Cancer incidence in kidney transplant recipients: a study protocol

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Different publications show an increased incidence of neoplasms in renal transplant patients. The objective of this study is to determine the incidence of cancer in the recipients of renal transplants performed in the A Coruña Hospital (Spain) during the period 1981–2007.</p> <p>Methods/Design</p> <p>During the study period 1967 kidney transplants were performed, corresponding to 1710 patients. Patients with neoplasms prior to the transplant will be excluded (n = 38). A follow-up study was carried out in order to estimate cancer incidence after transplantation.</p> <p>For each patient, information included donor and recipient characteristics, patients and graft survival and cancer incidence after transplantation. Incident cancer is considered as new cases of cancer after the transplant with anatomopathological confirmation. Their location will be classified according to the ICD-9.</p> <p>The analysis will be calculated using the indirect standardisation method. Age-adjusted cancer incidence rates in the Spanish general population will be obtained from the Carlos III Health Institute, the National Epidemiology Centre of the Ministry of Science and Technology. Crude first, second and third-year post-transplantation cancer incidence rates will be calculated for male and female recipients. The number of cases of cancer at each site will be calculated from data in the clinical records. The expected number of cancers will be calculated from data supplied by the Carlos III Health Institute. For each tumour location we will estimate the standardized incidence ratios (SIRs), using sex-specific cancer incidence rates, by dividing the incidence rate for the transplant patients by the rate of the general population. The 95% confidence intervals of the SIRs and their associated p-values will be calculated by assuming that the observed cancers follow a Poisson distribution. Stratified analysis will be performed to examine the variation in the SIRs with sex and length of follow-up.</p> <p>Competing risk survival analysis methods will be applied to estimate the cumulative incidence of cancer and to identify variables associated to its occurrence.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>Information about cancer incidence in kidney transplant patients could be useful to adapt the guidelines on post-kidney transplant follow-up on tumour screening, and evaluate the impact of intervention measures for the prevention of cancer in these patients.</p

Characterizing the Atmospheric Mn Cycle and Its Impact on Terrestrial Biogeochemistry

The role of manganese (Mn) in ecosystem carbon (C) biogeochemical cycling is gaining increasing attention. While soil Mn is mainly derived from bedrock, atmospheric deposition could be a major source of Mn to surface soils, with implications for soil C cycling. However, quantification of the atmospheric Mn cycle, which comprises emissions from natural (desert dust, sea salts, volcanoes, primary biogenic particles, and wildfires) and anthropogenic sources (e.g., industrialization and land-use change due to agriculture), transport, and deposition, remains uncertain. Here, we use compiled emission data sets for each identified source to model and quantify the atmospheric Mn cycle by combining an atmospheric model and in situ atmospheric concentration measurements. We estimated global emissions of atmospheric Mn in aerosols (&lt;10 mu m in aerodynamic diameter) to be 1,400 Gg Mn year(-1). Approximately 31% of the emissions come from anthropogenic sources. Deposition of the anthropogenic Mn shortened Mn "pseudo" turnover times in 1-m-thick surface soils (ranging from 1,000 to over 10,000,000 years) by 1-2 orders of magnitude in industrialized regions. Such anthropogenic Mn inputs boosted the Mn-to-N ratio of the atmospheric deposition in non-desert dominated regions (between 5 x 10(-5) and 0.02) across industrialized areas, but that was still lower than soil Mn-to-N ratio by 1-3 orders of magnitude. Correlation analysis revealed a negative relationship between Mn deposition and topsoil C density across temperate and (sub)tropical forests, consisting with atmospheric Mn deposition enhancing carbon respiration as seen in in situ biogeochemical studies

A Community Study of Factors Related to Poorly Controlled Asthma among Brazilian Urban Children

BACKGROUND: Asthma constitutes a serious public health problem in many regions of the world, including the city of Salvador, State of Bahia-Brazil. The purpose of this study was to analyse the factors associated with poor asthma control. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Two definitions were used for asthma: 1) wheezing in the last 12 months; 2) wheezing in the last 12 months plus other asthma symptoms or asthma diagnosis ever. The definition of poorly controlled asthma was: at least one reported hospitalisation due to asthma and/or high frequency of symptoms, in the last year. Children with poorly controlled asthma (N = 187/374) were compared with wheezing children with controlled asthma regarding age, gender, atopy, parental asthma, rhinitis, eczema, exposure to second hand tobacco smoke, presence of moulds, pets and pests in the house, helminth infections and body mass index. Crude and logistic regression adjusted odds ratios were used as measures of association. There was a higher proportion of poorly controlled asthma among children with eczema (OR = 1.55; 95% CI 1.02; 2.37). The strength of the association was greater among children with eczema and rhinitis (42.6%, 53.4% and 57.7%, respectively, in children who had no rhinitis nor eczema, had only one of those, and had both (p = 0.02 for trend test). The presence of mould in the houses was inversely associated with poorly controlled asthma (OR = 0.54; 95% CI 0.34; 0.87). CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our results indicate an association between eczema and poor asthma control in this environment, but emphasize the role of various other individual and environmental factors as determinants of poor control

Constraining Present-Day Anthropogenic Total Iron Emissions Using Model and Observations

