24099

Characterization of re-entry for the design of information systems in clinics in the city of Barranquilla, Colombia

Caracterizar el proceso del reingreso hospitalario para el diseño de sistemas de información en clínicas de Barranquilla, Colombia, se define como objetivo del artículo. Desarrollo basado en una investigación descriptiva, la técnica seleccionada fue el cuestionario dirigido a los coordinadores de los servicios hospitalarios estudiados, mediante el método cuantitativo se determinó que la principal causa del reingreso es la falta de instrumentos que garanticen el seguimiento y control de los pacientes después del egreso de los servicios. Se concluye, el definir un sistema de información para monitorear la evolución de los pacientes, contribuir con las condiciones de vida y minimizar inversión económica en servicios de salud por reingresos a estos serviciosCharacterization of re-entry for the design of information systems in clinics in the city of Barranquilla is defined as the objective of the article. Development based on descriptive research, the technique selected was the questionnaire addressed to the coordinators of the hospital services studied, using the quantitative method it was determined that the main cause of reentry is the lack of instruments that guarantee the monitoring and control of patients after discharge from the services. It is concluded, the definition of an information system to monitor the evolution of patients, contribute to living conditions and minimize economic investment in health services by readmissions to these services

Vitamin D deficiency is associated with poorer satisfaction with diabetes-related treatment and quality of life in patients with type 2 diabetes: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: In this cross-sectional study, we assessed the possible association of vitamin D deficiency with self-reported treatment satisfaction and health-related quality of life in patients with type 2 diabetes. METHODS: We performed a sub-analysis of a previous study and included a total of 292 type 2 diabetic patients. We evaluated treatment satisfaction and health-related quality of life through specific tools: the Diabetes Treatment Satisfaction Questionnaire and the Audit of Diabetes-Dependent Quality of Life. Vitamin D deficiency was defined as 25 (OH) D serum levels < 15 ng/mL. RESULTS: Multivariable linear regression models were used to estimate the relationship of vitamin D deficiency with both outcomes once adjusted for self-reported patient characteristics. Vitamin D deficiency was significantly associated with the final score of the Diabetes Treatment Satisfaction Questionnaire and the single 'diabetes-specific quality of life' dimension of the Audit of Diabetes-Dependent Quality of Life (p = 0.0198 and p = 0.0070, respectively). However, lower concentrations of 25-OH vitamin D were not associated with the overall quality of life score or the perceived frequency of hyperglycaemia and hypoglycaemia. CONCLUSIONS: Our study shows the association between vitamin D deficiency and both the self-reported diabetes treatment satisfaction and the diabetes-specific quality of life in patients with type 2 diabetes

Impact of recommended maternal vaccination programs on the clinical presentation of sars-cov-2 infection: A prospective observational study

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised questions about the possible cross immunity resulting from common vaccination programs and SARS-CoV-2 infection. Therefore, the Spanish Obstetric Emergency group performed a multicenter prospective study on the vaccination status of Influenza and Tdap (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine boost administered in adulthood) in consecutive cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection in a pregnancy cohort, in order to assess its possible association with the clinical presentation and severity of symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 infection, as well as to determine the factors that may affect vaccination adherence. A total of 1150 SARS-CoV-2 positive pregnant women from 78 Spanish hospitals were analyzed: 183 had not received either vaccine, 23 had been vaccinated for Influenza only, 529 for Tdap only and 415 received both vaccines. No association was observed between the vaccination status and the clinical presentation of SARS-CoV-2 infection and/or the severity of symptoms. However, a lower adherence to the administration of both vaccines was observed in the Latin-American subgroup. Based on the results above, we reinforce the importance of maternal vaccination programs in the actual pandemic. Health education campaigns should be specially targeted to groups less likely to participate in these programs, as well as for a future SARS-CoV-2 vaccination campaign.This research was supported by public funds obtained in competitive calls: Grant COV20/ 00021 from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III-Spanish Ministry of Health, and co-financed with Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) fund

Language Identification in Short Utterances Using Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) Recurrent Neural Networks

Zazo R, Lozano-Diez A, Gonzalez-Dominguez J, T. Toledano D, Gonzalez-Rodriguez J (2016) Language Identification in Short Utterances Using Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) Recurrent Neural Networks. PLoS ONE 11(1): e0146917. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0146917Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) have recently outperformed other state-of-the-art approaches, such as i-vector and Deep Neural Networks (DNNs), in automatic Language Identification (LID), particularly when dealing with very short utterances (similar to 3s). In this contribution we present an open-source, end-to-end, LSTM RNN system running on limited computational resources (a single GPU) that outperforms a reference i-vector system on a subset of the NIST Language Recognition Evaluation (8 target languages, 3s task) by up to a 26%. This result is in line with previously published research using proprietary LSTM implementations and huge computational resources, which made these former results hardly reproducible. Further, we extend those previous experiments modeling unseen languages (out of set, OOS, modeling), which is crucial in real applications. Results show that a LSTM RNN with OOS modeling is able to detect these languages and generalizes robustly to unseen OOS languages. Finally, we also analyze the effect of even more limited test data (from 2.25s to 0.1s) proving that with as little as 0.5s an accuracy of over 50% can be achieved.This work has been supported by project CMC-V2: Caracterizacion, Modelado y Compensacion de Variabilidad en la Señal de Voz (TEC2012-37585-C02-01), funded by Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad, Spain

