População residente de um hospital psiquiátrico: que saúde visual?

Introdução - Numa tentativa pioneira em Portugal de avaliar o estado da visão dos pacientes residentes de um Hospital Psiquiátrico, foi nosso objectivo identificar alterações visuais existentes nesta população, passíveis de comprometer o funcionamento do sistema visual e com repercussões negativas nas actividades da vida diária; caracterizar e corrigir ametropias; relacionar as patologias encontradas com a medicação e seleccionar! encaminhar os utentes para consulta de oftalmologia. Métodos - Foram examinados 254 pacientes residentes num Hospital Psiquiátrico de Lisboa, com idade compreendida entre os 25 e os 92 anos de idade, com diagnóstico no âmbito da saúde mental, capacidade de deslocação e alguma autonomia. Na recolha de dados foi utilizado o protocolo de observação do rastreio visual, tendo sido avaliados os seguintes parâmetros: Acuidade visual, Estudo refractivo; Função sensório-motora; Visão cromática; Segmento anterior; Tensão ocular. O rastreio foi composto por duas fases: uma primeira fase para identificação das alterações visuais, com 254 residentes e uma segunda fase, com 100 residentes, para correcção das ametropias diagnosticadas e prescrição óptica. Os resultados foram sujeitos a uma análise estatística descritiva e inferencial através do programa SPSS. Resultados - A maioria dos pacientes era do sexo masculino (64,2%), internados principalmente por esquizofrenia (47,24%) e medicados com antipsicóticos (82,8%) mas tomando também anti-parkinsónicos (62,3%) e ansiolíticos (52,4%). Apenas 20,87% da amostra tinha feito anteriormente um exame visual. Além de 33,86% de cataratas, em que 27,4% representam residentes entre os 20 e os 50 anos, encontraram-se acuidades visuais baixas. Para longe, 51% dos indivíduos apresentavam acuidade visual no intervalo entre contar dedos e os 6/10. No que concerne à acuidade visual para perto, os resultados obtidos demonstram que a maioria da população apresenta também baixa acuidade visual, entre os 1/10 e os 3/10, tanto para olho direito (25,59%), como para o olho esquerdo (26,38%). É de referir que esta baixa acuidade visual atinge um total de 27 indivíduos no intervalo dos 40 aos 59 anos. Foi ainda identificado um número expressivo de exoforias para perto (38,58%) e 7,15% de neuropatias glaucomatosas. Do estudo refractivo (2. Fase do rastreio visual), resultou a prescrição de 75 óculos, o que levou a uma melhoria significativa da acuidade visual, principalmente para perto: 50% da amostra que apresentava acuidade visual, no intervalo de percepção luminosa aos 6/10, passou a 3%, após correcção refractiva. No decurso do rastreio 5 residentes foram encaminhadas para o serviço de urgência por neuropatia glaucomatosa e melanoma da coróide. Apenas 5,5% teve alta e os restantes foram encaminhados para consulta de oftalmologia (34% com prioridade). Conclusões - Este rastreio permitiu além da correcção das ametropias diagnosticadas, encaminhar, os residentes com alterações visuais, para tratamento, possibilitando assim, que esta população use a sua visão da melhor maneira e potencializando um aumento da qualidade de vida destes pacientes

Long-lived NIR emission in sulfur-doped zeolites due to the presence of [S3]2- clusters

