Changes in BMI, Duration of Overweight and Obesity, and Glucose Metabolism: 45 Years of Follow-up of a Birth Cohort

OBJECTIVE: Long-term implications of childhood obesity and BMI change over the life course for risk of type 2 diabetes remain uncertain. The objective was to establish whether there are effects on adult glucose metabolism of 1) sensitive periods of BMI gain or 2) long duration of overweight and obesity. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Participants in the 1958 British birth cohort with child to adult BMI and glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA(1c)) at 45 years (n = 7,855). RESULTS: Prevalence of type 2 diabetes or HbA(1c) ≥7 was 2%. BMI gains in child- and adulthood were associated with higher HbA(1c): for every SD of 5-year BMI increase from 0 to 7 years, there was a 75% (95% CI 1.42–2.16) increased risk of HbA(1c) ≥7, increasing to a 4.7-fold (3.12–7.00) risk for the interval 23–33 years. Associations for BMI gain in adulthood were related to attained BMI but were independent for the longer period birth (or 7 years) to 45 years. Duration of obesity was also associated with HbA(1c); compared with the never obese, those with childhood onset had a 23.9-fold risk (13.5–42.1) of HbA(1c) ≥7%; odds ratios were 16.0 (10.6–24.2) and 2.99 (1.77–5.03), respectively, for young and midadulthood onset. Similar trends by onset age were found in mean HbA(1c) levels and for onset of overweight. Those with the earliest age of onset had higher BMI and waist circumference at 45 years, which markedly explained the associations for onset age and HbA(1c). CONCLUSIONS: Excessive BMI gain across the life span and earlier onset of overweight/obesity are associated with impaired glucose metabolism, in part through attained adult BMI

The Chemistry Development Kit (CDK) v2.0: atom typing, depiction, molecular formulas, and substructure searching

open access articleBackground: The Chemistry Development Kit (CDK) is a widely used open source cheminformatics toolkit, providing data structures to represent chemical concepts along with methods to manipulate such structures and perform computations on them. The library implements a wide variety of cheminformatics algorithms ranging from chemical structure canonicalization to molecular descriptor calculations and pharmacophore perception. It is used in drug discovery, metabolomics, and toxicology. Over the last 10 years, the code base has grown significantly, however, resulting in many complex interdependencies among components and poor performance of many algorithms. Results: We report improvements to the CDK v2.0 since the v1.2 release series, specifically addressing the increased functional complexity and poor performance. We first summarize the addition of new functionality, such atom typing and molecular formula handling, and improvement to existing functionality that has led to significantly better performance for substructure searching, molecular fingerprints, and rendering of molecules. Second, we outline how the CDK has evolved with respect to quality control and the approaches we have adopted to ensure stability, including a code review mechanism. Conclusions: This paper highlights our continued efforts to provide a community driven, open source cheminformatics library, and shows that such collaborative projects can thrive over extended periods of time, resulting in a high-quality and performant library. By taking advantage of community support and contributions, we show that an open source cheminformatics project can act as a peer reviewed publishing platform for scientific computing software

Relationship Between Baseline Prostate-specific Antigen on Cancer Detection and Prostate Cancer Death:Long-term Follow-up from the European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer

