Characterization of postnatal microglia as a model for in vitro microglial studies

Microglia are the resident immune cells of the central nervous system. They have been found to play a major role in the development of different neurodegenerative diseases. In the case of Alzheimer’s disease, understanding microglial interactions with Aβ peptides, a major hallmark of the disease, could unveil potential therapeutic targets. In order to study this interaction, it is important to be able to replicate it in vitro. However, there is no current model for microglial cells in vitro. Primary cultures of rodent postnatal microglia are currently the most used in vitro model for microglial cells, as they are the simpler method to obtain large numbers of primary cells. Nevertheless, this study shows that postnatal microglia grown in vitro with granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) do not present the levels of expression of microglial signature markers (TMEM119, FCRLS, P2RY12, TREM2) found in adult microglia in vivo. This microglial signature was also downregulated in postnatal microglia compared to adult microglia. From immunostaining of tissue slices at postnatal day 3 (P3) it was shown that at least one of this characteristic microglial markers (P2RY12) was present in most of the neonatal microglial cells, although it had lower levels of expression than in adult cells. Together, these results show that postnatal microglia have an immature phenotype and that current culture conditions are not able to promote differentiation of these immature cells into an adult phenotype. For this reason, neonatal microglia are currently not a good model for microglial studies concerning diseases that affect the adult brain.Ingeniería Biomédic

The contribution of microfluidics to the fight against tuberculosis

The high mortality associated with tuberculosis brings forward the urgency of developing new therapies and strategies against the disease. With the advance of drug-resistant strains, traditional techniques have proven insufficient to manage the disease appropriately. Microfluidic devices have characteristics that can enhance treatment prescription and significantly advance our knowledge about the disease and its interaction within the human body. In addition, microfluidic systems provide advantages in terms of time and costs, which are particularly important in countries with low income and resources. This review will highlight how microdevices can help bridge the gaps in disease management, including their use for drug testing and development, drug susceptibility, basic research, and novel approaches to anti-TB vaccines and organ-on-chip studies.This project has received funding from the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No. 853989. The JU receives support from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and EFPIA and Global Alliance for TB Drug Development non-profit organisation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and University of Dundee. This work was partially funded by Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, Agencia Estatal de Investigación, under grant PID2019-109820RB-I00, MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/, co-finance by European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), "A way of making Europe

APLICACIÓN DE LA METODOLOGÍA BOX-JENKINS EN LA FORMULACIÓN DE UN MODELO PREDICTIVO DE LAS REEXPORTACIONES DE LA ZONA LIBRE DE COLÓN HACIA COLOMBIA: 2000-2014

The Colon Free Zone is one of the most important commercial activities of Panama dedicated to the import and re-export of final and intermediate goods, in addition to other complementary services. Since 2013 a deterioration of its performance was mainly induced by trade and tariff restriction of Colombia. The research aims to develop a predictive methodology for estimating re-exports to Colombia, as a tool for forecasting and decision making for an effective allocation of resources.The Box-Jenkins methodology was applied and established an ARIMA (0,1, 1) (0,1,1) model which presented the highest degree of adjustment. The results provide a robust and reliable model to predict short-term re-export movement to Colombia.La Zona Libre de Colón es una de las actividades comerciales más importante de Panamá dedicada principalmente a la importación y reexportación de bienes finales y semielaborados, en adición a los diversos servicios complementarios. Desde el año 2013 se evidenció un deterioro de su desempeño inducido principalmente por la restricción comercial de Colombia de tipo arancelaria. La investigación plantea desarrollar una metodología predictiva para estimar las reexportaciones hacia Colombia, como herramienta de previsión y toma de decisiones para la efectiva asignación de recursos.Se aplicó la metodología Box-Jenkins y estableció el modelo ARIMA (0,1,1)(0,1,1), el cual presentó el mayor grado de ajuste. Los resultados ofrecen un modelo confiable y robusto para pronosticar el movimiento de reexportaciones a corto plazo para Colombia

Development of an Inverted Epifluorescence Microscope for Long-Term Monitoring of Bacteria in Multiplexed Microfluidic Devices

