Regional association of pCASL-MRI with FDG-PET and PiB-PET in people at risk for autosomal dominant Alzheimer's disease.

Autosomal dominant Alzheimer's disease (ADAD) is a small subset of Alzheimer's disease that is genetically determined with 100% penetrance. It provides a valuable window into studying the course of pathologic processes that leads to dementia. Arterial spin labeling (ASL) MRI is a potential AD imaging marker that non-invasively measures cerebral perfusion. In this study, we investigated the relationship of cerebral blood flow measured by pseudo-continuous ASL (pCASL) MRI with measures of cerebral metabolism (FDG PET) and amyloid deposition (Pittsburgh Compound B (PiB) PET). Thirty-one participants at risk for ADAD (age 39 ± 13 years, 19 females) were recruited into this study, and 21 of them received both MRI and FDG and PiB PET scans. Considerable variability was observed in regional correlations between ASL-CBF and FDG across subjects. Both regional hypo-perfusion and hypo-metabolism were associated with amyloid deposition. Cross-sectional analyses of each biomarker as a function of the estimated years to expected dementia diagnosis indicated an inverse relationship of both perfusion and glucose metabolism with amyloid deposition during AD development. These findings indicate that neurovascular dysfunction is associated with amyloid pathology, and also indicate that ASL CBF may serve as a sensitive early biomarker for AD. The direct comparison among the three biomarkers provides complementary information for understanding the pathophysiological process of AD

Titration of Power Output During Radiofrequency Catheter Ablation of Atrioventricular Nodal Reentrant Tachycardia

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/75088/1/j.1540-8159.1993.tb01609.x.pd

Effects of gestational age at birth on cognitive performance : a function of cognitive workload demands

Objective: Cognitive deficits have been inconsistently described for late or moderately preterm children but are consistently found in very preterm children. This study investigates the association between cognitive workload demands of tasks and cognitive performance in relation to gestational age at birth. Methods: Data were collected as part of a prospective geographically defined whole-population study of neonatal at-risk children in Southern Bavaria. At 8;5 years, n = 1326 children (gestation range: 23–41 weeks) were assessed with the K-ABC and a Mathematics Test. Results: Cognitive scores of preterm children decreased as cognitive workload demands of tasks increased. The relationship between gestation and task workload was curvilinear and more pronounced the higher the cognitive workload: GA2 (quadratic term) on low cognitive workload: R2 = .02, p<0.001; moderate cognitive workload: R2 = .09, p<0.001; and high cognitive workload tasks: R2 = .14, p<0.001. Specifically, disproportionally lower scores were found for very (<32 weeks gestation) and moderately (32–33 weeks gestation) preterm children the higher the cognitive workload of the tasks. Early biological factors such as gestation and neonatal complications explained more of the variance in high (12.5%) compared with moderate (8.1%) and low cognitive workload tasks (1.7%). Conclusions: The cognitive workload model may help to explain variations of findings on the relationship of gestational age with cognitive performance in the literature. The findings have implications for routine cognitive follow-up, educational intervention, and basic research into neuro-plasticity and brain reorganization after preterm birth

The human FK506-binding proteins: characterization of human FKBP19

Analysis of the human repertoire of the FK506-binding protein (FKBP) family of peptidyl-prolyl cis/trans isomerases has identified an expansion of genes that code for human FKBPs in the secretory pathway. There are distinct differences in tissue distribution and expression levels of each variant. In this article we describe the characterization of human FKBP19 (Entrez Gene ID: FKBP11), an FK506-binding protein predominantly expressed in vertebrate secretory tissues. The FKBP19 sequence comprises a cleavable N-terminal signal sequence followed by a putative peptidyl-prolyl cis/trans isomerase domain with homology to FKBP12. This domain binds FK506 weakly in vitro. FKBP19 mRNA is abundant in human pancreas and other secretory tissues and high levels of FKBP19 protein are detected in the acinar cells of mouse pancreas

A rare case of sarcoidosis involving the middle turbinates: an incidental diagnosis

