Better Palliative Care for people with a Dementia: Summary of InterdisciplinaryWorkshop Highlighting Current Gaps and Recommendations for Future Research

Background: Dementia is the most common neurological disorder worldwide and is a life-limiting condition, but very often is not recognised as such. People with dementia, and their carers, have been shown to have palliative care needs equal in extent to those of cancer patients. However, many people with advanced dementia are not routinely being assessed to determine their palliative care needs, and it is not clear why this is so. Main body: An interdisciplinary workshop on "Palliative Care in Neurodegeneration, with a focus on Dementia", was held in Cork, Ireland, in May 2016. The key aim of this workshop was to discuss the evidence base for palliative care for people with dementia, to identify 'gaps' for clinical research, and to make recommendations for interdisciplinary research practice. To lead the discussion throughout the day a multidisciplinary panel of expert speakers were brought together, including both researchers and clinicians from across Ireland and the UK. Targeted invitations were sent to attendees ensuring all key stakeholders were present to contribute to discussions. In total, 49 experts representing 17 different academic and practice settings, attended. Key topics for discussion were pre-selected based on previously identified research priorities (e.g. James Lind Alliance) and stakeholder input. Key discussion topics included: i. Advance Care Planning for people with Dementia; ii. Personhood in End-of-life Dementia care; iii. Topics in the care of advanced dementia at home. These topics were used as a starting point, and the ethos of the workshop was that the attendees could stimulate discussion and debate in any relevant area, not just the key topics, summarised under iv. Other priorities. Conclusions: The care experienced by people with dementia and their families has the potential to be improved; palliative care frameworks may have much to offer in this endeavour. However, a solid evidence base is required to translate palliative care into practice in the context of dementia. This paper presents suggested research priorities as a starting point to build this evidence base. An interdisciplinary approach to research and priority setting is essential to develop actionable knowledge in this area

Funding Source and Research Report Quality in Nutrition Practice-Related Research

BACKGROUND: The source of funding is one of many possible causes of bias in scientific research. One method of detecting potential for bias is to evaluate the quality of research reports. Research exploring the relationship between funding source and nutrition-related research report quality is limited and in other disciplines the findings are mixed. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to determine whether types of funding sources of nutrition research are associated with differences in research report quality. DESIGN: A retrospective study of research reporting quality, research design and funding source was conducted on 2539 peer reviewed research articles from the American Dietetic Association's Evidence Analysis Library® database. RESULTS: Quality rating frequency distributions indicate 43.3% of research reports were rated as positive, 50.1% neutral, and 6.6% as negative. Multinomial logistic regression results showed that while both funding source and type of research design are significant predictors of quality ratings (χ2 = 118.99, p≤0.001), the model's usefulness in predicting overall research report quality is little better than chance. Compared to research reports with government funding, those not acknowledging any funding sources, followed by studies with University/hospital funding were more likely to receive neutral vs positive quality ratings, OR = 1.85, P <0.001 and OR = 1.54, P<0.001, respectively and those that did not report funding were more likely to receive negative quality ratings (OR = 4.97, P<0.001). After controlling for research design, industry funded research reports were no more likely to receive a neutral or negative quality rating than those funded by government sources. CONCLUSION: Research report quality cannot be accurately predicted from the funding source after controlling for research design. Continued vigilance to evaluate the quality of all research regardless of the funding source and to further understand other factors that affect quality ratings are warranted

Natural humoral immune response to ribosomal P0 protein in colorectal cancer patients

Tumor associated antigens are useful in colorectal cancer (CRC) management. The ribosomal P proteins (P0, P1, P2) play an important role in protein synthesis and tumor formation. The immunogenicity of the ribosomal P0 protein in head and neck, in breast and prostate cancer patients and the overexpression of the carboxyl-terminal P0 epitope (C-22 P0) in some tumors were reported

Functional annotation of the transcriptome of Sorghum bicolor in response to osmotic stress and abscisic acid

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Higher plants exhibit remarkable phenotypic plasticity allowing them to adapt to an extensive range of environmental conditions. Sorghum is a cereal crop that exhibits exceptional tolerance to adverse conditions, in particular, water-limiting environments. This study utilized next generation sequencing (NGS) technology to examine the transcriptome of sorghum plants challenged with osmotic stress and exogenous abscisic acid (ABA) in order to elucidate genes and gene networks that contribute to sorghum's tolerance to water-limiting environments with a long-term aim of developing strategies to improve plant productivity under drought.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>RNA-Seq results revealed transcriptional activity of 28,335 unique genes from sorghum root and shoot tissues subjected to polyethylene glycol (PEG)-induced osmotic stress or exogenous ABA. Differential gene expression analyses in response to osmotic stress and ABA revealed a strong interplay among various metabolic pathways including abscisic acid and 13-lipoxygenase, salicylic acid, jasmonic acid, and plant defense pathways. Transcription factor analysis indicated that groups of genes may be co-regulated by similar regulatory sequences to which the expressed transcription factors bind. We successfully exploited the data presented here in conjunction with published transcriptome analyses for rice, maize, and Arabidopsis to discover more than 50 differentially expressed, drought-responsive gene orthologs for which no function had been previously ascribed.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The present study provides an initial assemblage of sorghum genes and gene networks regulated by osmotic stress and hormonal treatment. We are providing an RNA-Seq data set and an initial collection of transcription factors, which offer a preliminary look into the cascade of global gene expression patterns that arise in a drought tolerant crop subjected to abiotic stress. These resources will allow scientists to query gene expression and functional annotation in response to drought.</p

Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (4th edition)1.

In 2008, we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, this topic has received increasing attention, and many scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Thus, it is important to formulate on a regular basis updated guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Despite numerous reviews, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to evaluate autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. Here, we present a set of guidelines for investigators to select and interpret methods to examine autophagy and related processes, and for reviewers to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of reports that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a dogmatic set of rules, because the appropriateness of any assay largely depends on the question being asked and the system being used. Moreover, no individual assay is perfect for every situation, calling for the use of multiple techniques to properly monitor autophagy in each experimental setting. Finally, several core components of the autophagy machinery have been implicated in distinct autophagic processes (canonical and noncanonical autophagy), implying that genetic approaches to block autophagy should rely on targeting two or more autophagy-related genes that ideally participate in distinct steps of the pathway. Along similar lines, because multiple proteins involved in autophagy also regulate other cellular pathways including apoptosis, not all of them can be used as a specific marker for bona fide autophagic responses. Here, we critically discuss current methods of assessing autophagy and the information they can, or cannot, provide. Our ultimate goal is to encourage intellectual and technical innovation in the field