Kidney transplantation in childhood: mental health and quality of life of children and caregivers

Our objective was to assess the mental health and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in children and their parents after renal transplantation (TX) compared to healthy controls and children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and to identify possible health status variables associated with impaired mental health and HRQOL. Thirty-eight TX children with a median age of 13 (range 3–19) years were investigated. Mental health was assessed by the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL) 4.0 Generic Core Scales and the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ-20). Each mother’s own mental health and QOL were assessed by the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-30) and the Quality of Life Scale (QOLS). Forty children with ALL [median age 11 (8.5–15.4) years] and 42 healthy children [median age 11 (8.9– 15) years] served as controls. Treadmill exercise results from 22 of the 38 patients were included in the analysis. TX children showed significantly higher levels of mental health problems and lower HRQOL at 2 to 16 years after transplantation compared to both control groups. Body mass index and maximal oxygen uptake (n = 22/38) were significant predictors of child mental health (SDQ) and child QOL (PedsQL), respectively. Based on these results, we suggest that rehabilitation after TX should include a focus on physical activity and QOL to reduce interconnected physical and psychological morbidity in kidney TX children

Endothelium-Derived Netrin-4 Supports Pancreatic Epithelial Cell Adhesion and Differentiation through Integrins α2β1 and α3β1

BACKGROUND: Netrins have been extensively studied in the developing central nervous system as pathfinding guidance cues, and more recently in non-neural tissues where they mediate cell adhesion, migration and differentiation. Netrin-4, a distant relative of Netrins 1-3, has been proposed to affect cell fate determination in developing epithelia, though receptors mediating these functions have yet to be identified. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Using human embryonic pancreatic cells as a model of developing epithelium, here we report that Netrin-4 is abundantly expressed in vascular endothelial cells and pancreatic ductal cells, and supports epithelial cell adhesion through integrins α2β1 and α3β1. Interestingly, we find that Netrin-4 recognition by embryonic pancreatic cells through integrins α2β1 and α3β1 promotes insulin and glucagon gene expression. In addition, full genome microarray analysis revealed that fetal pancreatic cell adhesion to Netrin-4 causes a prominent down-regulation of cyclins and up-regulation of negative regulators of the cell cycle. Consistent with these results, a number of other genes whose activities have been linked to developmental decisions and/or cellular differentiation are up-regulated. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Given the recognized function of blood vessels in epithelial tissue morphogenesis, our results provide a mechanism by which endothelial-derived Netrin-4 may function as a pro-differentiation cue for adjacent developing pancreatic cell populations expressing adhesion receptors α2β1 and α3β1 integrins

Development of a multi-dimensional measure of resilience in adolescents: the Adolescent Resilience Questionnaire

Background: The concept of resilience has captured the imagination of researchers and policy makers over the past two decades. However, despite the ever growing body of resilience research, there is a paucity of relevant, comprehensive measurement tools. In this article, the development of a theoretically based, comprehensive multidimensional measure of resilience in adolescents is described.Methods: Extensive literature review and focus groups with young people living with chronic illness informed the conceptual development of scales and items. Two sequential rounds of factor and scale analyses were undertaken to revise the conceptually developed scales using data collected from young people living with a chronic illness and a general population sample.Results: The revised Adolescent Resilience Questionnaire comprises 93 items and 12 scales measuring resilience factors in the domains of self, family, peer, school and community. All scales have acceptable alpha coefficients. Revised scales closely reflect conceptually developed scales.Conclusions: It is proposed that, with further psychometric testing, this new measure of resilience will provide researchers and clinicians with a comprehensive and developmentally appropriate instrument to measure a young person&rsquo;s capacity to achieve positive outcomes despite life stressors.<br /

A conserved motif flags acyl carrier proteins for β-branching in polyketide synthesis

