A novel coil array for combined TMS/fMRI experiments at 3 T

PURPOSE: To overcome current limitations in combined transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies by employing a dedicated coil array design for 3 Tesla. METHODS: The state-of-the-art setup for concurrent TMS/fMRI is to use a large birdcage head coil, with the TMS between the subject's head and the MR coil. This setup has drawbacks in sensitivity, positioning, and available imaging techniques. In this study, an ultraslim 7-channel receive-only coil array for 3 T, which can be placed between the subject's head and the TMS, is presented. Interactions between the devices are investigated and the performance of the new setup is evaluated in comparison to the state-of-the-art setup. RESULTS: MR sensitivity obtained at the depth of the TMS stimulation is increased by a factor of five. Parallel imaging with an acceleration factor of two is feasible with low g-factors. Possible interactions between TMS and the novel hardware were investigated and were found negligible. CONCLUSION: The novel coil array is safe, strongly improves signal-to-noise ratio in concurrent TMS/fMRI experiments, enables parallel imaging, and allows for flexible positioning of the TMS on the head while ensuring efficient TMS stimulation due to its ultraslim design

Gut-Brain Axis: Role of Microbiota in Parkinson’s Disease and Multiple Sclerosis

It has recently been discovered that the digestive tract is lined with about 100 million nerve cells; the digestive tract has been baptized, metaphorically speaking, as “the second brain,” which contains a multitude of neurotransmitters, viruses, and bacteria that help regulate our emotional state. This second brain, known as the enteric nervous system, is a unique anatomical unit that extends from the esophagus to the anus. Like the nervous system, it produces a whole series of psychoactive substances, such as serotonin, dopamine, and opioids for pain, and synthesizes benzodiazepines. In it, we find the microbiota: a set of microorganisms (viruses and bacteria). Together with the brain, the microbiota directly influences mood, character, or sleep. Knowledge about the possible relationship of the microbiota with frequent neurological diseases is still just beginning. Recently, possible changes in the microbiota have been linked to the onset of Parkinson’s disease (PD). Also, today, we know that there are differences between the microbiota of healthy people and people with multiple sclerosis and that these differences have also been related to the disease and its evolution

CALIFA, the Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field Area survey: I. Survey presentation

We present here the Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field Area (CALIFA) survey, which has been designed to provide a first step in this direction.We summarize the survey goals and design, including sample selection and observational strategy.We also showcase the data taken during the first observing runs (June/July 2010) and outline the reduction pipeline, quality control schemes and general characteristics of the reduced data. This survey is obtaining spatially resolved spectroscopic information of a diameter selected sample of $\sim600$ galaxies in the Local Universe (0.005< z <0.03). CALIFA has been designed to allow the building of two-dimensional maps of the following quantities: (a) stellar populations: ages and metallicities; (b) ionized gas: distribution, excitation mechanism and chemical abundances; and (c) kinematic properties: both from stellar and ionized gas components. CALIFA uses the PPAK Integral Field Unit (IFU), with a hexagonal field-of-view of \sim1.3\sq\arcmin', with a 100% covering factor by adopting a three-pointing dithering scheme. The optical wavelength range is covered from 3700 to 7000 {\AA}, using two overlapping setups (V500 and V1200), with different resolutions: R\sim850 and R\sim1650, respectively. CALIFA is a legacy survey, intended for the community. The reduced data will be released, once the quality has been guaranteed. The analyzed data fulfill the expectations of the original observing proposal, on the basis of a set of quality checks and exploratory analysis. We conclude from this first look at the data that CALIFA will be an important resource for archaeological studies of galaxies in the Local Universe.Comment: 32 pages, 29 figures, Accepted for publishing in Astronomy and Astrophysic

Demographic and clinical profile of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis patients in Spain: the SEPAR National Registry

BackgroundLittle is known on the characteristics of patients diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) in Spain. We aimed to characterize the demographic and clinical profile of IPF patients included in the IPF National Registry of the Spanish Respiratory Society (SEPAR).MethodsThis is a prospective, observational, multicentre and nationwide study that involved 608 IPF patients included in the SEPAR IPF Registry up to June 27th, 2017, and who received any treatment for their disease. IPF patients were predominantly males, ex-smokers, and aged in their 70s, similar to other registries.ResultsUpon inclusion, meanSD predicted forced vital capacity was 77.6%+/- 19.4, diffusing capacity for carbon monoxide was 48.5%+/- 17.7, and the 6-min walk distance was 423.5m +/- 110.4. The diagnosis was mainly established on results from the high-resolution computed tomography in the proper clinical context (55.0% of patients), while 21.2% of patients required invasive procedures (surgical lung biopsy) for definitive diagnosis. Anti-fibrotic treatment was prescribed in 69.4% of cases, 51.5% pirfenidone and 17.9% nintedanib, overall with a good safety profile.Conclusions The SEPAR IPF Registry should help to further characterize current characteristics and future trends of IPF patients in Spain and compare/pool them with other registries and cohorts

Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): Gas Fuelling of Spiral Galaxies in the Local Universe II. – Direct Measurement of the Dependencies on Redshift and Host Halo Mass of Stellar Mass Growth in Central Disk Galaxies

