Contribution of time of day and the circadian clock to the heat stress responsive transcriptome in Arabidopsis.

In Arabidopsis, a large subset of heat responsive genes exhibits diurnal or circadian oscillations. However, to what extent the dimension of time and/or the circadian clock contribute to heat stress responses remains largely unknown. To determine the direct contribution of time of day and/or the clock to differential heat stress responses, we probed wild-type and mutants of the circadian clock genes CCA1, LHY, PRR7, and PRR9 following exposure to heat (37 °C) and moderate cold (10 °C) in the early morning (ZT1) and afternoon (ZT6). Thousands of genes were differentially expressed in response to temperature, time of day, and/or the clock mutation. Approximately 30% more genes were differentially expressed in the afternoon compared to the morning, and heat stress significantly perturbed the transcriptome. Of the DEGs (~3000) specifically responsive to heat stress, ~70% showed time of day (ZT1 or ZT6) occurrence of the transcriptional response. For the DEGs (~1400) that are shared between ZT1 and ZT6, we observed changes to the magnitude of the transcriptional response. In addition, ~2% of all DEGs showed differential responses to temperature stress in the clock mutants. The findings in this study highlight a significant role for time of day in the heat stress responsive transcriptome, and the clock through CCA1 and LHY, appears to have a more profound role than PRR7 and PRR9 in modulating heat stress responses during the day. Our results emphasize the importance of considering the dimension of time in studies on abiotic stress responses in Arabidopsis

Prevention Is Political: Political Party Affiliation Predicts Perceived Risk and Prevention Behaviors for COVID-19

BACKGROUND: Many US politicians have provided mixed messages about the risks posed by SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 and whether and to what extent prevention practices should be put in place to prevent transmission. This politicization of the virus and pandemic may affect individuals\u27 risk perceptions and willingness to take precautions. We examined how political party affiliation relates to risk perception for one\u27s own and other people\u27s likelihood of SARS-CoV-2 infection/COVID-19 illness. METHODS: We surveyed members of a nationally-representative, probability-sampling based survey panel (N = 410) to examine their risk perceptions, precautionary behaviors, and political party affiliation. RESULTS: The more strongly one identified as a Republican, the less risk one perceived to oneself from SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 and the less risk one perceived other people faced. Moreover, those identifying as more strongly Republican engaged in fewer preventive behaviors. CONCLUSIONS: This differential response may affect virus transmission patterns and poses a considerable challenge for health communications efforts

Limitations in American Adults’ Awareness of and Beliefs about Alcohol as a Risk Factor for Cancer

Alcohol is a carcinogen. Recommendations to reduce alcohol use to lower cancer risk are increasingly common. However, neither the beliefs of US adults about alcohol consumption and cancer risk, nor factors influencing those beliefs, are well understood. We used data from the 2019 Health Information National Trends Survey (analysis N = 4,470) to examine beliefs about whether drinking too much alcohol increases cancer risk. We compared those beliefs to beliefs for three other health problems, and examined whether believing alcohol is a cancer risk factor was related to demographics, risk perceptions, other beliefs about the nature of cancer, and alcohol consumption behavior. Only 33% of US adults reported believing that alcohol is a cancer risk factor; 27% stated that it was not, and the highest proportion (40%) reported they did not know. Misbeliefs and lack of knowledge about alcohol and health outcomes were higher for cancer than other outcomes. Higher age, education, seeking health information, risk perceptions, and pessimistic beliefs about cancer predicted both lack of knowledge and misbeliefs about alcohol use and cancer. However, misbeliefs and lack of knowledge were not limited to those who reported alcohol consumption. Demographic and psychosocial factors are associated with problematic beliefs about alcohol’s role as a risk factor for cancer. Because perceived risk for health problems is a driver of behavior change, cancer prevention and control efforts to reduce alcohol consumption must attend to and address both the misperceptions about and lack of knowledge of alcohol’s role in increasing risk for cancer

Health literacy and use and trust in health information

This is a post-print of an article whose final version has been published in Journal of Health Communication, Taylor and Francis, 2018.There is a need to investigate which health information sources are used and trusted by people with limited health literacy to help identify strategies for addressing knowledge gaps that can contribute to preventable illness. We examined whether health literacy was associated with people?s use of and trust in a range of potential health information sources. Six hundred participants from a GfK Internet survey panel completed an online survey. We assessed health literacy using the Newest Vital Sign, the sources participants used to get health information, and the extent to which participants trusted health information from these sources. We performed multivariable regressions, controlling for demographic characteristics. Lower health literacy was associated with lower odds of using medical websites for health information and with higher odds of using television, social media, and blogs or celebrity webpages. People with lower health literacy were less likely to trust health information from specialist doctors and dentists, but more likely to trust television, social media, blogs/celebrity webpages, friends, and pharmaceutical companies. People with limited health literacy had higher rates of using and trusting sources such as social media and blogs, which might contain lower quality health information compared to information from healthcare professionals. Thus, it might be necessary to enhance the public's ability to evaluate the quality of health information sources. The results of this study could be used to improve the reach of high quality health information among people with limited health literacy and thereby increase the effectiveness of health communication programs and campaigns.Peer reviewedCommunity Health Sciences, Counseling and Counseling Psycholog

No Evidence of Association between HIV-1 and Malaria in Populations with Low HIV-1 Prevalence

