51 research outputs found
Genome Wide Association Study Identifies Genetic Variants Associated With Early And Sustained Response To (Peg)Interferon In Chronic Hepatitis B Patients: The GIANT-B Study
(Peg)interferon ((Peg)IFN) therapy leads to response in a minority of chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients. Host genetic determinants of response are therefore in demand
The Relative Contribution of High-Gamma Linguistic Processing Stages of Word Production, and Motor Imagery of Articulation in Class Separability of Covert Speech Tasks in EEG Data
Word production begins with high-Gamma automatic linguistic processing functions followed by speech motor planning and articulation. Phonetic properties are processed in both linguistic and motor stages of word production. Four phonetically dissimilar phonemic structures “BA”, “FO”, “LE”, and “RY” were chosen as covert speech tasks. Ten neurologically healthy volunteers with the age range of 21–33 participated in this experiment. Participants were asked to covertly speak a phonemic structure when they heard an auditory cue. EEG was recorded with 64 electrodes at 2048 samples/s. Initially, one-second trials were used, which contained linguistic and motor imagery activities. The four-class true positive rate was calculated. In the next stage, 312 ms trials were used to exclude covert articulation from analysis. By eliminating the covert articulation stage, the four-class grand average classification accuracy dropped from 96.4% to 94.5%. The most valuable features emerge after Auditory cue recognition (~100 ms post onset), and within the 70–128 Hz frequency range. The most significant identified brain regions were the Prefrontal Cortex (linked to stimulus driven executive control), Wernicke’s area (linked to Phonological code retrieval), the right IFG, and Broca’s area (linked to syllabification). Alpha and Beta band oscillations associated with motor imagery do not contain enough information to fully reflect the complexity of speech movements. Over 90% of the most class-dependent features were in the 30-128 Hz range, even during the covert articulation stage. As a result, compared to linguistic functions, the contribution of motor imagery of articulation in class separability of covert speech tasks from EEG data is negligible
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Soluble epoxide hydrolase inhibitor can protect the femoral head against tobacco smoke exposure-induced osteonecrosis in spontaneously hypertensive rats
Exposure to tobacco smoke (TS) has been considered a risk factor for osteonecrosis of the femoral head (ONFH). Soluble epoxide hydrolase inhibitors (sEHIs) have been found to reduce inflammation and oxidative stress in a variety of pathologies. This study was designed to assess the effect of sEHI on the development of ONFH phenotypes induced by TS exposure in spontaneously hypertensive (SH) rats. SH and normotensive Wistar Kyoto (WKY) rats were exposed to filtered air (FA) or TS (80 mg/m3 particulate concentration) 6 h/day, 3 days/week for 8 weeks. During this period, sEHI was delivered through drinking water at a concentration of 6 mg/L. Histology, immunohistochemistry, and micro-CT morphometry were performed for phenotypic evaluation. As results, TS exposure induced significant increases in adipocyte area, bone specific surface (BS/BV), and trabecular separation (Tb.SP), as well as significant decreases in bone mineral density (BMD), percent trabecular area (Tb.Ar), HIF-1a expression, bone volume fraction (BV/TV), trabecular numbers (Tb.N), and trabecular thickness (Tb.Th) in both SH and WKY rats. However, the protective effects of sEHI were mainly observed in TS-exposed SH rats, specifically in the density of osteocytes, BMD, Tb.Ar, HIF-1a expression, BV/TV, BS/BV, Tb.N, and Tb.SP. Our study confirms that TS exposure can induce ONFH especially in SH rats, and suggests that sEHI therapy may protect against TS exposure-induced osteonecrotic changes in the femoral head
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