Recommendations for ICT use in Alzheimer's Disease assessment: Monaco CTAD expert meeting

International audienceAlzheimer disease (AD) and other related dementia represent a major challenge for health care systems within the aging population. It is therefore important to develop better instruments for assessing disease severity and disease progression to optimize patient's care and support to care provide rs, and also provide better tools for clinical research. In this area, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are of particular interest. Such techniques enable accurate and standardized assessments of patients' performance and actions in real time and real life situations. The aim of this article is to provide basic recommendation concerning the development and the use of ICT for Alzheimer's disease and related disorders. During he ICT and Mental Health workshop (CTAD meeting held in Monaco on the 30th October 2012) an expert panel was set up to prepare the first recommendations for the use of ICT in dementia research. The expert panel included geriatrician, epidemiologist, neurologist, psychiatrist, psychologist, ICT engineers, representatives from the industry and patient association. The recommendations are divided into three sections corresponding to 1/ the clinical targets of interest for the use of ICT, 2/ the cond itions, the type of sensors and the outputs (scores) that could be used and obtained, 3/ finally the last section concerns specifically the use of ICT within clinical trials

People with Dementia in Sub-Saharan Africa: From Support to Abuse by Caregivers: Results of EPIDEMCA-FU Program in Congo

Background/Aims: Dementia is an emerging public health problem in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). In SSA, the stigma suffered by people with dementia (PWD) can be strongly linked to pejorative social representations, interfering in social relationships with informal caregivers. The objective of the study was to analyze the consequences of social representations of PWD in social interactions with informal caregivers. Methods: A qualitative study was conducted in Republic of Congo among 93 interviewees. Nondirectional interviews were conducted in local languages and complemented by participating observations. The collected data were transcribed literally, synthesized, and then coded to allow extraction and organization of text segments. Results: Informal caregivers, daughters-in-laws, were considered as abusers and granddaughters as benevolent. The leaders of syncretic churches and traditional healers were the first therapeutic itineraries of PWD, due to pejorative social representations of disease. Of these, some PWD have appeared at front of a customary jurisdiction for accusations of witchcraft. Dementia, perceived as a mysterious disease by informal caregivers, wasn’t medicalized by leaders of syncretic churches, traditional healers, nurses, or general practitioners. Conclusion: Stigma, generated by social representations, can change the patient’s behavior and the one of informal caregivers, leading to time delay in the search for appropriate help

Metabolic Syndrome and Risk for Incident Alzheimer's Disease or Vascular Dementia: The Three-City Study

OBJECTIVE—Associations between metabolic syndrome and its individual components with risk of incident dementia and its different subtypes are inconsistent

Pattern of polyphenol intake and the long-term risk of dementia in older persons

International audienc

GCN2 phosphorylates HIV-1 integrase and decreases HIV-1 replication by limiting viral integration

AbstractGCN2 is a serine/threonine kinase involved in cellular stress response related to amino acid starvation. Previously, we showed that GCN2 interacts with HIV-1 integrase and is activated during HIV-1 infection. Herein, we identified HIV-1 integrase as a previously unknown substrate of GCN2 in vitro with a major site of phosphorylation at residue S255 located in the C-terminal domain of HIV-1 integrase. The underlying mechanism was investigated and it appeared that the integrase active site was required in order for GCN2 to target the integrase residue S255. Moreover, various integrases from other retroviruses (e.g. MLV, ASV) were also recognized as a substrate by GCN2. In cells, HIV-1 lentiviral particles harboring mutation at integrase position 255 were affected in their replication. Preventing phosphorylation resulted in an increase in infectivity that correlated with an increase in viral DNA integration. Infectivity of MLV was also higher in cells knocked-out for GCN2 suggesting a conserved mechanism to control viral replication. Altogether, our data suggest that GCN2 may constitute a general guardian of genome stability by regulating foreign DNA integration and as such be part of the antiviral armamentarium of the cell.</jats:p

Angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma is the most common T-cell lymphoma in two distinct French information data sets.

International audienceno abstrac

SelTarbase, a database of human mononucleotide-microsatellite mutations and their potential impact to tumorigenesis and immunology

About 15% of human colorectal cancers and, at varying degrees, other tumor entities as well as nearly all tumors related to Lynch syndrome are hallmarked by microsatellite instability (MSI) as a result of a defective mismatch repair system. The functional impact of resulting mutations depends on their genomic localization. Alterations within coding mononucleotide repeat tracts (MNRs) can lead to protein truncation and formation of neopeptides, whereas alterations within untranslated MNRs can alter transcription level or transcript stability. These mutations may provide selective advantage or disadvantage to affected cells. They may further concern the biology of microsatellite unstable cells, e.g. by generating immunogenic peptides induced by frameshifts mutations. The Selective Targets database (http://www.seltarbase.org) is a curated database of a growing number of public MNR mutation data in microsatellite unstable human tumors. Regression calculations for various MSI–H tumor entities indicating statistically deviant mutation frequencies predict TGFBR2, BAX, ACVR2A and others that are shown or highly suspected to be involved in MSI tumorigenesis. Many useful tools for further analyzing genomic DNA, derived wild-type and mutated cDNAs and peptides are integrated. A comprehensive database of all human coding, untranslated, non-coding RNA- and intronic MNRs (MNR_ensembl) is also included. Herewith, SelTarbase presents as a plenty instrument for MSI-carcinogenesis-related research, diagnostics and therapy