Hodgkin's lymphoma presenting with heart failure: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>Cardiac involvement in malignant lymphoma is one of the least investigated subjects in oncology. This article reports a case of cardiac involvement in Hodgkin's lymphoma which presented as heart failure.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>We report the case of an 8-year-old Afghan girl with Hodgkin's lymphoma. The disease presented with systemic signs and symptoms, including abdominal distension, weakness, pallor, chills, fever, generalized edema, hepatosplenomegaly and generalized lymphadenopathy, as well as signs of heart failure. Test results showed a rare form of heart metastasis.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We report a case of Hodgkin's lymphoma with metastasis to the heart, detected premortem. Although the involvement of the heart in a malignancy is relatively common, premortem detection is unusual and only few studies have reported it in the literature.</p

Comparative analysis of four medicinal floras: phylogenetic methods to identify cross-cultural patterns

Summary Four medicinal floras were compared using phylogenetic methods, to test whether there are shared patterns in medical plant use at the level of the whole medicinal floras, or for specific therapeutic applications. Checklists of the native plants and medicinal plants of Oman were compiled, and analyzed alongside existing checklists for Nepal, the Cape of South Africa and New Zealand. We reconstructed a plant phylogeny at generic level for Oman, and a new, more inclusive phylogeny to represent the genera found in all four local floras. Methods from community phylogenetics were used to identify clustering and overdispersion of the plants used. The impacts of using local or more inclusive phylogenies and different null model selections were explored. We found that Omani medicinal plant use emphasizes the same deep lineages of flowering plants as the other three medicinal floras, most strongly when comparing Omani and Nepalese medicinal plants. Drivers of this similarity might be floristic composition, opportunity for exchange of knowledge and shared beliefs in the causation of illness. Phylogenetic patterns among therapeutic applications are cross‐predictive within and between cultures, and must be interpreted with care since inappropriate use of null models can result in spurious similarity. High levels of cross‐predictivity suggest that targeting plants used for specific therapeutic applications to identify specific bioactives may have limited value. We outline the questions that might be addressed using a global phylogeny and medicinal plant checklists, suggest the best methods for future studies and propose how findings might be interpreted

Geostationary Coastal and Air Pollution Events (GeoCAPE) Wide Angle Spectrometer (WAS)

The GeoCAPE Wide Angle Spectrometer (WAS) Study was a revisit of the COEDI Study from 2012. The customer primary goals were to keep mass, volume and cost to a minimum while meeting the science objectives and maximizing flight opportunities by fitting on the largest number of GEO accommodations possible. Riding on a commercial GEO satellite minimizes total mission costs. For this study, it is desired to increase the coverage rate,km2min, while maintaining ground sample size, 375m, and spectral resolution, 0.4-0.5nm native resolution. To be able to do this, the IFOV was significantly increased, hence the wide angle moniker. The field of view for COEDI was +0.6 degrees or (2048) 375m ground pixels. The WAS Threshold (the IDL study baseline design) is +2.4 degrees IDL study baseline design) is +2.4 degrees

Multiple thromboembolism with multiple causes in a 69-year-old woman: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>Aggressive, recurrent embolisms require accurate etiologic diagnosis. We describe the case of a 69-year-old Italian Caucasian woman with recurrent arterial embolisms in whom several sources and triggers of thrombosis were detected.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>The patient, a 69-year-old Italian Caucasian woman, presented with a systemic embolism that was initially attributed to atrial fibrillation. The recurrence of embolisms despite anti-thrombotic therapy prompted a re-evaluation of the clinical presentation. New potential causes of thrombosis emerged in this patient, including thrombocytosis associated with the <it>JAK2 V617F </it>mutation and the very rare mural thrombosis of the descending aorta. A mural thrombus in the pulmonary artery was detected contiguous with the aortic mural thrombosis, raising the possibility of a clinically silent ductus Botalli as the initiating event. The patient was treated with warfarin, aspirin, hydroxyurea, and surgery.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The diagnosis was achieved via systematic use of imaging procedures and reconsideration of blood tests performed to explore the diagnosis of thrombosis. This allowed a deeper and more detailed analysis of the case beyond the conventional approach, which would have aimed to identify one cause for the condition at hand, in this case, atrial fibrillation. The broader approach that we used resulted in the diagnosis of multiple embolisms from multiple sites and multiple causes.</p

