5,832 research outputs found
White blood cell count and risk of incident lung cancer in the UK Biobank
Background The contribution of measurable immunological/inflammatory parameters to lung cancer development remains unclear, particularly among never-smokers. We investigated the relationship between total and differential white blood cell (WBC) counts and incident lung cancer risk overall and among subgroups defined by smoking status and sex in the United Kingdom (UK). Methods We evaluated 424,407 adults aged 37-73 years from the UK Biobank. Questionnaires, physical measurements, and blood were administered/collected at baseline in 2006-2010. Complete blood cell counts were measured using standard methods. Lung cancer diagnoses and histological classifications were obtained from cancer registries. Multivariable Cox regression models were used to estimate the hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) of incident lung cancer in relation to quartiles (Q) of total WBC and subtype-specific counts, with Q1 as the reference. Results There were 1,493 incident cases diagnosed over an average 7-year follow-up. Overall, the highest quartile of total WBC count was significantly associated with elevated lung cancer risk (HRQ4=1.67, 95% CI:1.41-1.98). Among women, increased risks were found in current-smokers (ncases/n=244/19,464, HRQ4=2.15, 95% CI:1.46-3.16), former-smokers (ncases/n=280/69,198, HRQ4=1.75, 95% CI:1.24-2.47), and never-smokers without environmental tobacco smoke exposure (ncases/n=108/111,294, HRQ4=1.93, 95% CI:1.11-3.35). Among men, stronger associations were identified in current-smokers (ncases/n=329/22,934, HRQ4=2.95, 95% CI:2.04-4.26) and former-smokers (ncases/n= 358/71,616, HRQ4=2.38, 95% CI:1.74-3.27) but not in never-smokers. Findings were similar for lung adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma and were driven primarily by elevated neutrophil fractions. Conclusions Elevated WBCs could potentially be one of many important markers for increased lung cancer risk, especially among never-smoking women and ever-smoking men
Seroprevalence of transfusion transmissible infections (TTI), in first time blood donors in Abeokuta, Nigeria.
Background: Transfusion transmissible infections, such as HIV, HBV, HCV and syphilis are on the rise and pose a threat to blood safety.Objective: To determine prevalence and demographic profiles of TTI’s among first time blood donors in Abeokuta, Nigeria. Methods: The study was conducted between February to November 2013; 130 first time blood donors were tested for the presence of HIV, HBsAg, HCV antibodies and Treponema palidium antibodies using EIA based rapid immunochromatographic kits. Data analysis was done using SPSS with a level of significance of p<0.05.Results: Prevalence rates to HIV, HBsAg, HCV antibody, were 6.2% (n=8), 10% (n=13) and 1.5% (n=2), there was 0% prevalence to Treponema palidium antibodies. Group specific prevalence rates revealed that educational status was associated with HBsAg positivity (p = 0.028), donors with a history of previous blood transfusion was also statistically associated with HIV sero-reactivity (p = 0.013).Conclusions: High levels of HBsAg and HIV were observed, there is need to revise the donor testing algorithm in Nigeria in line with the prevalence of TTI’s. We also advocate that a National surveillance system for TTI’s be established through our National blood transfusion service (NBTS) program, a second serological test is also suggested to reduce the risk of occult HBV infection in Nigeria.Key words: Prevalence rate, TTI’s, Blood donors, Nigeri
Spatio-Temporal Branching for Motion Prediction using Motion Increments
Human motion prediction (HMP) has emerged as a popular research topic due to
its diverse applications, but it remains a challenging task due to the
stochastic and aperiodic nature of future poses. Traditional methods rely on
hand-crafted features and machine learning techniques, which often struggle to
model the complex dynamics of human motion. Recent deep learning-based methods
have achieved success by learning spatio-temporal representations of motion,
but these models often overlook the reliability of motion data. Additionally,
the temporal and spatial dependencies of skeleton nodes are distinct. The
temporal relationship captures motion information over time, while the spatial
relationship describes body structure and the relationships between different
nodes. In this paper, we propose a novel spatio-temporal branching network
using incremental information for HMP, which decouples the learning of
temporal-domain and spatial-domain features, extracts more motion information,
and achieves complementary cross-domain knowledge learning through knowledge
distillation. Our approach effectively reduces noise interference and provides
more expressive information for characterizing motion by separately extracting
temporal and spatial features. We evaluate our approach on standard HMP
benchmarks and outperform state-of-the-art methods in terms of prediction
accuracy
Characterisation of the Toxoplasma gondii tyrosine transporter and its phosphorylation by the calcium-dependent protein kinase 3.
