In vivo imaging reveals transient microglia recruitment and functional recovery of photoreceptor signaling after injury.

Microglia respond to damage and microenvironmental changes within the central nervous system by morphologically transforming and migrating to the lesion, but the real-time behavior of populations of these resident immune cells and the neurons they support have seldom been observed simultaneously. Here, we have used in vivo high-resolution optical coherence tomography (OCT) and scanning laser ophthalmoscopy with and without adaptive optics to quantify the 3D distribution and dynamics of microglia in the living retina before and after local damage to photoreceptors. Following photoreceptor injury, microglia migrated both laterally and vertically through the retina over many hours, forming a tight cluster within the area of visible damage that resolved over 2 wk. In vivo OCT optophysiological assessment revealed that the photoreceptors occupying the damaged region lost all light-driven signaling during the period of microglia recruitment. Remarkably, photoreceptors recovered function to near-baseline levels after the microglia had departed the injury locus. These results demonstrate the spatiotemporal dynamics of microglia engagement and restoration of neuronal function during tissue remodeling and highlight the need for mechanistic studies that consider the temporal and structural dynamics of neuron-microglia interactions in vivo

Indoor Climate Prediction Using Attention-Based Sequence-to-Sequence Neural Network

The Solar Dryer Dome (SDD), a solar-powered agronomic facility for drying, retaining, and processing comestible commodities, needs smart systems for optimizing its energy consumption. Therefore, indoor condition variables such as temperature and relative humidity need to be forecasted so that actuators can be scheduled, as the largest energy usage originates from actuator activities such as heaters for increasing indoor temperature and dehumidifiers for maintaining optimal indoor humidity. To build such forecasting systems, prediction models based on deep learning for sequence-to-sequence cases were developed in this research, which may bring future benefits for assisting the SDDs and greenhouses in reducing energy consumption. This research experimented with the complex publicly available indoor climate dataset, the Room Climate dataset, which can be represented as environmental conditions inside an SDD. The main contribution of this research was the implementation of the Luong attention mechanism, which is commonly applied in Natural Language Processing (NLP) research, in time series prediction research by proposing two models with the Luong attention-based sequence-to-sequence (seq2seq) architecture with GRU and LSTM as encoder and decoder layers. The proposed models outperformed the adapted LSTM and GRU baseline models. The implementation of Luong attention had been proven capable of increasing the accuracy of the seq2seq LSTM model by reducing its test MAE by 0.00847 and RMSE by 0.00962 on average for predicting indoor temperature, as well as decreasing 0.068046 MAE and 0.095535 RMSE for predicting indoor humidity. The application of Luong's attention also improved the accuracy of the seq2seq GRU model by reducing the error by 0.01163 in MAE and 0.021996 in RMSE for indoor humidity. However, the implementation of Luong attention in seq2seq GRU for predicting indoor temperature showed inconsistent results by reducing approximately 0.003193 MAE and increasing roughly 0.01049 RMSE. Doi: 10.28991/CEJ-2023-09-05-06 Full Text: PD

Identifying Self-Disclosures of Use, Misuse and Addiction in Community-based Social Media Posts

In the last decade, the United States has lost more than 500,000 people from an overdose involving prescription and illicit opioids (https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/epidemic/index.html) making it a national public health emergency (USDHHS, 2017). To more effectively prevent unintentional opioid overdoses, medical practitioners require robust and timely tools that can effectively identify at-risk patients. Community-based social media platforms such as Reddit allow self-disclosure for users to discuss otherwise sensitive drug-related behaviors, often acting as indicators for opioid use disorder. Towards this, we present a moderate size corpus of 2500 opioid-related posts from various subreddits spanning 6 different phases of opioid use: Medical Use, Misuse, Addiction, Recovery, Relapse, Not Using. For every post, we annotate span-level extractive explanations and crucially study their role both in annotation quality and model development. We evaluate several state-of-the-art models in a supervised, few-shot, or zero-shot setting. Experimental results and error analysis show that identifying the phases of opioid use disorder is highly contextual and challenging. However, we find that using explanations during modeling leads to a significant boost in classification accuracy demonstrating their beneficial role in a high-stakes domain such as studying the opioid use disorder continuum. The dataset will be made available for research on Github in the formal version.Comment: Work in progres

Factors Influencing Dietetic Interns\u27 Dietary Habits During Supervised Practice

