Total Solar Irradiance and Stroke Mortality by Neural Networks Modelling

The purpose of this study was to examine the potential effect of solar energy on vascular stroke mortality in a Greek region by using neural networks analysis. The time period studied was from 1985 to 1989. We employed the Active Cavity Radiometer Irradiance Monitoring (ACRIM) data as the main representatives of total solar irradiance (TSI) and correlated them with stroke deaths obtained from the Piraeus City Registry. The ACRIM data (parameters included TSI, TSI uncertainty, and EPOCH: time given by ACRIM) were correlated with stroke deaths using Principal Components Analysis (PCA), regressions, and, finally, neural networks. TSI was the most important parameter for the years 1985, 1986, 1987, and 1989, while EPOCH: time given by ACRIM was important for the year 1988. When considering the entire period 1985–1989, the key parameter emerged was EPOCH: time given by ACRIM. Neural networks are useful tools in exposomic investigation regarding solar energy and vascular strokes

Electromagnetic fields impact on healthy greek population of children aged 11-14 years

Aim: To study the potential neurohormonal and inflammatory mechanisms involved in the response of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis in children and adolescents of 11-14 years to mobile phone call.Material-Methods: 353 questionnaires have been collected so as to describe the pupils of 11-14 years daily exposure to the cellular phone. Their parents answered also to a short questionnaire. 48 volunteers 11-14 year have been divided in two groups have been successively exposed to Trier Social Stress Test and to a mobile phone call. One group (Ι) of 28 volunteers had a 5 min talk to the mobile phone.The other group (ΙΙ) involved 20 volunteers that talked to the phone for 3 min, while only 5 min interfered between the two stressors. The participants’ health status was confirmed by a careful clinical examination (including weight, height,) and personal history data collection including intrauterine life events. Venous blood sampling was then undertaken after an overnight fasting at 8.00 am for tri-iodothyronine (T3), thyroxin (T4), thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), insulin and glucose determination. The participants were kept in supine position during the whole experiment whereas recordings for heart rate variability were also conducted. Salivary cortisol samples were collected in all participants (valid biomarker of HPA response) in baseline. Furthermore, in group (I) in 10 and 20 min after each stimulation, whereas in group (II) upon completion of each stimulation. Autonomic nervous system recordings and heart rate variability components identification in each part of the experiment was also calculated. Results: Salivary cortisol levels varied insignificantly (p>0.05) upon completion of each stimulation (group II) whereas varied significantly after each stimulation (group I). Baseline hsCRP was correlated both to salivary cortisol levels during mental stress and mean RR intervals after mobile phone call. Baseline blood cortisol was correlated to salivary cortisol levels during mobile phone call. Similarly, baseline thyroid hormones levels predicted salivary cortisol 10 and 20 min after the call in occasional users (Group A) (p<0.05). Mean RR was found decreased during a five minutes call (Group I). The finding remained significant 20 minutes later. The two groups (I and II) differ in the calling duration. It seems that if the call lasts more than 3 minutes respectively a subtle response of the autonomic system arises. However, the system seems to counter balance the perturbation as the LF/HF ratio does not