Iron emissions from human activities, such as oil combustion and smelting, affect the Earth's climate and marine ecosystems. These emissions are difficult to quantify accurately due to a lack of observations, particularly in remote ocean regions. In this study, we used long-term, near-source observations in areas with a dominance of anthropogenic iron emissions in various parts of the world to better estimate the total amount of anthropogenic iron emissions. We also used a statistical source apportionment method to identify the anthropogenic components and their sub-sources from bulk aerosol observations in the United States. We find that the estimates of anthropogenic iron emissions are within a factor of 3 in most regions compared to previous inventory estimates. Under- or overestimation varied by region and depended on the number of sites, interannual variability, and the statistical filter choice. Smelting-related iron emissions are overestimated by a factor of 1.5 in East Asia compared to previous estimates. More long-term iron observations and the consideration of the influence of dust and wildfires could help reduce the uncertainty in anthropogenic iron emissions estimates.Human activities, such as smelting and oil combustion, release smoke and particles into the atmosphere. These particles often contain iron, which not only absorbs sunlight, contributing to atmospheric warming, but also serves as a nutrient for phytoplankton in various ocean regions. However, the precise extent of human-induced iron emissions remains uncertain due to a lack of comprehensive monitoring data. In this study, we leverage a global data set of iron observations to refine our estimates of iron emissions attributed to human activities. Additionally, we examine other co-released substances, such as carbon and nickel, to identify specific emission sources of iron. We employ statistical techniques to distinguish human-caused iron emissions from those originating from natural sources like dust and wildfires. Moreover, we utilize iron oxide observations to constrain emissions originating from East Asia and Norway, which are estimated to originate largely from smelting emissions. Through the analysis of long-term data sets, we provide lower and upper bounds to human-caused iron emissions. Furthermore, we investigate the impact of reduced observation numbers and a sparse network on the range of estimated iron emissions. Our findings highlight the critical role of observation quality in accurately assessing iron emissions from human activities.Anthropogenic total iron emissions are constrained to a factor of 3 in most global regions using long-term aerosol observations The number of sites, interannual variability, and site selection filter can affect the model-observation comparison uncertainty by 15%-50% Smelting-related emissions are constrained to a factor of 1.5 using iron oxide observations from East Asi

Failure of Working Memory Training to Enhance Cognition or Intelligence

Fluid intelligence is important for successful functioning in the modern world, but much evidence suggests that fluid intelligence is largely immutable after childhood. Recently, however, researchers have reported gains in fluid intelligence after multiple sessions of adaptive working memory training in adults. The current study attempted to replicate and expand those results by administering a broad assessment of cognitive abilities and personality traits to young adults who underwent 20 sessions of an adaptive dual n-back working memory training program and comparing their post-training performance on those tests to a matched set of young adults who underwent 20 sessions of an adaptive attentional tracking program. Pre- and post-training measurements of fluid intelligence, standardized intelligence tests, speed of processing, reading skills, and other tests of working memory were assessed. Both training groups exhibited substantial and specific improvements on the trained tasks that persisted for at least 6 months post-training, but no transfer of improvement was observed to any of the non-trained measurements when compared to a third untrained group serving as a passive control. These findings fail to support the idea that adaptive working memory training in healthy young adults enhances working memory capacity in non-trained tasks, fluid intelligence, or other measures of cognitive abilities.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Blueprint for Neuroscience Research (T90DA022759/R90DA023427)United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (government contract no. NBCHC070105)United States. Dept. of Defense (National Defense Science and Engineering Fellowship)Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sheldon Razin (1959) Fellowship

Verbal short-term memory deficits in Down syndrome: phonological, semantic, or both?

The current study examined the phonological and semantic contributions to the verbal short-term memory (VSTM) deficit in Down syndrome (DS) by experimentally manipulating the phonological and semantic demands of VSTM tasks. The performance of 18 individuals with DS (ages 11–25) and 18 typically developing children (ages 3–10) matched pairwise on receptive vocabulary and gender was compared on four VSTM tasks, two tapping phonological VSTM (phonological similarity, nonword discrimination) and two tapping semantic VSTM (semantic category, semantic proactive interference). Group by condition interactions were found on the two phonological VSTM tasks (suggesting less sensitivity to the phonological qualities of words in DS), but not on the two semantic VSTM tasks. These findings suggest that a phonological weakness contributes to the VSTM deficit in DS. These results are discussed in relation to the DS neuropsychological and neuroanatomical phenotype

Exploring the relationship between video game expertise and fluid intelligence

Hundreds of millions of people play intellectually-demanding video games every day. What does individual performance on these games tell us about cognition? Here, we describe two studies that examine the potential link between intelligence and performance in one of the most popular video games genres in the world (Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas: MOBAs). In the first study, we show that performance in the popular MOBA League of Legends' correlates with fluid intelligence as measured under controlled laboratory conditions. In the second study, we also show that the age profile of performance in the two most widely-played MOBAs (League of Legends and DOTA II) matches that of raw fluid intelligence. We discuss and extend previous videogame literature on intelligence and videogames and suggest that commercial video games can be useful as 'proxy' tests of cognitive performance at a global population level