Callous-Unemotional Traits Moderate Anticipated Guilt and Wrongness Judgments to Everyday Moral Transgressions in Adolescents.

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits observed during childhood and adolescence are thought to be precursors of psychopathic traits in adulthood. Adults with high levels of psychopathic traits typically present antisocial behavior. Such behavior can be indicative of atypical moral processing. Evidence suggests that moral dysfunction in these individuals may stem from a disruption of affective components of moral processing rather than from an inability to compute moral judgments per se. No study to date has tested if the dissociation between affective and cognitive dimensions of moral processing linked to psychopathic traits in adulthood is also linked to CU traits during development. Here, 47 typically developing adolescents with varying levels of CU traits completed a novel, animated cartoon task depicting everyday moral transgressions and indicated how they would feel in such situations and how morally wrong the situations were. Adolescents with higher CU traits reported reduced anticipated guilt and wrongness appraisals of the transgressions. However, our key finding was a significant interaction between CU traits and anticipated guilt in predicting wrongness judgments. The strength of the association between anticipated guilt and wrongness judgement was significantly weaker for those with higher levels of CU traits. This evidence extends our knowledge on the cognitive-affective processing deficits that may underlie moral dysfunction in youth who are at heightened risk for antisocial behavior and psychopathy in adulthood. Future longitudinal research is required to elucidate whether there is an increased dissociation between different components of moral processing from adolescence to adulthood for those with high psychopathic traits

Evidenciação de dolo e má-fé na improbidade administrativa pela recomendação do Ministério Público

O artigo pretende avaliar, por meio do método hipotético-dedutivo, a possibilidade de utilização da recomendação expedida pelo Ministério Público (art. 6º, XX, da Lei Complementar nº 75 de 1993, art. 23, VII, da Lei nº 8.625/93, Resolução nº 164 de 28 de março de 2017 do Conselho Nacional do Ministério Público) como alerta de dolo e má-fé nos atos de improbidade administrativas. Tendo por base o elevado número de absolvições nas ações de responsabilização por atos de improbidade fundamentadas na ausência de dolo e/ou má-fé do sujeito ativo, pretende-se construir, à luz do que já reconhecido pelos Tribunais Superiores acerca dos alertas emitidos pelos Tribunais de Contas (art. 59, §1º, da Lei Complementar nº 101, de 4 de maio de 2000), uma forma de evidenciar o elemento subjetivo dos agentes ímprobos na violação da probidade administrativa por meio da expedição de recomendações na tutela do patrimônio público. Conclui-se que a utilização de instrumentos preventivos no combate aos atos ímprobos, tais como a recomendação administrativa, fortalece uma atuação resolutiva no combate à corrupção e, ao mesmo tempo, robustece o arsenal probatório do demandante no âmbito da ação de responsabilização por ato de improbidade administrativa

Acquisition of pneumococci specific effector and regulatory Cd4+ T cells localising within human upper respiratory-tract mucosal lymphoid tissue

The upper respiratory tract mucosa is the location for commensal Streptococcus (S.) pneumoniae colonization and therefore represents a major site of contact between host and bacteria. The CD4(+) T cell response to pneumococcus is increasingly recognised as an important mediator of immunity that protects against invasive disease, with data suggesting a critical role for Th17 cells in mucosal clearance. By assessing CD4 T cell proliferative responses we demonstrate age-related sequestration of Th1 and Th17 CD4(+) T cells reactive to pneumococcal protein antigens within mucosal lymphoid tissue. CD25(hi) T cell depletion and utilisation of pneumococcal specific MHCII tetramers revealed the presence of antigen specific Tregs that utilised CTLA-4 and PDL-1 surface molecules to suppress these responses. The balance between mucosal effector and regulatory CD4(+) T cell immunity is likely to be critical to pneumococcal commensalism and the prevention of unwanted pathology associated with carriage. However, if dysregulated, such responses may render the host more susceptible to invasive pneumococcal infection and adversely affect the successful implementation of both polysaccharide-conjugate and novel protein-based pneumococcal vaccines

Studies on the virome of the entomopathogenic fungus Beauveria bassiana reveal novel dsRNA elements and mild hypervirulence.