Neurodegeneration and astrogliosis in the entorhinal cortex in Alzheimer’s disease: Stereological layer-specific assessment and proteomic analysis

Introduction: The entorhinal cortex is among the earliest areas involved in Alzheimer’s disease. Volume reduction and neural loss in this area have been widely reported. Human entorhinal cortex atrophy is, in part, due to neural loss, but microglial and/or astroglial involvement in the different layers remains unclear. Additionally, -omic approaches in the human entorhinal cortex are scarce. Methods: Herein, stereological layer-specific and proteomic analyses were carried out in the human brain. Results: Neurodegeneration, microglial reduction, and astrogliosis have been demonstrated, and proteomic data have revealed relationships with up- (S100A6, PPP1R1B, BAG3, and PRDX6) and downregulated (GSK3B, SYN1, DLG4, and RAB3A) proteins. Namely, clusters of these proteins were related to synaptic, neuroinflammatory, and oxidative stress processes. Discussion: Differential layer involvement among neural and glial populations determined by proteinopathies and identified proteins related to neurodegeneration and astrogliosis could explain how the cortical circuitry facilitates pathological spreading within the medial temporal lobe.Introducción La corteza entorrinal se encuentra entre las primeras áreas involucradas en la enfermedad de Alzheimer. La reducción de volumen y la pérdida neural en esta área han sido ampliamente reportadas. La atrofia de la corteza entorrinal humana se debe, en parte, a la pérdida neural, pero la participación microglial y/o astroglial en las diferentes capas sigue sin estar clara. Además, los enfoques -ómicos en la corteza entorrinal humana son escasos. Métodos En este documento, se llevaron a cabo análisis proteómicos y específicos de capa estereológica en el cerebro humano. Resultados Se ha demostrado la neurodegeneración, la reducción microglial y la astrogliosis, y los datos proteómicos han revelado relaciones con proteínas reguladas al alza (S100A6, PPP1R1B, BAG3 y PRDX6) y a la baja (GSK3B, SYN1, DLG4 y RAB3A). Es decir, los grupos de estas proteínas estaban relacionados con procesos de estrés oxidativo, neuroinflamatorio y sináptico. Discusión La participación de capas diferenciales entre poblaciones neurales y gliales determinada por proteinopatías y proteínas identificadas relacionadas con la neurodegeneración y la astrogliosis podría explicar cómo el circuito cortical facilita la propagación patológica dentro del lóbulo temporal medial

Neuronal and glial characterization in the rostrocaudal axis of the human anterior olfactory nucleus: Involvement in Parkinson’s disease

Hyposmia is one of the prodromal symptoms of Parkinson’s disease (PD) and a red flag in clinical diagnosis. Neuropathologically, this sign correlates with α-synuclein involvement in the anterior olfactory nucleus (AON). Neurodegeneration, microgliosis, and astrogliosis in AON are poorly studied, and bulbar AON is the focus of these studies with contradictory results. Additionally, male sex is a risk marker for developing PD, but sexual dimorphism of neural and glial populations in the AON has rarely been considered. The aim of this study was to analyze the density of NeuN, Iba-1, GFAP, and Lewy bodies (LBs), as well as the relationship of these cell type markers with pathology along the rostrocaudal axis of the AON (bulbar, retrobulbar, cortical anterior, and posterior divisions). Cavalieri, optical fractionator, and area fraction fractionator stereological approaches were used for the volume, cell populations and LBs densities, area fraction, and percentage of overlap. Iba-1 and α-syn intensities were measured using ImageJ. In non-PD (NPD) cases, the volume was lower in the AON at the extremes of the rostrocaudal axis than in the intermediate divisions. Cortical anterior AON volume decreased in PD compared with NPD cases. NeuN density decreased rostrocaudally in AON portions in NPD and PD cases. This occurred similarly in Iba-1 but only in PD samples. Iba-1 intensity significantly increased in bulbar AON between PD and NPD. No changes were found in astrocytes. Eight percent of NeuN, 0.1% of Iba-1, and 0.1% of GFAP areas overlapped with LBs area along the AON portions. The data indicate that bulbar AON, which is the most rostral portion in this axis, could play a major role in the pathology. This could be related to the larger area occupied by LBs in these divisions