change. Yet, the sympathovagal balance as expressed by LF/HF ratio does not alter significantly. No correlation was observed between baseline ACTH, insulin, glucose levels and salivary cortisol levels of all samples. No alteration was also detected in group (I)for any of the questioned variables as well. Baseline thyroid hormones levels seem to predict the cortisol response to mental stress mainly in group A, while HOMA had no impact on salivary cortisol response at any phase of the test, in either group..Conclusions: HPA axis response to cellular phone after mental stress in children and adolescents (Group (I) follow a different pattern in frequent users than in occasional users that seems to be influenced by the baseline thyroid hormones’ levels. In group (II), the HPA acute response to mental stress and/or cellular phone call was predicted by baseline hsCRP and blood cortisol levels, with different effect over time: hsCRP effect weakened as time evolved, whereas, blood cortisol effect increased. Mean RR was found significantly decreased only during a five minutes call (Group II). The finding persisted 20 minutes later. The two children groups (I and II) differ in the calling duration. It seems that if the call lasts more than 3 minutes respectively a subtle response of the autonomic system arises. The effect is not detected in adults where the mechanism implicated seems to have been adapted to the frequent perturbation as adults are all users for a long time. However, the system seems to counter balance the perturbation as the LF/HF ratio does not change. The result, possibly, might be different if the calling period was longer, which we considered inadvisable in this age group. Our findings suggest further evaluation of the effects of mobile phone calls in children is warranted. Σκοπός: Η διερεύνηση της επίδρασης της χρήσης κινητού τηλεφώνου στον άξονα Υποθάλαμο-Υπόφυση –Επινεφρίδια (ΥΥΕ) και το αυτόνομο νευρικό σύστημα (ΑΝΣ) παιδιών 11-14 ετών.Υλικό –Μέθοδοι: Συνδυάστηκαν ερωτηματολόγιο κλειστού τύπου (n=353) και προοπτική κλινική μελέτη παρατήρησης σε υγιείς μαθητές 11-14 ετών (n=48).Μετά από 12ωρη νηστεία, στην φάση ηρεμίας αναφοράς μετρήθηκαν στο αίμα δείκτες χρονίου στρες, φλεγμονής, θυρεοειδικής λειτουργίας, μεταβολισμού, ομοιόστασης. 30’ μετά την αιμοληψία, όλοι οι εθελοντές υπεβλήθησαν διαδοχικά στην ψυχοκοινωνική δοκιμασία Trier, παύση/ηρεμία (5’ ή 20’), κλήση κινητού τηλεφώνου (διαρκείας 3’ ή 5’), ηρεμία (0’ ή 20’). Δείγματα κορτιζόλης σιέλου (δείκτης απόκρισης άξονα στρες) ελήφθησαν στην διάρκεια (ΙΙ) και μετά από κάθε ερέθισμα (Ι), ενώ γινόταν συνεχής καταγραφή των δεικτών μεταβλητότητας της καρδιακής συχνότητας ως μέτρο του αυτονόμου νευρικού συστήματος της καρδιάς. Επίσης, με μετα-ανάλυση της βιβλιογραφίας ανιχνεύθηκε η επίδραση της διάρκειας κλήσης ή/και της ηλικίας στη μεταβλητότητα της καρδιακής συχνότητας. Αποτελέσματα: Προγνωστικοί παράγοντες απόκρισης άξονα ΥΥΕ στα ερεθίσματα αναδείχθηκαν οι θυρεοειδικές ορμόνες (περιστασιακούς χρήστες), η hsCRP και η κορτιζόλη πλάσματος (σύνολο εθελοντών). Η hsCRP επηρεάζει τη σημαντική (p<0.001) διαταραχή του μέσου διαστήματος RR κατά την διάρκεια της πεντάλεπτης κλήσης και των 20΄ που ακολουθούν αυτή. Παράλληλα, η ισορροπία συμπαθητικού-παρασυμπαθητικού εξαρτάται από την ηλικία και όχι από την διάρκεια κλήσης.Συμπεράσματα: Ο άξονας ΥΥΕ και το ΑΝΣ βρίσκονται σε ένα νεοφανή εσωτερικό διάλογο με τον άξονα υποθάλαμος-υπόφυση –θυρεοειδή, τα επίπεδα χρονίου στρες και φλεγμονής προκειμένου να αντιμετωπίσουν τα διαδοχικά ερεθίσματα στρες και της ηλεκτρομαγνητικής ακτινοβολίας. Το ΑΝΣ της καρδιάς των εφήβων αντιδρά εντονότερα από των ενηλίκων στο ερέθισμα του κινητού τηλεφώνου, ενώ, δεν επηρεάζεται από την διάρκεια της κλήσης.

