Epigallocatechin-3-gallate: a useful, effective and safe clinical approach for targeted prevention and individualised treatment of neurological diseases?

Neurodegenerative disorders show an increasing prevalence in a number of highly developed countries. Often, these diseases require life-long treatment mostly with drugs which are costly and mostly accompanied by more or less serious side-effects. Their heterogeneous manifestation, severity and outcome pose the need for individualised treatment options. There is an intensive search for new strategies not only for treating but also for preventing these diseases. Green tea and green tea extracts seem to be such a promising and safe alternative. However, data regarding the beneficial effects and possible underlying mechanism, specifically in clinical trials, are rare and rather controversial or non-conclusive. This review outlines the existing evidence from preclinical studies (cell and tissue cultures and animal models) and clinical trials regarding preventive and therapeutic effects of epigallcatechin-3-gallate in neurodegenerative diseases and considers antioxidative vs. pro-oxidative properties of the tea catechin important for dosage recommendations

Iron Behaving Badly: Inappropriate Iron Chelation as a Major Contributor to the Aetiology of Vascular and Other Progressive Inflammatory and Degenerative Diseases

The production of peroxide and superoxide is an inevitable consequence of aerobic metabolism, and while these particular "reactive oxygen species" (ROSs) can exhibit a number of biological effects, they are not of themselves excessively reactive and thus they are not especially damaging at physiological concentrations. However, their reactions with poorly liganded iron species can lead to the catalytic production of the very reactive and dangerous hydroxyl radical, which is exceptionally damaging, and a major cause of chronic inflammation. We review the considerable and wide-ranging evidence for the involvement of this combination of (su)peroxide and poorly liganded iron in a large number of physiological and indeed pathological processes and inflammatory disorders, especially those involving the progressive degradation of cellular and organismal performance. These diseases share a great many similarities and thus might be considered to have a common cause (i.e. iron-catalysed free radical and especially hydroxyl radical generation). The studies reviewed include those focused on a series of cardiovascular, metabolic and neurological diseases, where iron can be found at the sites of plaques and lesions, as well as studies showing the significance of iron to aging and longevity. The effective chelation of iron by natural or synthetic ligands is thus of major physiological (and potentially therapeutic) importance. As systems properties, we need to recognise that physiological observables have multiple molecular causes, and studying them in isolation leads to inconsistent patterns of apparent causality when it is the simultaneous combination of multiple factors that is responsible. This explains, for instance, the decidedly mixed effects of antioxidants that have been observed, etc...Comment: 159 pages, including 9 Figs and 2184 reference

Possible Role of Neonatal Infection with the Asymptomatic Reassortant Rotavirus (RV) Strain I321 in the Decrease in Hospital Admissions for RV Diarrhea, Bangalore, India, 1988–1999

We sought to determine the proportion of rotavirus ( RV) infections among children with severe diarrhea in Bangalore, India, and to determine the role of neonatal infection with the asymptomatic RV strain I321 in protection against subsequent RV diarrhea. At 2 major hospitals, there was a >42% decrease in diarrhea-specific admissions during the study period. At 6 hospitals, asymptomatic infections were found in 25%-50% of neonates, when screening was performed randomly, and in >58% of neonates, when screening was performed daily, with the majority of infections occurring within the first 7 days of life. All the RVs found in asymptomatic neonates were strain I321. A 24-month follow-up of a cohort of 44 children who had been neonatally infected with strain I321 and 28 children who had not (control group) revealed comparable rates of RV detection but a marked decrease in the number of RV diarrhea episodes in the strain I321-infected group (2.3%), compared with the control group (39.3%) (P < .0001). This preliminary study suggests a possible association between neonatal infection with strain I321 and protection against subsequent RV illness

First detection and molecular characterization of new apple scar skin viroid variants from apple and pear in Iran

Apple scar skin viroid (ASSVd) is one of the most destructive viroids of pome fruit. We report 12 new sequence variants of ASSVd from apple and pear trees in north-eastern Iran. The Iranian variants ranged in size from 329 to 334 nucleotides. They formed a cluster distinct from other reported ASSVd isolates, and showed sequence variations in specific regions of the viroid RNA. This is the first report of the identification and molecular characterization of ASSVd in Iran.Arezou Yazarlou, Behrooz Jafarpour, Nuredin Habili, John W. Randle

