Evaluating engrailed-2 and cytokines in urine with serum PSA as potential biomarkers in patients with prostatism at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, Eldoret, Kenya

Background: Prostatism is a clinical syndrome, occurring mostly in older men, usually caused by enlargement of the prostate gland and manifested by irritative and obstructive symptoms. Prostate cancer (CaP) is the most common non-cutaneous and the second leading cause of cancer related death in men. It is a disease in which cells in the prostate gland become abnormal and start to grow uncontrollably, forming tumours. The prostate specific antigen (PSA) test has been shown to be of low specificity and low sensitive and unable to differentiate the various forms of prostatism. Engrailed 2 and pro-inflammatory cytokines may be able to distinguish and stage protatism.Objective: To evaluate EN-2 and Cytokines in urine with serum PSA as potential biomarkers in patients with prostatism.Design: Cross sectional studySetting: Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, Eldoret, Kenya.Subjects: Thirty nine (39) respondents were recruited in to the study. Thirteen (13) cases of prostate cancer and twenty six (26) controls were matched by age.Results: The mean age of cases was 73.1years and controls 71.1 years. Over 92.3% of the cases and 73.1% of controls had PSA values >4.0ng/ml. Both groups had elevated levels of urinary EN-2, which were statistically not significant. IL-6 and TNF-α expressions were higher in cases compared to controls with p-values of 0.0001 and 0.04 respectively. There was a good correlation between urinary IL-6 levels and urinary TNF-α levels (r=0.49)Conclusion: EN-2 expression in urine was not a predictive marker, however, IL-6 and TNF-α levels were elevated in urine of CaP patients. The potential for using these cytokines as urinary biomarkers to distinguish prostatism should be further explored

Predicting spatial patterns of soil bacteria under current and future environmental conditions

Soil bacteria are largely missing from future biodiversity assessments hindering comprehensive forecasts of ecosystem changes. Soil bacterial communities are expected to be more strongly driven by pH and less by other edaphic and climatic factors. Thus, alkalinisation or acidification along with climate change may influence soil bacteria, with subsequent influences for example on nutrient cycling and vegetation. Future forecasts of soil bacteria are therefore needed. We applied species distribution modelling (SDM) to quantify the roles of environmental factors in governing spatial abundance distribution of soil bacterial OTUs and to predict how future changes in these factors may change bacterial communities in a temperate mountain area. Models indicated that factors related to soil (especially pH), climate and/or topography explain and predict part of the abundance distribution of most OTUs. This supports the expectations that microorganisms have specific environmental requirements (i.e., niches/envelopes) and that they should accordingly respond to environmental changes. Our predictions indicate a stronger role of pH over other predictors (e.g. climate) in governing distributions of bacteria, yet the predicted future changes in bacteria communities are smaller than their current variation across space. The extent of bacterial community change predictions varies as a function of elevation, but in general, deviations from neutral soil pH are expected to decrease abundances and diversity of bacteria. Our findings highlight the need to account for edaphic changes, along with climate changes, in future forecasts of soil bacteria.Peer reviewe

Soil protist function varies with elevation in the Swiss Alps

Protists are abundant and play key trophic functions in soil. Documenting how their trophic contributions vary across large environmental gradients is essential to understand and predict how biogeochemical cycles will be impacted by global changes. Here, using amplicon sequencing of environmental DNA in open habitat soil from 161 locations spanning 2600 m of elevation in the Swiss Alps (from 400 to 3000 m), we found that, over the whole study area, soils are dominated by consumers, followed by parasites and phototrophs. In contrast, the proportion of these groups in local communities shows large variations in relation to elevation. While there is, on average, three times more consumers than parasites at low elevation (400-1000 m), this ratio increases to 12 at high elevation (2000-3000 m). This suggests that the decrease in protist host biomass and diversity toward mountains tops impact protist functional composition. Furthermore, the taxonomic composition of protists that infect animals was related to elevation while that of protists that infect plants or of protist consumers was related to soil pH. This study provides a first step to document and understand how soil protist functions vary along the elevational gradient.Peer reviewe

Improving access to and reuse of research results, publications and data for scientific purposes – Study to evaluate the effects of the EU copyright framework on research and the effects of potential interventions and to identify and present relevant provisions for research in EU data and digital legislation, with a focus on rights and obligations (Publications Office of the European Union)

