DENTAL HEALTH IN TOULON VAR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS: RESULTS OF THE ACTION UNDERTAKEN BY NICE DENTAL STUDENTS

Oral Communication presented at the ";Forum des Jeunes Chercheurs";, Brest (France) 2011

ORAL HEALTH PROMOTION THROUGH PEER-SUPPORT: 2ND EDITION OF THE ACTION UNDERTAKEN BY DENTAL STUDENTS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF NICE SOPHIA ANTIPOLIS

Oral Communication presented at the ";Forum des Jeunes Chercheurs";, Brest (France) 2011

Is the association between blood pressure and cognition in the oldest-old modified by physical, vascular or brain pathology markers? The EMIF-AD 90 + Study

BACKGROUND: Prior studies suggest a changing association between blood pressure (BP) and cognition with aging, however work in the oldest-old has yielded ambiguous results. Potentially, these mixed results can be explained by modifying factors. The aim of this study was to establish whether physical, vascular or brain pathology markers that describe a state of increased vulnerability, affect the association between BP and cognition in the oldest-old. Results may influence clinicians’ decisions regarding the use of antihypertensives in this age group. METHODS: We included 122 individuals (84 without cognitive impairment and 38 with cognitive impairment) from the EMIF-AD 90 + Study (mean age 92.4 years). First, we tested cross-sectional associations of systolic and diastolic BP with a cognitive composite score. Second, we tested whether these associations were modified by physical markers (waist circumference, muscle mass, gait speed and handgrip strength), vascular markers (history of cardiac disease, carotid intima media thickness as a proxy for atherosclerosis and carotid distensibility coefficient as a proxy for arterial stiffness) or brain pathology markers (white matter hyperintensities and cortical thickness). RESULTS: In the total sample, there was no association between BP and cognition, however, waist circumference modified this association (p-value for interaction with systolic BP: 0.03, with diastolic BP: 0.01). In individuals with a high waist circumference, higher systolic and diastolic BP tended to be associated with worse cognition, while in individuals with a low waist circumference, higher systolic BP was associated with better cognition. The others physical, vascular and brain pathology markers did not modify the association between BP and cognition. CONCLUSIONS: When examining various markers for physical, vascular and brain vulnerability, only waist circumference affected the association between BP and cognition. This warrants further research to evaluate whether waist circumference may be a marker in clinical practice influencing the use of antihypertensives in the oldest-old

N=2 supergravity and supercurrents

We address the problem of classifying all N=2 supercurrent multiplets in four space-time dimensions. For this purpose we consider the minimal formulation of N=2 Poincare supergravity with a tensor compensator, and derive its linearized action in terms of three N=2 off-shell multiplets: an unconstrained scalar superfield, a vector multiplet, and a tensor multiplet. Such an action was ruled out to exist in the past. Using the action constructed, one can derive other models for linearized N=2 supergravity by applying N=2 superfield duality transformations. The action depends parametrically on a constant non-vanishing real isotriplet g^{ij}=g^{ji} which originates as an expectation value of the tensor compensator. Upon reduction to N=1 superfields, we show that the model describes two dually equivalent formulations for the massless multiplet (1,3/2)+(3/2,2) depending on a choice of g^{ij}. In the case g^{11}=g^{22}=0, the action describes (i) new minimal N=1 supergravity; and (ii) the Fradkin-Vasiliev-de Wit-van Holten gravitino multiplet. In the case g^{12}=0, on the other hand, the action describes (i) old minimal N=1 supergravity; and (ii) the Ogievetsky-Sokatchev gravitino multiplet.Comment: 40 pages; v2: added references, some comments, new appendi

What Determines Cognitive Functioning in the Oldest-Old? The EMIF-AD 90+ Study

OBJECTIVES: Determinants of cognitive functioning in individuals aged 90 years and older, the oldest-old, remain poorly understood. We aimed to establish the association of risk factors, white matter hyperintensities (WMH), hippocampal atrophy and amyloid aggregation with cognition in the oldest-old. METHODS: We included 84 individuals without cognitive impairment and 38 individuals with cognitive impairment from the EMIF-AD 90+ Study (mean age 92.4 years) and tested cross-sectional associations between risk factors (cognitive activity, physical parameters, nutritional status, inflammatory markers and cardiovascular risk factors), brain pathology biomarkers (WMH and hippocampal volume on MRI, and amyloid binding measured with PET) and cognition. Additionally, we tested whether the brain pathology biomarkers were independently associated with cognition. When applicable, we tested whether the effect of risk factors on cognition was mediated by brain pathology. RESULTS: Lower values for handgrip strength, Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB), nutritional status, HbA1c and hippocampal volume, and higher values for WMH volume and amyloid binding were associated with worse cognition. Higher past cognitive activity and lower BMI were associated with increased amyloid binding, lower muscle mass with more WMH, and lower SPPB scores with more WMH and hippocampal atrophy. The brain pathology markers were independently associated with cognition. The association of SPPB with cognition was partially mediated by hippocampal volume. DISCUSSION: In the oldest-old, physical parameters, nutritional status, HbA1c, WMH, hippocampal atrophy and amyloid binding are associated with cognitive impairment. Physical performance may affect cognition through hippocampal atrophy. This study highlights the importance to consider multiple factors when assessing cognition in the oldest-old