Funding Information: The authors want to acknowledge the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology for funding through the grants SFRH/BD/145009/2019 and SFRH/BPD/120599/2016 , the individual contract 2020.00252. CEECIND and several projects PTDC/QUI-QFI/32007/2017, UIDB/04565/2020, UIDP/04565/2020, LA/P/0140/2020, LAQV-REQUIMTE (LA/P/0008/2020, UIDB/50006/2020 and UIDP/50006/2020), VICARTE (UIDP/00729/2020, UIDB/00729/2020) and C2TN (UIDB/04349/2020). MOSTMICRO-ITQB R&D Unit (UIDB/04612/2020, UIDP/04612/2020) and LS4FUTURE Associated Laboratory (LA/P/0087/2020) and by European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 810856. Funding Information: The authors want to acknowledge the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology for funding through the grants SFRH/BD/145009/2019 and SFRH/BPD/120599/2016, the individual contract 2020.00252. CEECIND and several projects PTDC/QUI-QFI/32007/2017, UIDB/04565/2020, UIDP/04565/2020, LA/P/0140/2020, LAQV-REQUIMTE (LA/P/0008/2020, UIDB/50006/2020 and UIDP/50006/2020), VICARTE (UIDP/00729/2020, UIDB/00729/2020) and C2TN (UIDB/04349/2020). MOSTMICRO-ITQB R&D Unit (UIDB/04612/2020, UIDP/04612/2020) and LS4FUTURE Associated Laboratory (LA/P/0087/2020) and by European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 810856. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Author(s)The exploration of novel long-lived near-infrared (NIR) luminescent materials has attracted significant attention due to their applications in optical communications, anticounterfeiting, and bioimaging. However, these materials usually present low photoluminescence quantum yields and low photo- and chemical stability. Novel emitters that overcome these limitations are in demand. In this study, NIR emission was achieved using widely available, sustainable, and non-toxic materials through the synthesis of sulfur-doped zeolites, with different S/Cl ratios. With a combination of computational calculations (TD-DFT) and spectroscopic data, this emission was assigned to the radiative decay of excited triplet states of [S3]2- clusters, which resulted in a remarkably high Stokes shift (1.97 eV, 440 nm) and an average decay time of 0.54 ms. These new materials present high stability, external quantum efficiency of up to 17%, and a long-lived NIR emission, placing these compounds in a unique position to be used in applications demanding NIR emitters.publishersversionpublishe

BiofOmics: A Web Platform for the Systematic and Standardized Collection of High-Throughput Biofilm Data

Background: Consortia of microorganisms, commonly known as biofilms, are attracting much attention from the scientific community due to their impact in human activity. As biofilm research grows to be a data-intensive discipline, the need for suitable bioinformatics approaches becomes compelling to manage and validate individual experiments, and also execute inter-laboratory large-scale comparisons. However, biofilm data is widespread across ad hoc, non-standardized individual files and, thus, data interchange among researchers, or any attempt of cross-laboratory experimentation or analysis, is hardly possible or even attempted. Methodology/Principal findings This paper presents BiofOmics, the first publicly accessible Web platform specialized in the management and analysis of data derived from biofilm high-throughput studies. The aim is to promote data interchange across laboratories, implementing collaborative experiments, and enable the development of bioinformatics tools in support of the processing and analysis of the increasing volumes of experimental biofilm data that are being generated. BiofOmics data deposition facility enforces data structuring and standardization, supported by controlled vocabulary. Researchers are responsible for the description of the experiments, their results and conclusions. BiofOmics curators interact with submitters only to enforce data structuring and the use of controlled vocabulary. Then, BiofOmics search facility makes publicly available the profile and data associated with a submitted study so that any researcher can profit from these standardization efforts to compare similar studies, generate new hypotheses to be tested or even extend the conditions experimented in the study. Significance BiofOmics novelty lays on its support to standardized data deposition, the availability of computerizable data files and the free-of-charge dissemination of biofilm studies across the community. Hopefully, this will open promising research possibilities, namely: the comparison of results between different laboratories, the reproducibility of methods within and between laboratories, and the development of guidelines and standardized protocols for biofilm formation devices and analytical methods.The financial support from the Institute of Biotechnology and Bioengineering - Center of Biological Engineering (IBB-CEB), Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT) and European Community fund FEDER (Program COMPETE), project PTDC/SAU-ESA/646091/2006/FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-007480 and PhD grant of Idalina Machado (SFRH/BD/31065/2006) are gratefully acknowledged. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

C2-phytoceramide perturbs lipid rafts and cell integrity in Saccharomyces cerevisiae in a sterol-dependent manner