Type I PKSs often utilise programmed β-branching, via enzymes of an “HMG-CoA synthase (HCS) cassette”, to incorporate various side chains at the second carbon from the terminal carboxylic acid of growing polyketide backbones. We identified a strong sequence motif in Acyl Carrier Proteins (ACPs) where β-branching is known. Substituting ACPs confirmed a correlation of ACP type with β-branching specificity. While these ACPs often occur in tandem, NMR analysis of tandem β-branching ACPs indicated no ACP-ACP synergistic effects and revealed that the conserved sequence motif forms an internal core rather than an exposed patch. Modelling and mutagenesis identified ACP Helix III as a probable anchor point of the ACP-HCS complex whose position is determined by the core. Mutating the core affects ACP functionality while ACP-HCS interface substitutions modulate system specificity. Our method for predicting β-carbon branching expands the potential for engineering novel polyketides and lays a basis for determining specificity rules

AGATH : Utilisation de plantes de service et de kaolin pour gérer les populations de pucerons et de thrips en cultures légumières.

Dans un contexte règlementaire en pleine évolution (diminution du nombre de spécialités phytosanitaires disponibles), la maitrise du puceron Aphis gossypii dans les cultures de melon et de Thrips tabaci dans les cultures de poireau à l’aide de solutions phytosanitaires est de plus en plus difficile, et la recherche de méthodes de lutte alternatives et/ou complémentaires est nécessaire. Dans cette optique, des stratégies de protection basée sur l’utilisation de plantes de service (plantesressources, plantes-banque, plantes répulsives, plantes-écran et plantes-piège) ou bien sur l’utilisation de produits alternatifs (kaolin) ont été mises au point et évaluées dans le cadre du projet Casdar AGATH, porté par le CTIFL de 2013 à 2015 et labellisé par le GIS PICleg. Les résultats obtenus montrent que la mise en place de plantes-ressources et de plantes-banque autour des parcelles pourrait être efficace pour gérer A. gossypii en cultures de melon mais pas pour gérer T. tabaci en cultures de poireau, tandis que le phénomène inverse est observé pour ce qui concerne l’utilisation de plantes-répulsives et de kaolin. Enfin, certaines stratégies telles que l’utilisation de plantes-écran et/ou de plantes-piège n’ont pas montré d’intérêt dans le contexte expérimental des travaux menés.In a constant changing context (reduction in the number of pesticides available) the control of Aphis gossypii populations in melon crops and of Thrips tabaci populations in leek crops using pesticides is increasingly difficult. Then, the search for alternative and/or complementary solutions is required. With this in mind, new strategies of protection based on the use of service plants (resource-plants, bankerplants, repellent-plants, screen and/or trap plants) or on the use of natural products such as kaolin have been developed and evaluated in the framework of the AGATH project, managed by the French Institute for Fruits and Vegetables (CTIFL) from 2013 to 2015, supported by the French Ministry of Agriculture and Food, and labelled by the PICleg consortium. The results showed that the setting up of resourceplants and/or banker-plants all around the fields could be effective in controlling A. gossypii in melon crops but not in controlling T. tabaci in leek crops, while it is the opposite as far as the use of repellentplants or kaolin are concerned. Finally, some strategies such as the use of screen and/or trap plants did not show any interest in the experimental context of the work carried out

Radial Basis Function Neural Networks Have Superlinear VC Dimension

We establish superlinear lower bounds on the Vapnik-Chervonenkis (VC) dimension of neural networks with one hidden layer and local receptive field neurons. As the main result we show that every reasonably sized standard network of radial basis function (RBF) neurons has VC dimension\Omega\Gamma W log k), where W is the number of parameters and k the number of nodes. This significantly improves the previously known linear bound. We also derive superlinear lower bounds for networks of discrete and continuous variants of centersurround neurons. The constants in all bounds are larger than those obtained thus far for sigmoidal neural networks with constant depth. The results have several implications with regard to the computational power and learning capabilities of neural networks with local receptive fields. In particular, they imply that the pseudo dimension and the fat-shattering dimension of these networks is superlinear as well, and they yield lower bounds even when the input dimension is fixed. The methods developed here appear suitable for obtaining similar results for other kernel-based function classes.