Striatal Dopamine Transmission Is Subtly Modified in Human A53Tα-Synuclein Overexpressing Mice

Mutations in, or elevated dosage of, SNCA, the gene for α-synuclein (α-syn), cause familial Parkinson's disease (PD). Mouse lines overexpressing the mutant human A53Tα-syn may represent a model of early PD. They display progressive motor deficits, abnormal cellular accumulation of α-syn, and deficits in dopamine-dependent corticostriatal plasticity, which, in the absence of overt nigrostriatal degeneration, suggest there are age-related deficits in striatal dopamine (DA) signalling. In addition A53Tα-syn overexpression in cultured rodent neurons has been reported to inhibit transmitter release. Therefore here we have characterized for the first time DA release in the striatum of mice overexpressing human A53Tα-syn, and explored whether A53Tα-syn overexpression causes deficits in the release of DA. We used fast-scan cyclic voltammetry to detect DA release at carbon-fibre microelectrodes in acute striatal slices from two different lines of A53Tα-syn-overexpressing mice, at up to 24 months. In A53Tα-syn overexpressors, mean DA release evoked by a single stimulus pulse was not different from wild-types, in either dorsal striatum or nucleus accumbens. However the frequency responsiveness of DA release was slightly modified in A53Tα-syn overexpressors, and in particular showed slight deficiency when the confounding effects of striatal ACh acting at presynaptic nicotinic receptors (nAChRs) were antagonized. The re-release of DA was unmodified after single-pulse stimuli, but after prolonged stimulation trains, A53Tα-syn overexpressors showed enhanced recovery of DA release at old age, in keeping with elevated striatal DA content. In summary, A53Tα-syn overexpression in mice causes subtle changes in the regulation of DA release in the striatum. While modest, these modifications may indicate or contribute to striatal dysfunction

Seed Mucilage Improves Seedling Emergence of a Sand Desert Shrub

The success of seedling establishment of desert plants is determined by seedling emergence response to an unpredictable precipitation regime. Sand burial is a crucial and frequent environmental stress that impacts seedling establishment on sand dunes. However, little is known about the ecological role of seed mucilage in seedling emergence in arid sandy environments. We hypothesized that seed mucilage enhances seedling emergence in a low precipitation regime and under conditions of sand burial. In a greenhouse experiment, two types of Artemisia sphaerocephala achenes (intact and demucilaged) were exposed to different combinations of burial depth (0, 5, 10, 20, 40 and 60 mm) and irrigation regimes (low, medium and high, which simulated the precipitation amount and frequency in May, June and July in the natural habitat, respectively). Seedling emergence increased with increasing irrigation. It was highest at 5 mm sand burial depth and ceased at burial depths greater than 20 mm in all irrigation regimes. Mucilage significantly enhanced seedling emergence at 0, 5 and 10 mm burial depths in low irrigation, at 0 and 5 mm burial depths in medium irrigation and at 0 and 10 mm burial depths in high irrigation. Seed mucilage also reduced seedling mortality at the shallow sand burial depths. Moreover, mucilage significantly affected seedling emergence time and quiescence and dormancy percentages. Our findings suggest that seed mucilage plays an ecologically important role in successful seedling establishment of A. sphaerocephala by improving seedling emergence and reducing seedling mortality in stressful habitats of the sandy desert environment

Home Range Use and Movement Patterns of Non-Native Feral Goats in a Tropical Island Montane Dry Landscape