Specific ceramides are key regulators of cell fate, and extensive studies aimed to develop therapies based on ceramide-induced cell death. However, the mechanisms regulating ceramide cytotoxicity are not yet fully elucidated. Since ceramides also regulate growth and stress responses in yeast, we studied how different exogenous ceramides affect yeast cells. C2-phytoceramide, a soluble form of phytoceramides, the yeast counterparts of mammalian ceramides, greatly reduced clonogenic survival, particularly in the G2/M phase, but did not induce autophagy nor increase apoptotic markers. Rather, the loss of clonogenic survival was associated with PI positive staining, disorganization of lipid rafts and cell wall weakening. Sensitivity to C2-phytoceramide was exacerbated in mutants lacking Hog1p, the MAP kinase homolog of human p38 kinase. Decreasing sterol membrane content reduced sensitivity to C2-phytoceramide, suggesting sterols are the targets of this compound. This study identified a new function of C2-phytoceramide through disorganization of lipid rafts and induction of a necrotic cell death under hypo-osmotic conditions. Since lipid rafts are important in mammalian cell signaling and adhesion, our findings further support pursuing the exploitation of yeast to understand the basis of synthetic ceramides' cytotoxicity to provide novel strategies for therapeutic intervention in cancer and other diseases.This work was supported by Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia through projects PTDC/BIA-BCM/69448/2006 and PEst-C/BIA/UI4050/2011, and fellowships to A. P. (SFRH/BPD/65003) and F. A. (SFRH/BD/80934/2011), as well as by FEDER through POFC - COMPETE. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

Seven-coordinate Tb3+ complexes with 90% quantum yields: High-performance examples of combined singlet- and triplet-to-Tb3+ energy-transfer pathways

Seven-coordinate, pentagonal-bipyramidal (PBP) complexes [Ln(bbpen)Cl] and [Ln(bbppn)Cl], in which Ln = Tb3+ (products I and II), Eu3+ (III and IV), and Gd3+ (V and VI), with bbpen2- = N,N′-bis(2-oxidobenzyl)-N,N′-bis(pyridin-2-ylmethyl)ethylenediamine and bbppn2- = N,N′-bis(2-oxidobenzyl)-N,N′-bis(pyridin-2-ylmethyl)-1,2-propanediamine, were synthesized and characterized by single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysis, alternating-current magnetic susceptibility measurements, and photoluminescence (steady-state and time-resolved) spectroscopy. Under a static magnetic field of 0.1 T, the Tb3+ complexes I and II revealed single-ion-magnet behavior. Also, upon excitation at 320 nm at 300 K, I and II presented very high absolute emission quantum yields (0.90 ± 0.09 and 0.92 ± 0.09, respectively), while the corresponding Eu3+ complexes III and IV showed no photoluminescence. Detailed theoretical calculations on the intramolecular energy-transfer rates for the Tb3+ products indicated that both singlet and triplet ligand excited states contribute efficiently to the overall emission performance. The expressive quantum yields, QLnL, measured for I and II in the solid state and a dichloromethane solution depend on the excitation wavelength, being higher at 320 nm. Such a dependence was rationalized by computing the intersystem crossing rates (WISC) and singlet fluorescence lifetimes (τS) related to the population dynamics of the S1 and T1 levels. Thin films of product II showed high air stability and photostability upon continuous UV illumination, which allowed their use as downshifting layers in a green light-emitting device (LED). The prototypes presented a luminous efficacy comparable with those found in commercial LED coatings, without requiring encapsulation or dispersion of II in host matrixes. The results indicate that the PBP environment determined by the ethylenediamine (en)-based ligands investigated in this work favors the outstanding optical properties in Tb3+ complexes. This work presents a comprehensive structural, chemical, and spectroscopic characterization of two Tb3+ complexes of mixed-donor, en-based ligands, focusing on their outstanding optical properties. They constitute good molecular examples in which both triplet and singlet excited states provide energy to the Tb3+ ion and lead to high values of QLnL

Whole-genome sequencing of 1,171 elderly admixed individuals from Brazil

As whole-genome sequencing (WGS) becomes the gold standard tool for studying population genomics and medical applications, data on diverse non-European and admixed individuals are still scarce. Here, we present a high-coverage WGS dataset of 1,171 highly admixed elderly Brazilians from a census-based cohort, providing over 76 million variants, of which ~2 million are absent from large public databases. WGS enables identification of ~2,000 previously undescribed mobile element insertions without previous description, nearly 5 Mb of genomic segments absent from the human genome reference, and over 140 alleles from HLA genes absent from public resources. We reclassify and curate pathogenicity assertions for nearly four hundred variants in genes associated with dominantly-inherited Mendelian disorders and calculate the incidence for selected recessive disorders, demonstrating the clinical usefulness of the present study. Finally, we observe that whole-genome and HLA imputation could be significantly improved compared to available datasets since rare variation represents the largest proportion of input from WGS. These results demonstrate that even smaller sample sizes of underrepresented populations bring relevant data for genomic studies, especially when exploring analyses allowed only by WGS