Current Progress and Future Directions for Tau-Based Fluid Biomarker Diagnostics in Alzheimer’s Disease

Funding: Research activity relating to tau-based immunodiagnostics performed by the Scottish Biologics Facility was funded by Genting TauRx Diagnostic Centre Sdn. Bhd. Acknowledgments: Figures were created using www.BioRender.com.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Considerations for biomarker strategies in clinical trials investigating tau-targeting therapeutics for Alzheimer's disease

Peer reviewe

Exploring the Anti-Hypoxaemia Effect of Hydromethylthionine : A Prospective Study of Phase 3 Clinical Trial Participants

Funding Information: This work was funded by TauRx Therapeutics Ltd., Singapore.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Methylene Blue for Treatment of Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients, Randomized, Controlled, Open-Label Clinical Trial, Phase 3

Funding: This work was supported by a grant from Mashhad University of Medical Sciences (Grant number: 990096, 990845). Acknowledgements: The authors gratefully acknowledge the nurses in Iamm Reza Hospital, Shariati Hospital, Hasheminejad Hospital for their excellent cooperation.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The Hepatoprotection Provided by Taurine and Glycine against Antineoplastic Drugs Induced Liver Injury in an Ex Vivo Model of Normothermic Recirculating Isolated Perfused Rat Liver

Taurine (2-aminoethane sulfonic acid) is a non-protein amino acid found in high concentration in different tissues. Glycine (Amino acetic acid) is the simplest amino acid incorporated in the structure of proteins. Several investigations indicate the hepatoprotective properties of these amino acids. On the other hand, antineoplastic agents-induced serum transaminase elevation and liver injury is a clinical complication. The current investigation was designed to screen the possible hepatoprotective properties of taurine and glycine against antineoplastic drugs-induced hepatic injury in an ex vivo model of isolated perfused rat liver. Rat liver was perfused with different concentration (10 µM, 100 µM and 1000 µM) of antineoplastic drugs (Mitoxantrone, Cyclophosphamide, Cisplatin, 5‑Fluorouracil, Doxorubicin and Dacarbazine) via portal vein. Taurine and glycine were administered to drug-treated livers and liver perfusate samples were collected for biochemical measurements (ALT, LDH, AST, and K+). Markers of oxidative stress (reactive oxygen species formation, lipid peroxidation, total antioxidant capacity and glutathione) were also assessed in liver tissue. Antineoplastic drugs caused significant pathological changes in perfusate biochemistry. Furthermore, markers of oxidative stress were significantly elevated in drug‑treated livers. It was found that taurine (5 and 10 mM) and glycine (5 and 10 mM) administration significantly mitigated the biomarkers of liver injury and attenuated drug‑induced oxidative stress. Our data indicate that taurine and glycine supplementation might help as potential therapeutic options to encounter anticancer drugs-induced liver injury.</p

Genetic Study of Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy in Iranian children: The Role of a De novo Variant

Background and Objectives: Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a common cardiac disease diagnosed in young adults and rarely detectable in childhood. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy exhibits considerable diversity in its clinical and genetic characteristics. To date, mutations in multiple genes associated with HCM have been discovered, with the most common ones being MYBPC3 and MYH7 genes. The present study aimed to utilize whole exome sequencing for conducting a genetic analysis of Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in four children belonging to Iranian families. Materials and Methods: Patients underwent medical evaluation, including clinical assessment, electrocardiography, and echocardiography. Genetic testing was performed after DNA extraction using whole exome sequencing to identify genetic alterations that may be responsible for this disease. In addition, bioinformatic analysis of the genetic changes was carried out using software tools for alignment, variant calling, and interpretation. Finally, the Sanger sequencing method was employed to confirm the genetic variations in the affected individual's family members. Results: The patients were children presenting with initial symptoms, such as syncope and palpitations. They were diagnosed with Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy type 3 and 4 based on the results of electrocardiography and echocardiography. The genetic testing results revealed a pathogenic de novo mutation (c.1208G>A, p.Arg403Gln) in the MYH7 gene. In addition, another disease-causing homozygous nonsense genetic variation (c.3811C>T, p.Arg1271Ter) was identified in the MYBPC3 gene, resulting in the production of a premature protein. Conclusion: This study not only expanded the spectrum of genetic variations associated with Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy disease and aided in genetic counseling for families affected by it but also presented the first variations of the sarcomere gene in Iranian children

The mediating role of psychological basic needs in the relationship between personality traits and students’ happiness

Background: Happiness is one of the main components of quality of life in all age groups, especially students Studies have shown that happiness is significantly correlated with the big five personality traits, especially neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness. In addition, satisfying basic psychological needs is one of the primary conditions for achieving happiness and life satisfaction. However, the role of these components in the student population has not been studied. Aims: The aim of this study was to evaluate the mediating role of satisfying basic psychological needs in the relationship between personality traits and students' happiness. Methods: For this purpose, a sample of 356 male and female students was selected from among the students of universities of Golestan province using stepwise cluster sampling. Selected individuals completed the NEO Personality Traits Questionnaire (NEO-PI) (1992), the Gugnea Psychological Basic Needs Scale (PBNS-G) (2003), and the Oxford Happiness Index (OHI) (2002). Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) and LISREL software version 8.81. Results: The results showed that in all the fit indices, the structural model for Happiness has a suitable and acceptable fit. According to the research results, neuroticism was negatively correlated to happiness (-0.29), extroversion (0.31), and psychological basic needs satisfaction (0.50) positively significantly correlated with happiness (P< 0.05).in total 36% of the variance of the happiness is predicted and explained by these variables. Conclusion: It seems that students who experience lower neuroticism and higher extraversion experience more happiness. In addition, the satisfaction of basic psychological needs was associated with increased happiness of students

INCIM: A community-based algorithm for influence maximization problem under the linear threshold model

With the proliferation of graph applications in social network analysis, biological networks, WWW and many other areas, a great demand of efficient and scalable algorithms for graph mining is rising. In many applications, finding the most influential nodes in the network is informative for the network analyzers in order to track the spread of information, disease and rumors. The problem of finding the top k influential nodes of a directed graph G=(V,E) such that the influence spread of these nodes will be maximized has long been exposed and many algorithms have been proposed to deal with this problem. Despite the useful characteristics of community structure in social networks, only a few works have studied the role of communities in the spread of influence in social networks. In this paper we propose an efficient algorithm (which has an acceptable response time even for large graphs) for finding the influential nodes in the graph under linear threshold model. We exploit the community structure of graph to find the influential communities, and then find the influence of each node as a combination of its local and global influences. We compare our algorithm with the state-of-the-art methods for influence maximization problem and the results of our experiments on real world datasets show that our approach outperforms the other ones in the quality of outputted influential nodes while still has acceptable running time and memory usage for large graphs