BACKGROUND: Sarcoidosis is a chronic, systemic granulomatous disease of unknown etiology that features noncaseating granulomas in many body regions. Sinonasal involvement is rare but is also suspected to be underreported. CASE PRESENTATION: We present the case of a 39-year-old woman who was incidentally diagnosed with isolated sarcoidosis involving the middle turbinates. Histopathologic examination of resected concha bullosa material and an extensive panel of diagnostic tests revealed a diagnosis of isolated sarcoidosis. Since no systemic manifestations were detected, topical corticosteroid (nasal spray) was administered in the postoperative period. Throughout the 12 months after surgery, the patient remained free of symptoms and all nasal endoscopy examinations were normal. CONCLUSION: Although isolated nasal involvement of sarcoidosis is rare, otorhinolaryngologists should consider this condition in a differential diagnosis for sinonasal complaints

A novel malaria vaccine candidate antigen expressed in Tetrahymena thermophila

Development of effective malaria vaccines is hampered by the problem of producing correctly folded Plasmodium proteins for use as vaccine components. We have investigated the use of a novel ciliate expression system, Tetrahymena thermophila, as a P. falciparum vaccine antigen platform. A synthetic vaccine antigen composed of N-terminal and C-terminal regions of merozoite surface protein-1 (MSP-1) was expressed in Tetrahymena thermophila. The recombinant antigen was secreted into the culture medium and purified by monoclonal antibody (mAb) affinity chromatography. The vaccine was immunogenic in MF1 mice, eliciting high antibody titers against both N- and C-terminal components. Sera from immunized animals reacted strongly with P. falciparum parasites from three antigenically different strains by immunofluorescence assays, confirming that the antibodies produced are able to recognize parasite antigens in their native form. Epitope mapping of serum reactivity with a peptide library derived from all three MSP-1 Block 2 serotypes confirmed that the MSP-1 Block 2 hybrid component of the vaccine had effectively targeted all three serotypes of this polymorphic region of MSP-1. This study has successfully demonstrated the use of Tetrahymena thermophila as a recombinant protein expression platform for the production of malaria vaccine antigens

Pre-cooling for endurance exercise performance in the heat: a systematic review.

PMCID: PMC3568721The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/10/166. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Endurance exercise capacity diminishes under hot environmental conditions. Time to exhaustion can be increased by lowering body temperature prior to exercise (pre-cooling). This systematic literature review synthesizes the current findings of the effects of pre-cooling on endurance exercise performance, providing guidance for clinical practice and further research

Gravito-electromagnetic analogies

We reexamine and further develop different gravito-electromagnetic (GEM) analogies found in the literature, and clarify the connection between them. Special emphasis is placed in two exact physical analogies: the analogy based on inertial fields from the so-called "1+3 formalism", and the analogy based on tidal tensors. Both are reformulated, extended and generalized. We write in both formalisms the Maxwell and the full exact Einstein field equations with sources, plus the algebraic Bianchi identities, which are cast as the source-free equations for the gravitational field. New results within each approach are unveiled. The well known analogy between linearized gravity and electromagnetism in Lorentz frames is obtained as a limiting case of the exact ones. The formal analogies between the Maxwell and Weyl tensors are also discussed, and, together with insight from the other approaches, used to physically interpret gravitational radiation. The precise conditions under which a similarity between gravity and electromagnetism occurs are discussed, and we conclude by summarizing the main outcome of each approach.Comment: 60 pages, 2 figures. Improved version (compared to v2) with some re-write, notation improvements and a new figure that match the published version; expanded compared to the published version to include Secs. 2.3 and

Fisher Information as a Metric of Locally Optimal Processing and Stochastic Resonance

The origins of Fisher information are in its use as a performance measure for parametric estimation. We augment this and show that the Fisher information can characterize the performance in several other significant signal processing operations. For processing of a weak signal in additive white noise, we demonstrate that the Fisher information determines (i) the maximum output signal-to-noise ratio for a periodic signal; (ii) the optimum asymptotic efficacy for signal detection; (iii) the best cross-correlation coefficient for signal transmission; and (iv) the minimum mean square error of an unbiased estimator. This unifying picture, via inequalities on the Fisher information, is used to establish conditions where improvement by noise through stochastic resonance is feasible or not