This report supports ERA Policy Agenda 2022-2024, aiming at an EU framework for copyright and data fit for research. It analyses barriers to accessing and reusing publicly funded research, evaluating EU copyright and data legislation, along with regulatory frameworks. Presented measures aim to enhance the current framework, aligning it with scientific research and open data principles. It offers a comprehensive overview of the EU's research and innovation legal landscape, providing insights for policymakers, researchers, and research organisations

Spatial distribution of leprosy in India : an ecological study

CITATION: Grantz, Kyra H., et al. 2018. Spatial distribution of leprosy in India : an ecological study. Infectious Diseases of Poverty, 7:20, doi:10.1186/s40249-018-0402-y.The original publication is available at https://idpjournal.biomedcentral.comBackground: As leprosy elimination becomes an increasingly realistic goal, it is essential to determine the factors that contribute to its persistence. We evaluate social and economic factors as predictors of leprosy annual new case detection rates within India, where the majority of leprosy cases occur. Methods: We used correlation and linear mixed effect regressions to assess whether poverty, illiteracy, nighttime satellite radiance (an index of development), and other covariates can explain district-wise annual new case detection rate and Grade 2 disability diagnoses. Results: We find only weak evidence of an association between poverty and annual new case detection rates at the district level, though illiteracy and satellite radiance are statistically significant predictors of leprosy at the district level. We find no evidence of rapid decline over the period 2008–2015 in either new case detection or new Grade 2 disability. Conclusions: Our findings suggest a somewhat higher rate of leprosy detection, on average, in poorer districts; the overall effect is weak. The divide between leprosy case detection and true incidence of clinical leprosy complicates these results, particularly given that the detection rate is likely disproportionately lower in impoverished settings. Additional information is needed to distinguish the determinants of leprosy case detection and transmission during the elimination epoch.https://idpjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40249-018-0402-yPublisher's versio

Chemokine CXCL13 is overexpressed in the tumour tissue and in the peripheral blood of breast cancer patients

The abilities of chemokines in orchestrating cellular migration are utilised by different (patho-)biological networks including malignancies. However, except for CXCR4/CXCL12, little is known about the relation between tumour-related chemokine expression and the development and progression of solid tumours like breast cancer. In this study, microarray analyses revealed the overexpression of chemokine CXCL13 in breast cancer specimens. This finding was confirmed by real-time polymerase chain reaction in a larger set of samples (n=34) and cell lines, and was validated on the protein level performing Western blot, ELISA, and immunohistochemistry. Levels of CXCR5, the receptor for CXCL13, were low in malignant and healthy breast tissues, and surface expression was not detected in vitro. However, we observed a strong (P=0.0004) correlation between the expressions of CXCL13 and CXCR5 in breast cancer tissues, indicating a biologically relevant role of CXCR5 in vivo. Finally, we detected significantly elevated serum concentrations of CXCL13 in patients with metastatic disease (n=54) as compared with controls (n=44) and disease-free patients (n=48). In conclusion, CXCL13 is overexpressed within breast cancer tissues, and increased serum levels of this cytokine can be found in breast cancer patients with metastatic disease pointing to a role of CXCL13 in the progression of breast cancer, suggesting that CXCL13 might serve as a useful therapeutic target and/or diagnostic marker in this malignancy

The Variance in Genetic Diversity Among Subpopulations is More Sensitive to Founder Effects and Bottlenecks Than is the Mean: A Case Study

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Evaluation of sesamum gum as an excipient in matrix tablets

In developing countries modern medicines are often beyond the affordability of the majority of the population. This is due to the reliance on expensive imported raw materials despite the abundance of natural resources which could provide an equivalent or even an improved function. The aim of this study was to investigate the potential of sesamum gum (SG) extracted from the leaves of Sesamum radiatum (readily cultivated in sub-Saharan Africa) as a matrix former. Directly compressed matrix tablets were prepared from the extract and compared with similar matrices of HPMC (K4M) using theophylline as a model water soluble drug. The compaction, swelling, erosion and drug release from the matrices were studied in deionized water, 0.1 N HCl (pH 1.2) and phosphate buffer (pH 6.8) using USP apparatus II. The data from the swelling, erosion and drug release studies were also fitted into the respective mathematical models. Results showed that the matrices underwent a combination of swelling and erosion, with the swelling action being controlled by the rate of hydration in the medium. SG also controlled the release of theophylline similar to the HPMC and therefore may have use as an alternative excipient in regions where Sesamum radiatum can be easily cultivated