Toxoplasma gondii parasites rapidly exit their host cell when exposed to calcium ionophores. Calcium-dependent protein kinase 3 (TgCDPK3) was previously identified as a key mediator in this process, as TgCDPK3 knockout (∆cdpk3) parasites fail to egress in a timely manner. Phosphoproteomic analysis comparing WT with ∆cdpk3 parasites revealed changes in the TgCDPK3-dependent phosphoproteome that included proteins important for regulating motility, but also metabolic enzymes, indicating that TgCDPK3 controls processes beyond egress. Here we have investigated a predicted direct target of TgCDPK3, ApiAT5-3, a putative transporter of the major facilitator superfamily, and show that it is rapidly phosphorylated at serine 56 after induction of calcium signalling. Conditional knockout of apiAT5-3 results in transcriptional upregulation of most ribosomal subunits, but no alternative transporters, and subsequent parasite death. Mutating the S56 to a non-phosphorylatable alanine leads to a fitness cost, suggesting that phosphorylation of this residue is beneficial, albeit not essential, for tyrosine import. Using a combination of metabolomics and heterologous expression, we confirmed a primary role in tyrosine import for ApiAT5-3. However, no significant differences in tyrosine import could be detected in phosphorylation site mutants showing that if tyrosine transport is affected by S56 phosphorylation, its regulatory role is subtle
Association between interpretation flexibility and emotional health in an anxious sample: The challenge of measuring flexible adoption of multiple perspectives
Interpreting ambiguous situations in a rigidly negative manner contributes to emotional disorders. Although negative interpretation biases have been well studied in relation to anxiety and depression, the relationship between interpretation flexibility (vs. rigidity) and emotional health remains understudied. The present study is a secondary analysis to test the hypothesis that higher interpretation flexibility is associated with better emotional health, as indicated by lower anxiety and depression levels, and higher quality of life. Here, interpretation flexibility focuses specifically on the ability to recognize multiple possible interpretations within and across ambiguous situations. Using baseline data from N = 939 high trait-anxious community participants who enrolled in an online anxiety intervention, multiple ways of computing interpretation flexibility were applied to help the field learn how different operationalizations can lead to varied conclusions about the connection between interpretation flexibility and emotional health. Using two measures of interpretation style, four approaches (some pre-registered , some exploratory) to computing interpretation flexibility were tested using an internal replication analytic approach. Results varied across type of approach, but in general, contrary to hypotheses, results indicated that higher interpretation flexibility was either unrelated to, or associated with higher, anxiety, and depression, and lower quality of life
Topological Surface States Protected From Backscattering by Chiral Spin Texture
Topological insulators are a new class of insulators in which a bulk gap for
electronic excitations is generated by strong spin orbit coupling. These novel
materials are distinguished from ordinary insulators by the presence of gapless
metallic boundary states, akin to the chiral edge modes in quantum Hall
systems, but with unconventional spin textures. Recently, experiments and
theoretical efforts have provided strong evidence for both two- and
three-dimensional topological insulators and their novel edge and surface
states in semiconductor quantum well structures and several Bi-based compounds.
A key characteristic of these spin-textured boundary states is their
insensitivity to spin-independent scattering, which protects them from
backscattering and localization. These chiral states are potentially useful for
spin-based electronics, in which long spin coherence is critical, and also for
quantum computing applications, where topological protection can enable
fault-tolerant information processing. Here we use a scanning tunneling
microscope (STM) to visualize the gapless surface states of the
three-dimensional topological insulator BiSb and to examine their scattering
behavior from disorder caused by random alloying in this compound. Combining
STM and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, we show that despite strong
atomic scale disorder, backscattering between states of opposite momentum and
opposite spin is absent. Our observation of spin-selective scattering
demonstrates that the chiral nature of these states protects the spin of the
carriers; they therefore have the potential to be used for coherent spin
transport in spintronic devices.Comment: to be appear in Nature on August 9, 200
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