Microalgae production in fresh market wastewater and its utilization as a protein substitute in formulated fish feed for oreochromis spp.

Rapid growing of human population has led to increasing demand of aquaculture production. Oreochromis niloticus or known as tilapia is one of the most globally cultured freshwater fish due to its great adaptation towards extreme environment. Besides, farming of tilapia not only involves small scales farming for local consumption but also larger scales for international market which contributes to a foreign currency earning. Extensive use of fishmeal as feed for fish and for other animals indirectly caused an increasing depletion of the natural resource and may consequently cause economic and environmental unstable. Microalgae biomass seems to be a promising feedstock in aquaculture industry. It can be used for many purposes such as live food for fish larvae and dried microalgae to substitute protein material in fish feed. The microalgae replacement in fish feed formulation as protein alternative seem potentially beneficial for long term aqua-business sustainability. The present chapter discussed the potential of microalgae as an alternative nutrition in fish feed formulations, specifically Tilapia

Expression of CXCL10 is associated with response to radiotherapy and overall survival in squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue

Five-year survival for patients with oral cancer has been disappointingly stable during the last decades, creating a demand for new biomarkers and treatment targets. Lately, much focus has been set on immunomodulation as a possible treatment or an adjuvant increasing sensitivity to conventional treatments. The objective of this study was to evaluate the prognostic importance of response to radiotherapy in tongue carcinoma patients as well as the expression of the CXC-chemokines in correlation to radiation response in the same group of tumours. Thirty-eight patients with tongue carcinoma that had received radiotherapy followed by surgery were included. The prognostic impact of pathological response to radiotherapy, N-status, T-stage, age and gender was evaluated using Cox's regression models, Kaplan-Meier survival curves and chi-square test. The expression of 23 CXC-chemokine ligands and their receptors were evaluated in all patients using microarray and qPCR and correlated with response to treatment using logistic regression. Pathological response to radiotherapy was independently associated to overall survival with a 2-year survival probability of 81 % for patients showing a complete pathological response, while patients with a non-complete response only had a probability of 42 % to survive for 2 years (p = 0.016). The expression of one CXC-chemokine, CXCL10, was significantly associated with response to radiotherapy and the group of patients with the highest CXCL10 expression responded, especially poorly (p = 0.01). CXCL10 is a potential marker for response to radiotherapy and overall survival in patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue

A multi-gene signature predicts outcome in patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.

© 2014 Haider et al.; licensee BioMed Central. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Improved usage of the repertoires of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) profiles is crucially needed to guide the development of predictive and prognostic tools that could inform the selection of treatment options

Infectious Disease Ontology

Technological developments have resulted in tremendous increases in the volume and diversity of the data and information that must be processed in the course of biomedical and clinical research and practice. Researchers are at the same time under ever greater pressure to share data and to take steps to ensure that data resources are interoperable. The use of ontologies to annotate data has proven successful in supporting these goals and in providing new possibilities for the automated processing of data and information. In this chapter, we describe different types of vocabulary resources and emphasize those features of formal ontologies that make them most useful for computational applications. We describe current uses of ontologies and discuss future goals for ontology-based computing, focusing on its use in the field of infectious diseases. We review the largest and most widely used vocabulary resources relevant to the study of infectious diseases and conclude with a description of the Infectious Disease Ontology (IDO) suite of interoperable ontology modules that together cover the entire infectious disease domain

Diffusion-weighted whole-body imaging with background body signal suppression (DWIBS): features and potential applications in oncology

Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DWI) provides functional information and can be used for the detection and characterization of pathologic processes, including malignant tumors. The recently introduced concept of “diffusion-weighted whole-body imaging with background body signal suppression” (DWIBS) now allows acquisition of volumetric diffusion-weighted images of the entire body. This new concept has unique features different from conventional DWI and may play an important role in whole-body oncological imaging. This review describes and illustrates the basics of DWI, the features of DWIBS, and its potential applications in oncology