© 2017 Kotta-Loizou, Coutts. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Kotta-Loizou I, Coutts RHA (2017) 'Studies on the Virome of the Entomopathogenic Fungus Beauveria bassiana Reveal Novel dsRNA Elements and Mild Hypervirulence', PLoS Pathogens, 13(1): e1006183. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1006183The entomopathogenic fungus Beauveria bassiana has a wide host range and is used as a biocontrol agent against arthropod pests. Mycoviruses have been described in phytopathogenic fungi while in entomopathogenic fungi their presence has been reported only rarely. Here we show that 21.3% of a collection of B. bassiana isolates sourced from worldwide locations, harbor dsRNA elements. Molecular characterization of these elements revealed the prevalence of mycoviruses belonging to the Partitiviridae and Totiviridae families, the smallest reported virus to date, belonging to the family Narnaviridae, and viruses unassigned to a family or genus. Of particular importance is the discovery of members of a newly proposed family Polymycoviridae in B. bassiana. Polymycoviruses, previously designated as tetramycoviruses, consist of four non-conventionally encapsidated capped dsRNAs. The presence of additional non-homologous genomic segments in B. bassiana polymycoviruses and other fungi illustrates the unprecedented dynamic nature of the viral genome. Finally, a comparison of virus-free and virus-infected isogenic lines derived from an exemplar B. bassiana isolate revealed a mild hypervirulent effect of mycoviruses on the growth of their host isolate and on its pathogenicity against the greater wax moth Galleria mellonella, highlighting for the first time the potential of mycoviruses as enhancers of biocontrol agents.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Ketamine induces a robust whole-brain connectivity pattern that can be differentially modulated by drugs of different mechanism and clinical profile

Ketamine, an N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) antagonist, has been studied in relation to the glutamate hypothesis of schizophrenia and increases dissociation, positive and negative symptom ratings. Ketamine effects brain function through changes in brain activity; these activity patterns can be modulated by pre-treatment of compounds known to attenuate the effects of ketamine on glutamate release. Ketamine also has marked effects on brain connectivity; we predicted that these changes would also be modulated by compounds known to attenuate glutamate release. Here, we perform task-free pharmacological magnetic resonance imaging (phMRI) to investigate the functional connectivity effects of ketamine in the brain and the potential modulation of these effects by pre-treatment of the compounds lamotrigine and risperidone, compounds hypothesised to differentially modulate glutamate release. Connectivity patterns were assessed by combining windowing, graph theory and multivariate Gaussian process classification. We demonstrate that ketamine has a robust effect on the functional connectivity of the human brain compared to saline (87.5 % accuracy). Ketamine produced a shift from a cortically centred, to a subcortically centred pattern of connections. This effect is strongly modulated by pre-treatment with risperidone (81.25 %) but not lamotrigine (43.75 %). Based on the differential effect of these compounds on ketamine response, we suggest the observed connectivity effects are primarily due to NMDAR blockade rather than downstream glutamatergic effects. The connectivity changes contrast with amplitude of response for which no differential effect between pre-treatments was detected, highlighting the necessity of these techniques in forming an informed view of the mechanistic effects of pharmacological compounds in the human brain

Genetic and Functional Role of TNF-alpha in the Development Trypanosoma cruzi Infection

TNF-alpha plays an important role in trypanocidal mechanisms and is related to tissue injury. This cytokine has been detected in the heart of human chagasic patients where it is associated with tissue damage. This study investigated whether TNF-alpha levels and the presence of genetic polymorphisms are associated with the presence of T. cruzi infection and/or with the development of the cardiac form in chronic chagasic patients. Genomic DNA of 300 subjects from an endemic area was extracted and analyzed by PCR using specific primers. TNF-alpha was assayed in culture supernatants by ELISA. An association was observed between the absence of the TNF-238A allele and negative serology. Furthermore, seropositive individuals carrying the TNF-238A allele produced significantly higher TNF-alpha levels without stimulation (p = 0.04) and after stimulation with LPS (p = 0.007) and T. cruzi antigens (p = 0.004). The present results suggest that the polymorphism at position -238 influences susceptibility to infection and that this allele is associated with higher TNF-alpha production in seropositive individuals

Static cut-points of hypertension and increased arterial stiffness in children and adolescents: The International Childhood Vascular Function Evaluation Consortium

Pediatric elevated blood pressure (BP) and hypertension are usually defined using traditional BP tables at the 90th and 95th percentiles, respectively, based on sex, age, and height, which are cumbersome to use in clinical practice. The authors aimed to assess the performance of the static cut-points (120/80 mm Hg and 130/80 mm Hg for defining elevated BP and hypertension for adolescents, respectively; and 110/70 mm Hg and 120/80 mm Hg for children, respectively) in predicting increased arterial stiffness. Using data from five population-based cross-sectional studies conducted in Brazil, China, Korea, and New Zealand, a total of 2546 children and adolescents aged 6-17 years were included. Increased arterial stiffness was defined as pulse wave velocity >= sex-specific, age-specific, and study population-specific 90th percentile. Compared to youth with normal BP, those with hypertension defined using the 2017 American Academy of Pediatrics guideline (hereafter referred to as "percentile-based cut-points") and the static cut-points were at similar risk of increased arterial stiffness, with odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals of 2.35 (1.74-3.17) and 3.07 (2.20-4.28), respectively. Area under the receiver operating characteristic curve and net reclassification improvement methods confirmed the similar performance of static cut-points and percentile-based cut-points (P for difference > .05). In conclusion, the static cut-points performed similarly well when compared with the percentile-based cut-points in predicting childhood increased arterial stiffness. Use of static cut-points to define hypertension in childhood might simplify identification of children with abnormal BP in clinical practice