Background: The European Association of Urology guidelines recommend a risk-based strategy for prostate cancer screening based on the first prostate-specific antigen (PSA) level and age. Objective: To analyze the impact of the first PSA level on prostate cancer (PCa) detection and PCa-specific mortality (PCSM) in a population-based screening trial (repeat screening every 2–4 yr). Design, setting, and participants: We evaluated 25 589 men aged 55–59 yr, 16 898 men aged 60–64 yr, and 12 936 men aged 65–69 yr who attended at least one screening visit in the European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer (ERSPC) trial (screening arm: repeat PSA testing every 2–4 yr and biopsy in cases with elevated PSA; control arm: no active screening offered) during 16-yr follow-up (FU). Outcome measurements and statistical analysis: We assessed the actuarial probability for any PCa and for clinically significant (cs)PCa (Gleason ≥7). Cox proportional-hazards regression was performed to assess whether the association between baseline PSA and PCSM was comparable for all age groups. A Lorenz curve was computed to assess the association between baseline PSA and PCSM for men aged 60–61 yr. Results and limitations: The overall actuarial probability at 16 yr ranged from 12% to 16% for any PCa and from 3.7% to 5.7% for csPCa across the age groups. The actuarial probability of csPCa at 16 yr ranged from 1.2–1.5% for men with PSA &lt;1.0 ng/ml to 13.3–13.8% for men with PSA ≥3.0 ng/ml. The association between baseline PSA and PCSM differed marginally among the three age groups. A Lorenz curve for men aged 60–61 yr showed that 92% of lethal PCa cases occurred among those with PSA above the median (1.21 ng/ml). In addition, for men initially screened at age 60–61 yr with baseline PSA &lt;2 ng/ml, further continuation of screening is unlikely to be beneficial after the age of 68–70 yr if PSA is still &lt;2 ng/ml. No case of PCSM emerged in the subsequent 8 yr (up to age 76–78 yr). A limitation is that these results may not be generalizable to an opportunistic screening setting or to contemporary clinical practice. Conclusions: In all age groups, baseline PSA can guide decisions on the repeat screening interval. Baseline PSA of &lt;1.0 ng/ml for men aged 55–69 yr is a strong indicator to delay or stop further screening. Patient summary: In prostate cancer screening, the patient's baseline PSA (prostate-specific antigen) level can be used to guide decisions on when to repeat screening. The PSA test when used according to current knowledge is valuable in helping to reduce the burden of prostate cancer.</p

Information Revolutions and the Overthrow of Autocratic Regimes

This paper presents a model of information quality and political regime change. If enough citizens act against a regime, it is overthrown. Citizens are imperfectly informed about how hard this will be and the regime can, at a cost, engage in propaganda so that at face-value it seems hard. The citizens are rational and evaluate their information knowing the regime's incentives. The model makes three predictions. First, even rational citizens may not correctly infer the amount of manipulation. Second, as the intrinsic quality of information available becomes sufficiently high, the regime is more likely to survive. Third, the regime benefits from ambiguity about the amount of manipulation, and consequently, as it becomes cheaper to manipulate, the regime is also more likely to survive. Key results of the benchmark static model extend to a simple dynamic setting where there are waves of unrest

A Wake-Up Call: Information Contagion and Strategic Uncertainty

A successful speculative attack against one currency is a wake-up call for speculators elsewhere. Currency speculators have an incentive to acquire costly information about exposures across countries to infer whether their monetary authority's ability to defend its currency is weakened. Information acquisition per se increases the likelihood of speculative currency attacks via heightened strategic uncertainty among speculators. Contagion occurs even if speculators learn that there is no exposure. Our new contagion mechanism offers a compelling explanation for the 1997 Asian currency crisis and the 1998 Russian crisis, both of which spread across countries with seemingly unrelated fundamentals and limited interconnectedness. The proposed contagion mechanism applies generally in global coordination games and can also be applied to bank runs, sovereign debt crises, and political regime change

The successes and challenges of harmonising juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) datasets to create a large-scale JIA data resource

Background CLUSTER is a UK consortium focussed on precision medicine research in JIA/JIA-Uveitis. As part of this programme, a large-scale JIA data resource was created by harmonizing and pooling existing real-world studies. Here we present challenges and progress towards creation of this unique large JIA dataset. Methods Four real-world studies contributed data; two clinical datasets of JIA patients starting first-line methotrexate (MTX) or tumour necrosis factor inhibitors (TNFi) were created. Variables were selected based on a previously developed core dataset, and encrypted NHS numbers were used to identify children contributing similar data across multiple studies. Results Of 7013 records (from 5435 individuals), 2882 (1304 individuals) represented the same child across studies. The final datasets contain 2899 (MTX) and 2401 (TNFi) unique patients; 1018 are in both datasets. Missingness ranged from 10 to 60% and was not improved through harmonisation. Conclusions Combining data across studies has achieved dataset sizes rarely seen in JIA, invaluable to progressing research. Losing variable specificity and missingness, and their impact on future analyses requires further consideration