CMMSE-2019 mean-based iterative methods for solving nonlinear chemistry problems

[EN] The third-order iterative method designed by Weerakoon and Fernando includes the arithmetic mean of two functional evaluations in its expression. Replacing this arithmetic mean with different means, other iterative methods have been proposed in the literature. The evolution of these methods in terms of order of convergence implies the inclusion of a weight function for each case, showing an optimal fourth-order convergence, in the sense of Kung-Traub's conjecture. The analysis of these new schemes is performed by means of complex dynamics. These methods are applied on the solution of the nonlinear Colebrook-White equation and the nonlinear system of the equilibrium conversion, both frequently used in Chemistry.This research was partially supported by PGC2018-095896-B-C22 (MCIU/AEI/FEDER/UE) and Generalitat Valenciana PROMETEO/2016/089.Chicharro, FI.; Cordero Barbero, A.; Martínez, TH.; Torregrosa Sánchez, JR. (2020). CMMSE-2019 mean-based iterative methods for solving nonlinear chemistry problems. Journal of Mathematical Chemistry. 58(3):555-572. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10910-019-01085-2S555572583O. Ababneh, New Newton’s method with third order convergence for solving nonlinear equations. World Acad. Sci. Eng. Technol. 61, 1071–1073 (2012)S. Amat, S. Busquier, Advances in iterative methods for nonlinear equations, chapter 5. SEMA SIMAI Springer Series. (Springer, Berlin, 2016), vol. 10, pp. 79–111R. Behl, Í. Sarría, R. González, Á.A. Magreñán, Highly efficient family of iterative methods for solving nonlinear models. J. Comput. Appl. Math. 346, 110–132 (2019)B. Campos, J. Canela, P. Vindel, Convergence regions for the Chebyshev-Halley family. Commun. Nonlinear Sci. Numer. Simul. 56, 508–525 (2018)F.I. Chicharro, A. Cordero, J.R. Torregrosa, Drawing dynamical and parameters planes of iterative families and methods. Sci. World J. 780513, 1–11 (2013)F.I. Chicharro, A. Cordero, J.R. Torregrosa, Dynamics of iterative families with memory based on weight functions procedure. J. Comput. Appl. Math. 354, 286–298 (2019)C.F. Colebrook, C.M. White, Experiments with fluid friction in roughened pipes. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. 161, 367–381 (1937)A. Constantinides, N. Mostoufi, Numerical Methods for Chemical Engineers with MATLAB Applications (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1999)A. Cordero, J. Franceschi, J.R. Torregrosa, A.C. Zagati, A convex combination approach for mean-based variants of Newton’s method. Symmetry 11, 1062 (2019)A. Cordero, J.R. Torregrosa, Variants of Newton’s method using fifth order quadrature formulas. Appl. Math. Comput. 190, 686–698 (2007)H.T. Kung, J.F. Traub, Optimal order of one-point and multipoint iteration. J. Assoc. Comput. Math. 21, 643–651 (1974)T. Lukić, N. Ralević, Geometric mean Newton’s method for simple and multiple roots. Appl. Math. Lett. 21, 30–36 (2008)A. Özban, Some new variants of Newton’s method. Appl. Math. Lett. 17, 677–682 (2004)M. Petković, B. Neta, L. Petković, J. Dz̆unić, Multipoint Methods for Solving Nonlinear Equations (Academic Press, Cambridge, 2013)E. Shashi, Transmission Pipeline Calculations and Simulations Manual, Fluid Flow in Pipes (Elsevier, London, 2015), pp. 149–234M.K. Singh, A.K. Singh, A new-mean type variant of Newton’s method for simple and multiple roots. Int. J. Math. Trends Technol. 49, 174–177 (2017)K. Verma, On the centroidal mean Newton’s method for simple and multiple roots of nonlinear equations. Int. J. Comput. Sci. Math. 7, 126–143 (2016)S. Weerakoon, T.G.I. Fernando, A variant of Newton’s method with third-order convergence. Appl. Math. Lett. 13, 87–93 (2000)Z. Xiaojian, A class of Newton’s methods with third-order convergence. Appl. Math. Lett. 20, 1026–1030 (2007

Absolute Lymphocyte Count (ALC) after Induction Treatment Predicts Survival of Pediatric Patients with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

Absolute Lymphocyte Count (ALC) has been recently established as a prognostic factor of survival in pediatric Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL). A retrospective analysis of 132 patients treated according the BFM - ALLIC 2002 protocol was performed in a single institution. A possible association between ALC values and Overall Survival (OS) or Event-Free Survival (EFS) was evaluated at multiple time points during induction chemotherapy. ALC higher than 350 cells/muL measured on the 33th day of induction was associated with better Overall- and Event-Free Survival in both Kaplan-Meier (OS 88.6% vs. 40%; p 10 years). With help of day 33 ALC values of 350 cells/muL cutoff it was possible to refine day 33 flow cytometry (FC) Minimal Residual Disease (MRD) results within the negative cohort: higher ALC values were significantly associated with better survival. ALC on day 33 (350 cells/muL) remained prognostic for OS and EFS in multivariate analysis after adjusting it for age, cytogenetics, immunophenotype and FC MRD of induction day 33. According to these findings ALC on day 33 of induction is a strong predictor of survival in pediatric ALL