Effectiveness of a home-based telerehabilitation program for post-Covid patients: preliminary results

The aim of this study was to quantify the effectiveness of a tele-rehabilitation program for post-Covid-19 patients who reported disabling motor and respiratory symptoms after the infection. Nine post-covid patients were assessed in three session: at hospital admittance time (T0), at discharge time (T1) and at the end of the tele-rehabilitation program (T2) via instrumental (i.e. instrumented six-minute walking test and handgrip) and clinical (i.e. spirometry) tests. So far, just the data coming from the instrumented tests of three patients who completed the program were considered, showing an increasing trend in terms of both motor and strength parameters between the considered time points. The preliminary results suggested that the proposed tele-rehabilitation approach could have positive effects on motor function in post-covid patients

DETERMINATION OF LEVEL EXPRESSION OF mRNA SPLICING VARIANTS FOR DR3 IN BLOOD CELLS IN INFECTIOUS MONONUCLEOSIS

The DR3 «death receptor» plays an important role in the initiation of apoptosis, proliferation, or inflammation. This receptor is shown to be involved in various diseases, including infectious conditions. Different variants of mRNA DR3 are formed as a result of alternative splicing. These variant transcripts encode membrane and soluble forms of the receptor which have different functions. Features of their expression and contribution of individual DR3 variants to the immune pathogenesis of infectious mononucleosis (IM) are poorely understood.The purpose of this work was to develop, validate and test the techniques of DR3 gene expression assays, as well as to evaluate the DR3 mRNA splice variants by means of real-time RT-PCR and RT-PCR in the IM patients.The original version of real-time RT-PCR allowed to determine relative amounts of DR3 mRNA, DR3 membrane variants (LARD1a + LARD8), and ratios of mRNAs encoding membrane and soluble forms of the receptor. The technique proved to be specific and sensitive (a semi-quantitative detection limit = 34-35 cycles) when tested in healthy volunteers and patients with acute infectious mononucleosis (AIM). Lower expression levels were shown for two alternative membrane variants of DR3 mRNA (LARD1b and DR3beta) thus regarding these isoforms as minor fractions. The relative levels of total DR3 mRNA expression were decreased in patients with AIM, as compared to healthy volunteers, whereas mRNA expression of membrane receptor variants did not differ between IM and controls.To determine a qualitative contribution of either LARD1a and LARD8 variants into the expression of membrane forms of DR3, a two-step «nested» version of RT-PCR has been developed. It was shown that, in majority of control and IM samples, both main LARD1a, and alternative LARD8 membrane forms are contributing to mRNA expression of membrane DR3 variants.The presented methods for evaluation of expression and occurrence of DR3 mRNA variants allow to characterize changes in the expression and function of this receptor associated with infectious mononucleosis. Further investigations are required to test the technique in larger number of samples

Sunflower and climate change: Possibilities of adaptation through breeding and genomic selection

Due to its ability to grow in different agroecological conditions and its moderate drought tolerance, sunflower may become the oil crop of preference in the future, especially in the light of global environmental changes. In the field conditions, sunflower crop is often simultaneously challenged by different biotic and abiotic stresses, and understanding the shared mechanisms contributing to two or more stresses occurring individually or simultaneously is important to improve crop productivity under foreseeable complex stress situations. Exploitation of the available plant genetic resources in combination with the use of modern molecular tools for genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and application of genomic selection (GS) could lead to considerable improvements in sunflower, especially with regard to different stresses and better adaptation to the climate change. In this chapter we present a review of climate-smart (CS) traits and respective genetic resources and tools for their introduction into the cultivated sunflower, thus making it the oil crop resilient to the extreme climatic conditions and well-known and emerging pests and diseases. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019