Acetyl Cholinesterase Inhibitors and Cell-Derived Peripheral Inflammatory Cytokines in Early Stages of Alzheimer's Disease

Clinical and preclinical studies firmly support the involvement of the inflammation in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Despite acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (AChEI) being widely used in AD patients, there is no conclusive evidence about their impact on the inflammatory response.Funding was received from a program co-financed by the European Social Fund and the Greek State (GSRT LS5-3808)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Center-of-Mass Properties of the Exciton in Quantum Wells

We present high-quality numerical calculations of the exciton center-of-mass dispersion for GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells of widths in the range 2-20 nm. The k.p-coupling of the heavy- and light-hole bands is fully taken into account. An optimized center-of-mass transformation enhances numerical convergence. We derive an easy-to-use semi-analytical expression for the exciton groundstate mass from an ansatz for the exciton wavefunction at finite momentum. It is checked against the numerical results and found to give very good results. We also show multiband calculations of the exciton groundstate dispersion using a finite-differences scheme in real space, which can be applied to rather general heterostructures.Comment: 19 pages, 12 figures included, to be published in Phys. Rev.

Ultrafast terahertz probes of transient conducting and insulating phases in an electron–hole gas

Many-body systems in nature exhibit complexity and self-organization arising from seemingly simple laws. The long-range Coulomb interaction between electrical charges generates a plethora of bound states in matter, ranging from the hydrogen atom to complex biochemical structures. Semiconductors form an ideal laboratory for studying many-body interactions of quasi-particles among themselves and with lattice vibrations and light. Oppositely charged electron and hole quasi-particles can coexist in an ionized but correlated plasma, or form bound hydrogen-like pairs called excitons which strongly affect physical properties. The pathways between such states however remain elusive in near-visible optical experiments that detect a subset of excitons with vanishing center-of-mass momenta. In contrast, transitions between internal exciton levels which occur in the far-infrared at terahertz (10 s) frequencies are in dependent of this restriction suggesting their use as a novel pro be of pair dynamics. Here, we employ an ultrafast terahertz probe to directly investigate the dynamical interplay of optically-generated excitons and unbound electron-hole pairs in GaAs quantum wells. Our observations witness an unexpected quasi-instantaneous excitonic enhancement, reveal formation of insulating excitons on a hundred picosecond timescale and manifest conditions under which excitonic populations prevail

COVID-19 Crisis Effects on Caregiver Distress in Neurocognitive Disorder

Background: The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic seems to have mental health implications for both people with neurocognitive disorder and their caregivers. Objective: The study aimed to shed light on relations between caregiver mental reaction to the pandemic and caregiver distress related to neuropsychiatric symptoms, memory impairment progression, and functional impairment of people with neurocognitive disorder during the period of confinement in Greece. Methods: The study included caregivers of patients with mild (N = 13) and major (N = 54) neurocognitive disorder. The caregiver-based telephone interview was based on items of the neuropsychiatric inventory questionnaire, the AD8 Dementia Screening Instrument, and the Bristol Activities of Daily Living Scale. Regarding the mental impact of the COVID-19 crisis on caregivers, four single questions referring to their worries in the last seven days were posed, in addition to the scales Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-Item (GAD-7) and the 22-item Impact of Event Scale-revised (IES-R). A stepwise linear regression model was employed for studying the relationship between caregiver distress and demographic and clinical data and caregiver mental reaction to COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. Results: Caregiver distress severity during the confinement period was influenced not only by memory deficits (p = 0.009) and neuropsychiatric symptoms (p < 0.001) of patients, but also by caregiver hyperarousal (p = 0.003) and avoidance symptoms (p = 0.033) and worries directly linked to the COVID-19 crisis (p = 0.022). Conclusion: These observations provide further evidence for the urgent need for support of caregivers of patients with neurocognitive disorder during the COVID-19 pandemic. © 2021-IOS Press. All rights reserved