Supervised practice is a prerequisite to becoming a registered dietitian. Research suggests that environmental and social factors may affect dietary choices. This focus group research aimed to gather opinions from dietetic interns to understand what factors related to supervised practice, if any, affected their dietary habits. Qualitative data were collected via seven recorded virtual focus groups in which trained moderators facilitated a discussion using a series of controlled questions. Participants, dietetic interns (n = 42) who were currently completing or had completed their supervised practice within the previous six months, attended one of seven virtual focus groups. Each focus group had five to eight participants. Transcripts were separately coded by two trained researchers using a grounded theory approach to identify themes and subthemes. Researchers discussed any disagreements in coding and established a consensus. Elements related to the dietetic internship were observed to influence participants’ dietary choices. Main themes included time, finances, food access and availability, physical and mental effects, non-supervised practice factors, and social factors. Dietetic programs and preceptors should explore ways to raise interns’ awareness and minimize the potential negative impacts of these factors on interns’ dietary habits to improve their overall internship experience

Production of IgG2 Antibodies to Pneumococcal Polysaccharides After Vaccination of Treated HIV Patients May Be Augmented by IL-7Rα Signaling in ICOS+ Circulating T Follicular-Helper Cells

Greater understanding of factors influencing the maturation of antibody responses against pneumococcal polysaccharides (PcPs) may improve pneumococcal vaccination strategies. Although PcPs are type 2 T cell-independent antigens thought not to induce follicular immune responses, we have previously shown that IgG2 antibody responses against antigens in the 23-valent unconjugated PcP vaccine (PPV23) are associated with expansion of ICOS+ circulating T follicular helper (cTFH) cells in HIV seronegative subjects but not HIV patients. As IL-7Rα signaling in CD4+ T cells may affect TFH cell function and is adversely affected by HIV-1 infection, we have examined the relationship of IL-7Rα expression on ICOS+ cTFH cells with PcP-specific IgG2 antibody responses. PPV23 vaccination was undertaken in HIV patients receiving antiretroviral therapy (n = 25) and HIV seronegative subjects (n = 20). IL-7Rα expression on ICOS+ and ICOS− cTFH cells was assessed at day(D) 0, 7, and 28. Fold increase between D0 and D28 in serum IgG1 and IgG2 antibodies to PcP serotypes 4, 6B, 9V, and 14 and the frequency of IgG1+ and IgG2+ antibody secreting cells (ASCs) at D7 were also assessed. Decline in IL-7Rα expression on ICOS+ cTFH cells between D0 and D7 occurred in 75% of HIV seronegative subjects and 60% of HIV patients (Group A), with changes in IL-7Rα expression being more pronounced in HIV patients. Group A patients exhibited abnormally high IL-7Rα expression pre-vaccination, an association of serum IgG2, but not IgG1, antibody responses with a decline of IL-7Rα expression on ICOS+ cTFH cells between D0 and D7, and an association of higher IgG2+ ASCs with lower IL-7Rα expression on ICOS+ cTFH cells at D7. As decline of IL-7Rα expression on CD4+ T cells is an indicator of IL-7Rα signaling, our findings suggest that utilization of IL-7 by cTFH cells affects production of IgG2 antibodies to PPV23 antigens in some HIV patients

Migraine headaches among university students using id migraine test as a screening tool

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Migraine is a significant health problem, especially for the young people, due to its frequency and accompanying morbidity, causing disability and loss of performance. In this study, our aim was to determine the prevalence of migraine headaches among university students in Edirne, a Turkish city.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In this cross-sectional and descriptive study, study population was composed of students registered to Trakya University in the academic year of 2008-2009. Out of these, 3694 of them accepted to participate. Participants who had two or more headaches in the last 3 months formed the headache group. Afterwards, two preliminary questions were applied to the headache group and participants with at least one affirmative response were asked to perform the validated ID-Migraine™ test.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The mean age of 3694 students participated in the study was 19.23 ± 1.84 (17-39 years), with adolescents:adult ratio being 2.5:1. 1613 students (43.7%) did have at least two headaches in the last three months. Migraine-type headache was detected in 266 subjects (7.2%) based on the ID-Migraine™ test. Of the migraine group, 72 were male (27.1%) and 194 were female (72.9%). There was no significant difference in migraine prevalence between adolescent and adult age groups.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>With a prevalence similar to adults, primary care physicians should be aware of the probability of migraine headaches in university students in order to maintain a successful school performance.</p