Emotional Analysis of Twitter Posts During the First Phase of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Greece: Infoveillance Study

BackgroundThe effectiveness of public health measures depends upon a community’s compliance as well as on its positive or negative emotions. ObjectiveThe purpose of this study was to perform an analysis of the expressed emotions in English tweets by Greek Twitter users during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in Greece. MethodsThe period of this study was from January 25, 2020 to June 30, 2020. Data collection was performed by using appropriate search words with the filter-streaming application programming interface of Twitter. The emotional analysis of the tweets that satisfied the inclusion criteria was achieved using a deep learning approach that performs better by utilizing recurrent neural networks on sequences of characters. Emotional epidemiology tools such as the 6 basic emotions, that is, joy, sadness, disgust, fear, surprise, and anger based on the Paul Ekman classification were adopted. ResultsThe most frequent emotion that was detected in the tweets was “surprise” at the emerging contagion, while the imposed isolation resulted mostly in “anger” (odds ratio 2.108, 95% CI 0.986-4.506). Although the Greeks felt rather safe during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, their positive and negative emotions reflected a masked “flight or fight” or “fear versus anger” response to the contagion. ConclusionsThe findings of our study show that emotional analysis emerges as a valid tool for epidemiology evaluations, design, and public health strategy and surveillance

Interactome of Obesity: Obesidome Genetic Obesity, Stress Induced Obesity, Pathogenic Obesity Interaction

Obesity is a chronic disease of increasing prevalence reaching epidemic proportions. Genetic defects as well as epigenetic effects contribute to the obesity phenotype. Investigating gene (e.g. MC4R defects)-environment (behavior, infectious agents, stress) interactions is a relative new field of great research interest. In this study, we have made an effort to create an interactome (henceforth referred to as "obesidome"), where extrinsic stressors response, intrinsic predisposition, immunity response to inflammation and autonomous nervous system implications are integrated. These pathways are presented in one interactome network for the first time. In our study, obesity-related genes/gene products were found to form a complex interactions network

Thrombocytopenia in COVID-19 and vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia

The highly heterogeneous symptomatology and unpredictable progress of COVID-19 triggered unprecedented intensive biomedical research and a number of clinical research projects. Although the pathophysiology of the disease is being progressively clarified, its complexity remains vast. Moreover, some extremely infrequent cases of thrombotic thrombocytopenia following vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 infection have been observed. The present study aimed to map the signaling pathways of thrombocytopenia implicated in COVID-19, as well as in vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT). The biomedical literature database, MEDLINE/PubMed, was thoroughly searched using artificial intelligence techniques for the semantic relations among the top 50 similar words (&gt;0.9) implicated in COVID-19-mediated human infection or VITT. Additionally, STRING, a database of primary and predicted associations among genes and proteins (collected from diverse resources, such as documented pathway knowledge, high-throughput experimental studies, cross-species extrapolated information, automated text mining results, computationally predicted interactions, etc.), was employed, with the confidence threshold set at 0.7. In addition, two interactomes were constructed: i) A network including 119 and 56 nodes relevant to COVID-19 and thrombocytopenia, respectively; and ii) a second network containing 60 nodes relevant to VITT. Although thrombocytopenia is a dominant morbidity in both entities, three nodes were observed that corresponded to genes (AURKA, CD46 and CD19) expressed only in VITT, whilst ADAM10, CDC20, SHC1 and STXBP2 are silenced in VITT, but are commonly expressed in both COVID-19 and thrombocytopenia. The calculated average node degree was immense (11.9 in COVID-19 and 6.43 in VITT), illustrating the complexity of COVID-19 and VITT pathologies and confirming the importance of cytokines, as well as of pathways activated following hypoxic events. In addition, PYCARD, NLP3 and P2RX7 are key potential therapeutic targets for all three morbid entities, meriting further research. This interactome was based on wild-type genes, revealing the predisposition of the body to hypoxia-induced thrombosis, leading to the acute COVID-19 phenotype, the `long-COVID syndrome&apos;, and/or VITT. Thus, common nodes appear to be key players in illness prevention, progression and treatment

Interactions Networks for Primary Heart Sarcomas

Simple Summary Cardiac cancer represents a rare, largely understudied disease. The aim of this study was to elucidate the underlying pathophysiology of cardiac sarcomas by employing specific network-based methods. Focused interactomes comprised of heart- and tumor-associated gene/proteins were constructed. These networks allowed us to unfold the main pathways leading from heart sarcomas to cardiac diseases. The findings of this study could be utilized in the clinical setting for diagnostic and therapy decision-making. Personalized medicine incorporates genetic information into medical practice so as to optimize the management of chronic diseases. In rare diseases, such as heart cancer (incidence 0.0017-0.33%), this may be elusive. Ninety-five percent of the cases are due to secondary involvementwith the neoplasm originating in the lungs, breasts, kidney, blood, or skin. The clinical manifestations of heart tumors (benign or malignant) include heart failure, hypertension, and cardiac arrhythmias of varying severity, frequently resulting in blood vessel emboli, including strokes. This study aims to explain the pathophysiology and contribute to a P4 medicine model for use by cardiologists, pathologists, and oncologists. We created six gene/protein heart-related and tumor-related targets high-confidence interactomes, which unfold the main pathways that may lead to cardiac diseases (heart failure, hypertension, coronary artery disease, arrhythmias), i.e., the sympathetic nervous system, the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone axis and the endothelin pathway, and excludes others, such as the K oxidase or cytochrome P450 pathways. We concluded that heart cancer patients could be affected by beta-adrenergic blockers, ACE inhibitors, QT-prolonging antiarrhythmic drugs, antibiotics, and antipsychotics. Interactomes may elucidate unknown pathways, adding to patient/survivor wellness during/after chemo- and/or radio-therapy