Developing more efficient methods for antibiotic susceptibility testing is a pressing issue in novel drug development as bacterial resistance to antibiotics becomes increasingly common. Microfluidic devices have been demonstrated to be powerful platforms that allow researchers to perform multiplexed antibiotic testing. However, the level of multiplexing within microdevices is limited, evidencing the need of creating simple, low-cost and high-resolution imaging systems that can be integrated in antibiotic development pipelines. This paper describes the design and development of an epifluorescence inverted microscope that enables long-term monitoring of bacteria inside multiplexed microfluidic devices. The goal of this work is to provide a simple microscope powerful enough to allow single-cell analysis of bacteria at a reduced cost. This facilitates increasing the number of microscopes that are simultaneously used for antibiotic testing. We prove that the designed system is able to accurately detect fluorescent beads of 100 nm, demonstrating comparable features to high-end commercial microscopes and effectively achieving the resolution required for single-cell analysis of bacteria. The proposed microscope could thus increase the efficiency in antibiotic testing while reducing cost, size, weight, and power requirements, contributing to the successful development of new antibiotic drugs.This work was partially funded by project TEC2016-78052-R from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and PID2019-109820RB-I00 from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. The research leading to these results received funding from the Innovative Medicines Innitiative 2 Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No 853989. The JU receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and EFPIA and Global Alliance for TB Drug Development non profit organisation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and University of Dundee

A voltammetric electronic tongue based on commercial screen-printed electrodes for the analysis of aminothiols by differential pulse voltammetry

A voltammetric electronic tongue has been designed as a proof of concept for the analysis of aminothiols by differential pulse voltammetry and has been tested in ternary mixtures of cysteine (Cys), homocysteine (hCys) and glutathione (GSH). It consists of three screen-printed electrodes of carbon, carbon nanofibers and gold cured at low temperature. A preliminary calibration study carried out separately for each aminothiol confirmed that, working at an optimal pH value of 7.4, every electrode produces differentiated responses for every analyte (cross-response). As for the tongue, it was applied to calibration and validation mixtures of Cys, hCys and GSH and provided voltammograms that, baseline-corrected, normalized and combined in different ways were submitted to partial least squares (PLS) calibration. The calibration models produced good predictions of the concentrations of all three analytes, which suggest that the proposed voltammetric tongue improves the performance of a previous design based on linear sweep voltammetric measurements under acidic conditions

Magneto-mechanical system to reproduce and quantify complex strain patterns in biological materials

Biological cells and tissues are continuously subjected to mechanical stress and strain cues from their surrounding substrate. How these forces modulate cell and tissue behavior is a major question in mechanobiology. To conduct studies under controlled varying physiological strain scenarios, a new virtually-assisted experimental system is proposed allowing for non-invasive and real-time control of complex deformation modes within the substrates. This approach is based on the use of extremely soft magneto-active polymers, which mimic the stiffness of biological materials. Thus, the system enables the untethered control of biological substrates providing reversible mechanical changes and controlling heterogeneous patterns. Motivated on a deep magneto-mechanical characterization across scales, a multi-physics and multi-scale in silico framework was developed to guide the experimental stimulation setup. The versatility and viability of the system have been demonstrated through its ability to reproduce complex mechanical scenarios simulating local strain patterns in brain tissue during a head impact, and its capability to transmit physiologically relevant mechanical forces to dermal fibroblasts. The proposed framework opens the way to understanding the mechanobiological processes that occur during complex and dynamic deformation states, e.g., in traumatic brain injury, pathological skin scarring or fibrotic heart remodeling during myocardial infarction.The authors thank Denis Wirtz (Johns Hopkins University) and Jean-Christophe Olivo-Marin (Institute Pasteur) for relevant discussion. The authors acknowledge support from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program (Grant agreement No. 947723, project: 4D-BIOMAP), and from Programa de Apoyo a la Realizacion de Proyectos Interdiscisplinares de I+D para Jovenes Investigadores de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and Comunidad de Madrid (project: BIOMASKIN). MAMM and CGC acknowledges support from the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades, Spain (FPU19/03874 and FPU20/01459) and DGG acknowledges support from the Talent Attraction grant (CM 2018 - 2018-T2/IND-9992) from the Comunidad de Madrid