Advances in wildlife telemetry and remote sensing technology facilitate studies of broad-scale movements of ungulates in relation to phenological shifts in vegetation. In tropical island dry landscapes, home range use and movements of non-native feral goats (Capra hircus) are largely unknown, yet this information is important to help guide the conservation and restoration of some of the world’s most critically endangered ecosystems. We hypothesized that feral goats would respond to resource pulses in vegetation by traveling to areas of recent green-up. To address this hypothesis, we fitted six male and seven female feral goats with Global Positioning System (GPS) collars equipped with an Argos satellite upload link to examine goat movements in relation to the plant phenology using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). Movement patterns of 50% of males and 40% of females suggested conditional movement between non-overlapping home ranges throughout the year. A shift in NDVI values corresponded with movement between primary and secondary ranges of goats that exhibited long-distance movement, suggesting that vegetation phenology as captured by NDVI is a good indicator of the habitat and movement patterns of feral goats in tropical island dry landscapes. In the context of conservation and restoration of tropical island landscapes, the results of our study identify how non-native feral goats use resources across a broad landscape to sustain their populations and facilitate invasion of native plant communities

Role of Alpha-Synuclein Protein Levels in Mitochondrial Morphology and Cell Survival in Cell Lines

α-Synuclein is highly associated with some neurodegeneration and malignancies. Overexpressing wild-type or mutant α-synuclein promotes neuronal death by mitochondrial dysfunction, the underlying mechanisms of which remain poorly defined. It was recently reported that α-synuclein expression could directly lead to mitochondrial fragmentation in vitro and in vivo, which may be due to α-synuclein localization on mitochondria. Here, we applied a double staining method to demonstrate mitochondrial morphogenetic changes in cells overexpressed with α-synuclein. We show that mitochondrial localization of α-synuclein was increased following its overexpression in three distinct cell lines, including HeLa, SH-SY5Y, and PC12 cells, but no alteration in mitochondrial morphology was detected. However, α-synuclein knockdown prevents MPP+-induced mitochondrial fragmentation in SH-SY5Y and PC12 cells. These data suggest that α-synuclein protein levels hardly affect mitochondrial morphology in normal cell lines, but may have some influence on that under certain environmental conditions

A53T-alpha-synuclein-overexpression in the mouse nigrostriatal pathway leads to early increase of 14-3-3 epsilon and late increase of GFAP

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder frequent at old age characterized by atrophy of the nigrostriatal projection. Overexpression and A53T-mutation of the presynaptic, vesicle-associated chaperone alpha-synuclein are known to cause early-onset autosomal dominant PD. We previously generated mice with transgenic overexpression of human A53T-alpha-synuclein (A53T-SNCA) in dopaminergic substantia nigra neurons as a model of early PD. To elucidate the early and late effects of A53T-alpha-synuclein on the proteome of dopaminergic nerve terminals in the striatum, we now investigated expression profiles of young and old mice using two-dimensional fluorescence difference in gel electrophoresis (2D-DIGE) and mass spectrometry. In total, 15 proteins were upregulated and 2 downregulated. Mice before the onset of motor anomalies showed an upregulation of the spot containing 14-3-3 proteins, in particular the epsilon isoform, as well as altered levels of chaperones, vesicle trafficking and bioenergetics proteins. In old mice, the persistent upregulation of 14-3-3 proteins was aggravated by an increase of glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) suggesting astrogliosis due to initial neurodegeneration. Independent immunoblots corroborated GFAP upregulation and 14-3-3 upregulation for the epsilon isoform, and also detected significant eta and gamma changes. Only for 14-3-3 epsilon a corresponding mRNA increase was observed in midbrain, suggesting it is transcribed in dopaminergic perikarya and accumulates as protein in presynapses, together with A53T-SNCA. 14-3-3 proteins associate with alpha-synuclein in vitro and in pathognomonic Lewy bodies of PD brains. They act as chaperones in signaling, dopamine synthesis and stress response. Thus, their early dysregulation probably reflects a response to alpha-synuclein toxicity