A study of the TNF/LTA/LTB locus and susceptibility to severe malaria in highland papuan children and adults

Background: Severe malaria (SM) syndromes caused by Plasmodium falciparum infection result in major morbidity and mortality each year. However, only a fraction of P. falciparum infections develop into SM, implicating host genetic factors as important determinants of disease outcome. Previous studies indicate that tumour necrosis factor (TNF) and lymphotoxin alpha (LT alpha) may be important for the development of cerebral malaria (CM) and other SM syndromes

One-year prevalence and the impact of migraine and tension-type headache in Turkey: a nationwide home-based study in adults

Several studies have shown that the prevalence of migraine and tension-type headache (TTH) varied between different geographical regions. Therefore, there is a need of a nationwide prevalence study for headache in our country, located between Asia and Europe. This nationwide study was designed to estimate the 1-year prevalence of migraine and TTH and analyse the clinical features, the impact as well as the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the participant households in Turkey. We planned to investigate 6,000 representative households in 21 cities of Turkey; and a total of 5,323 households (response rate of 89%) aged between 18 and 65 years were examined for headache by 33 trained physicians at home on the basis of the diagnostic criteria of the second edition of the International Classification of Headache Disorders (ICHD-II). The electronically registered questionnaire was based on the headache features, the associated symptoms, demographic and socio-economic situation and history. Of 5,323 participants (48.8% women; mean age 35.9 ± 12 years) 44.6% reported recurrent headaches during the last 1 year and 871 were diagnosed with migraine at a prevalence rate of 16.4% (8.5% in men and 24.6% in women), whereas only 270 were diagnosed with TTH at a prevalence rate of 5.1% (5.7% in men and 4.5% in women). The 1-year prevalence of probable migraine was 12.4% and probable TTH was 9.5% additionally. The rate of migraine with aura among migraineurs was 21.5%. The prevalence of migraine was highest among 35–40-year-old women while there were no differences in age groups among men and in TTH overall. More than 2/3 of migraineurs had ever consulted a physician whereas only 1/3 of patients with TTH had ever consulted a physician. For women, the migraine prevalence was higher among the ones with a lower income, while among men, it did not show any change by income. Migraine prevalence was lower in those with a lower educational status compared to those with a high educational status. Chronic daily headache was present in 3.3% and the prevalence of medication overuse headache was 2.1% in our population. There was an important impact of migraine with a monthly frequency of 5.9 ± 6, and an attack duration of 35.1 ± 72 h, but only 4.9% were on prophylactic treatment. The one-year prevalence of migraine estimated as 16.4% was similar or even higher than world-wide reported migraine prevalence figures and identical to a previous nation-wide study conducted in 1998, whereas the TTH prevalence was much lower using the same methodology with the ICHD-II criteria

Stress and psychological factors before a migraine attack: A time-based analysis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The objective of this study is to examine the stress and mood changes of Japanese subjects over the 1–3 days before a migraine headache.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The study participants were 16 patients with migraines who consented to participate in this study. Each subject kept a headache diary four times a day for two weeks. They evaluated the number of stressful events, daily hassles, domestic and non-domestic stress, anxiety, depressive tendency and irritability by visual analog scales. The days were classified into migraine days, pre-migraine days, buffer days and control days based on the intensity of the headaches and accompanying symptoms, and a comparative study was conducted for each factor on the migraine days, pre-migraine days and control days.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The stressful event value of pre-migraine days showed no significant difference compared to other days. The daily hassle value of pre-migraine days was the highest and was significantly higher than that of buffer days. In non-domestic stress, values on migraine days were significantly higher than on other days, and there was no significant difference between pre-migraine days and buffer days or between pre-migraine days and control days. There was no significant difference in the values of domestic stress between the categories. In non-domestic stress, values on migraine days were significantly higher than other days, and there was no significant difference between pre-migraine days and buffer days or between pre-migraine days and control days.</p> <p>There was little difference in sleep quality on migraine and pre-migraine days, but other psychological factors were higher on migraine days than on pre-migraine days.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Psychosocial stress preceding the onset of migraines by several days was suggested to play an important role in the occurrence of migraines. However, stress 2–3 days before a migraine attack was not so high as it has been reported to be in the United States and Europe. There was no significant difference in the values of psychological factors between pre-migraine days and other days.</p