The geographic overlap between HIV-1 and malaria has generated much interest in their potential interactions. A variety of studies have evidenced a complex HIV-malaria interaction within individuals and populations that may have dramatic effects, but the causes and implications of this co-infection at the population level are still unclear. In a previous publication, we showed that the prevalence of malaria caused by the parasite Plasmodium falciparum is associated with HIV infection in eastern sub-Saharan Africa. To complement our knowledge of the HIV-malaria co-infection, the objective of this work was to assess the relationship between malaria and HIV prevalence in the western region of sub-Saharan Africa.Population-based cross-sectional data were obtained from the HIV/AIDS Demographic and Health Surveys conducted in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Liberia and Cameroon, and the malaria atlas project. Using generalized linear mixed models, we assessed the relationship between HIV-1 and Plasmodium falciparum parasite rate (PfPR) adjusting for important socio-economic and biological cofactors. We found no evidence that individuals living in areas with stable malaria transmission (PfPR>0.46) have higher odds of being HIV-positive than individuals who live in areas with PfPR≤0.46 in western sub-Saharan Africa (estimated odds ratio 1.14, 95% confidence interval 0.86-1.50). In contrast, the results suggested that PfPR was associated with being infected with HIV in Cameroon (estimated odds ratio 1.56, 95% confidence interval 1.23-2.00).Contrary to our previous research on eastern sub-Saharan Africa, this study did not identify an association between PfPR and infection with HIV in western sub-Saharan Africa, which suggests that malaria might not play an important role in the spread of HIV in populations where the HIV prevalence is low. Our work highlights the importance of understanding the epidemiologic effect of co-infection and the relevant factors involved in this relationship for the implementation of effective control strategies

Mesenchymal Stem Cells Promote Mammosphere Formation and Decrease E-Cadherin in Normal and Malignant Breast Cells

Normal and malignant breast tissue contains a rare population of multi-potent cells with the capacity to self-renew, referred to as stem cells, or tumor initiating cells (TIC). These cells can be enriched by growth as "mammospheres" in three-dimensional cultures.We tested the hypothesis that human bone-marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSC), which are known to support tumor growth and metastasis, increase mammosphere formation.We found that MSC increased human mammary epithelial cell (HMEC) mammosphere formation in a dose-dependent manner. A similar increase in sphere formation was seen in human inflammatory (SUM149) and non-inflammatory breast cancer cell lines (MCF-7) but not in primary inflammatory breast cancer cells (MDA-IBC-3). We determined that increased mammosphere formation can be mediated by secreted factors as MSC conditioned media from MSC spheroids significantly increased HMEC, MCF-7 and SUM149 mammosphere formation by 6.4 to 21-fold. Mammospheres grown in MSC conditioned media had lower levels of the cell adhesion protein, E-cadherin, and increased expression of N-cadherin in SUM149 and HMEC cells, characteristic of a pro-invasive mesenchymal phenotype. Co-injection with MSC in vivo resulted in a reduced latency time to develop detectable MCF-7 and MDA-IBC-3 tumors and increased the growth of MDA-IBC-3 tumors. Furthermore, E-cadherin expression was decreased in MDA-IBC-3 xenografts with co-injection of MSC.MSC increase the efficiency of primary mammosphere formation in normal and malignant breast cells and decrease E-cadherin expression, a biologic event associated with breast cancer progression and resistance to therapy

Asymptomatic Carriage of Plasmodium in Urban Dakar: The Risk of Malaria Should Not Be Underestimated

Introduction: The objective of this study was to measure the rate of asymptomatic carriage of plasmodium in the Dakar region two years after the implementation of new strategies in clinical malaria management. Methodology: Between October and December 2008, 2952 households selected in 50 sites of Dakar area, were visited for interviews and blood sampling. Giemsa-stained thick blood smears (TBS) were performed for microscopy in asymptomatic adult women and children aged 2 to 10 years. To ensure the quality of the microscopy, we performed a polymerase chai

IgG Responses to Anopheles gambiae Salivary Antigen gSG6 Detect Variation in Exposure to Malaria Vectors and Disease Risk

Assessment of exposure to malaria vectors is important to our understanding of spatial and temporal variations in disease transmission and facilitates the targeting and evaluation of control efforts. Recently, an immunogenic Anopheles gambiae salivary protein (gSG6) was identified and proposed as the basis of an immuno-assay determining exposure to Afrotropical malaria vectors. In the present study, IgG responses to gSG6 and 6 malaria antigens (CSP, AMA-1, MSP-1, MSP-3, GLURP R1, and GLURP R2) were compared to Anopheles exposure and malaria incidence in a cohort of children from Korogwe district, Tanzania, an area of moderate and heterogeneous malaria transmission. Anti-gSG6 responses above the threshold for seropositivity were detected in 15% (96/636) of the children, and were positively associated with geographical variations in Anopheles exposure (OR 1.25, CI 1.01–1.54, p = 0.04). Additionally, IgG responses to gSG6 in individual children showed a strong positive association with household level mosquito exposure. IgG levels for all antigens except AMA-1 were associated with the frequency of malaria episodes following sampling. gSG6 seropositivity was strongly positively associated with subsequent malaria incidence (test for trend p = 0.004), comparable to malaria antigens MSP-1 and GLURP R2. Our results show that the gSG6 assay is sensitive to micro-epidemiological variations in exposure to Anopheles mosquitoes, and provides a correlate of malaria risk that is unrelated to immune protection. While the technique requires further evaluation in a range of malaria endemic settings, our findings suggest that the gSG6 assay may have a role in the evaluation and planning of targeted and preventative anti-malaria interventions