Intervención De Enfermería En La Redirección De Catéteres Tenkhoff Disfuncionales

Renal Diseases (RD) today represent a high social and economic cost that affects the quality of life of people. This is irrespective of the fact that there are Substitutive Therapies of Renal Function (STRF) in some complications such as migration, elbowing or plug of fibrin in Peritoneal Dialysis. Objective: To know the effectiveness of the nursing intervention in the redirection of dysfunctional Tenckhoff catheters installed in the General Subzone Hospital No. 4 of the IMSS of the municipality of Tenosique, Tabasco, Mexico. Methodology: This uses a quantitative-qualitative approach with the quasi-experimental longitudinal cut design, with n = 9 people with CKD in TSFR under the DPCA and DPA modality. Results: The data that predominated indicate that 5 (55.6%) were men and 4 (44.4%) women. In terms of occupation, 3 were housewives (33.3%), followed by employees. 8 (88.9%) were married people and 4 (44.4%) have completed their basic primary education. 7 (77.8%) people have been diagnosed of Diabetes. At the pre-intervention stage, they found signs of edema, uremic syndrome, elevated creatinine, hyperglycemia and fluid control with a positive balance sheet. That is to say that the peritoneal cavity was presenting retention of peritoneal fluid, which is confirmed by the simple X-ray photography of abdomen. At the post-intervention stage, they found changes that result to decrease of the edema, urea, and creatinine due to the exit of the liquid preserved in the peritoneum. Conclusion: The redirection of the catheters Tenckhoff through the employment of the nursing intervention with metallic guide is effective to recover the functionality of the same one

Perspectivas de investigación, innovación y desarrollo. Volumen 2

Perspectivas de Investigación, Innovación y Desarrollo es una compilación de ponencias presentadas en eventos de las diferentes facultades de la Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios – UNIMINUTO, seccional Antioquia - Chocó. La edición pasada, publicada en 2019, abordó los avances investigativos expuestos en el 1er Simposio Internacional de Innovación Contable y Financiera NIIF y NIA. Esta entrega compila las ponencias del 1er Simposio del Grupo de Investigación Clínica Psicológica: abordajes y retos de problemas clínicos contemporáneos. Aunque las temáticas divergen, tanto en la publicación pasada como en esta, los textos presentados tienen en común la intención de la institución y los investigadores de presentar a la comunidad académica y a la sociedad, avances investigativos que aporten al desarrollo individual y comunitario

Evaluación de las propiedades psicométricas de la Escala de Detección de la Soledad Existencial en pacientes con enfermedades avanzadas

Objetivo: Analizar las propiedades psicométricas y la utilidad clínica de la Escala de Soledad Existencial (EDSOL) en enfermos hospitalizados con enfermedad avanzada. Método: Para determinar las propiedades psicométricas de la escala, se administró la escala EDSOL junto con otros instrumentos a 103 pacientes adultos con enfermedades avanzadas ingresados en 5 unidades de cuidados paliativos de hospitales catalanes. Resultados: La escala presenta una excelente fiabilidad medida a través del alfa de Cronbach (0,902) y una adecuada estabilidad temporal (r=0,71). La escala mostró correlaciones positivas y significativas con ansiedad y depresión de la escala HADS y con la suma total de la misma, así como con la valoración clínica psicológica (p<0,01). A través del análisis estadístico de las curvas ROC se determinó que la escala presentaba una sensibilidad del 79,8% y una especificidad del 74,6% y se sugiere que el punto de corte para la detección de la EDSOL sea una puntuación de 5. Conclusiones: La EDSOL presenta unas buenas propiedades psicométricas, es sencilla, breve, fiable y fácil de administrar. Consideramos que es una escala útil para detectar la presencia de soledad existencial en enfermos hospitalizados que padecen enfermedades avanzada