A systematic review of physiological methods in rodent pharmacological MRI studies

Rationale: Pharmacological magnetic resonance imaging (phMRI) provides an approach to study effects of drug challenges on brain processes. Elucidating mechanisms of drug action helps us to better understand the workings of neurotransmitter systems, map brain function or facilitate drug development. phMRI is increasingly used in preclinical research employing rodent models; however, data interpretation and integration are complicated by the use of different experimental approaches between laboratories. In particular, the effects of different anaesthetic regimes upon neuronal and haemodynamic processes and baseline physiology could be problematic. Objectives: This paper investigates how differences in phMRI research methodologies are manifested and considers associated implications, placing particular emphasis on choice of anaesthetic regimes. Methods: A systematic review of rodent phMRI studies was conducted. Factors such as those describing anaesthetic regimes (e.g. agent, dosage) and parameters relating to physiological maintenance (e.g. ventilatory gases) and MRI method were recorded. Results: We identified 126 eligible studies and found that the volatile agents isoflurane (43.7 %) and halothane (33.3 %) were most commonly used for anaesthesia, but dosage and mixture of ventilatory gases varied substantially between laboratories. Relevant physiological parameters were usually recorded, although 32 % of studies did not provide cardiovascular measures. Conclusions: Anaesthesia and animal preparation can influence phMRI data profoundly. The variation of anaesthetic type, dosage regime and ventilatory gases makes consolidation of research findings (e.g. within a specific neurotransmitter system) difficult. Standardisation of a small(er) number of preclinical phMRI research methodologies and/or increased consideration of approaches that do not require anaesthesia is necessary to address these challenges

No Differential Regulation of Dopamine Transporter (DAT) and Vesicular Monoamine Transporter 2 (VMAT2) Binding in a Primate Model of Parkinson Disease

Radioligands for DAT and VMAT2 are widely used presynaptic markers for assessing dopamine (DA) nerve terminals in Parkinson disease (PD). Previous in vivo imaging and postmortem studies suggest that these transporter sites may be regulated as the numbers of nigrostriatal neurons change in pathologic conditions. To investigate this issue, we used in vitro quantitative autoradioradiography to measure striatal DAT and VMAT2 specific binding in postmortem brain from 14 monkeys after unilateral internal carotid artery infusion of 1-Methyl-4-Phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP) with doses varying from 0 to 0.31 mg/kg. Quantitative estimates of the number of tyrosine hydroxylase (TH)-immunoreactive (ir) neurons in substantia nigra (SN) were determined with unbiased stereology, and quantitative autoradiography was used to measure DAT and VMAT2 striatal specific binding. Striatal VMAT2 and DAT binding correlated with striatal DA (rs = 0.83, rs = 0.80, respectively, both with n = 14, p<0.001) but only with nigra TH-ir cells when nigral cell loss was 50% or less (r = 0.93, n = 8, p = 0.001 and r = 0.91, n = 8, p = 0.002 respectively). Reduction of VMAT2 and DAT striatal specific binding sites strongly correlated with each other (r = 0.93, n = 14, p<0.0005). These similar changes in DAT and VMAT2 binding sites in the striatal terminal fields of the surviving nigrostriatal neurons demonstrate that there is no differential regulation of these two sites at 2 months after MPTP infusion

Developments and applications of the OPTIMADE API for materials discovery, design, and data exchange

The Open Databases Integration for Materials Design (OPTIMADE) application programming interface (API) empowers users with holistic access to a growing federation of databases, enhancing the accessibility and discoverability of materials and chemical data. Since the first release of the OPTIMADE specification (v1.0), the API has undergone significant development, leading to the upcoming v1.2 release, and has underpinned multiple scientific studies. In this work, we highlight the latest features of the API format, accompanying software tools, and provide an update on the implementation of OPTIMADE in contributing materials databases. We end by providing several use cases that demonstrate the utility of the OPTIMADE API in materials research that continue to drive its ongoing development