We present a detailed analysis of the specific star formation rate – stellar mass (sSFR − M*) of z ≤ 0.13 disk central galaxies using a morphologically selected mass-complete sample (M* ≥ 109.5M⊙). Considering samples of grouped and ungrouped galaxies, we find the sSFR − M* relations of disk-dominated central galaxies to have no detectable dependence on host dark-matter halo (DMH) mass, even where weak-lensing measurements indicate a difference in halo mass of a factor ≳ 5. We further detect a gradual evolution of the sSFR − M* relation of non-grouped (field) central disk galaxies with redshift, even over a Δz ≈ 0.04 (≈5 · 108yr) interval, while the scatter remains constant. This evolution is consistent with extrapolation of the ”main-sequence-of-star-forming-galaxies” from previous literature that uses larger redshift baselines and coarser sampling. Taken together, our results present new constraints on the paradigm under which the SFR of galaxies is determined by a self-regulated balance between gas inflows and outflows, and consumption of gas by star-formation in disks, with the inflow being determined by the product of the cosmological accretion rate and a fuelling-efficiency – M ˙ b,halo ζ M˙b,haloζ . In particular, maintaining the paradigm requires M ˙ b,halo ζ M˙b,haloζ to be independent of the mass Mhalo of the host DMH. Furthermore, it requires the fuelling-efficiency ζ to have a strong redshift dependence (∝(1 + z)2.7 for M* = 1010.3M⊙ over z = 0 − 0.13), even though no morphological transformation to spheroids can be invoked to explain this in our disk-dominated sample. The physical mechanisms capable of giving rise to such dependencies of ζ on Mhalo and z for disks are unclea

Epidemiological trends of HIV/HCV coinfection in Spain, 2015-2019

Altres ajuts: Spanish AIDS Research Network; European Funding for Regional Development (FEDER).Objectives: We assessed the prevalence of anti-hepatitis C virus (HCV) antibodies and active HCV infection (HCV-RNA-positive) in people living with HIV (PLWH) in Spain in 2019 and compared the results with those of four similar studies performed during 2015-2018. Methods: The study was performed in 41 centres. Sample size was estimated for an accuracy of 1%. Patients were selected by random sampling with proportional allocation. Results: The reference population comprised 41 973 PLWH, and the sample size was 1325. HCV serostatus was known in 1316 PLWH (99.3%), of whom 376 (28.6%) were HCV antibody (Ab)-positive (78.7% were prior injection drug users); 29 were HCV-RNA-positive (2.2%). Of the 29 HCV-RNA-positive PLWH, infection was chronic in 24, it was acute/recent in one, and it was of unknown duration in four. Cirrhosis was present in 71 (5.4%) PLWH overall, three (10.3%) HCV-RNA-positive patients and 68 (23.4%) of those who cleared HCV after anti-HCV therapy (p = 0.04). The prevalence of anti-HCV antibodies decreased steadily from 37.7% in 2015 to 28.6% in 2019 (p < 0.001); the prevalence of active HCV infection decreased from 22.1% in 2015 to 2.2% in 2019 (p < 0.001). Uptake of anti-HCV treatment increased from 53.9% in 2015 to 95.0% in 2019 (p < 0.001). Conclusions: In Spain, the prevalence of active HCV infection among PLWH at the end of 2019 was 2.2%, i.e. 90.0% lower than in 2015. Increased exposure to DAAs was probably the main reason for this sharp reduction. Despite the high coverage of treatment with direct-acting antiviral agents, HCV-related cirrhosis remains significant in this population

The CALIFA survey across the Hubble sequence Spatially resolved stellar population properties in galaxies

Various different physical processes contribute to the star formation and stellar mass assembly histories of galaxies. One important approach to understanding the significance of these different processes on galaxy evolution is the study of the stellar population content of today’s galaxies in a spatially resolved manner. The aim of this paper is to characterize in detail the radial structure of stellar population properties of galaxies in the nearby universe, based on a uniquely large galaxy sample, considering the quality and coverage of the data. The sample under study was drawn from the CALIFA survey and contains 300 galaxies observed with integral field spectroscopy. These cover a wide range of Hubble types, from spheroids to spiral galaxies, while stellar masses range from M? ∼ 109 to 7 × 1011 M . We apply the fossil record method based on spectral synthesis techniques to recover the following physical properties for each spatial resolution element in our target galaxies: the stellar mass surface density (µ?), stellar extinction (AV ), light-weighted and mass-weighted ages (hlog ageiL, hlog ageiM), and mass-weighted metallicity (hlog Z?iM). To study mean trends with overall galaxy properties, the individual radial profiles are stacked in seven bins of galaxy morphology (E, S0, Sa, Sb, Sbc, Sc, and Sd). We confirm that more massive galaxies are more compact, older, more metal rich, and less reddened by dust. Additionally, we find that these trends are preserved spatially with the radial distance to the nucleus. Deviations from these relations appear correlated with Hubble type: earlier types are more compact, older, and more metal rich for a given M?, which is evidence that quenching is related to morphology, but not driven by mass. Negative gradients of hlog ageiL are consistent with an inside-out growth of galaxies, with the largest hlog ageiL gradients in Sb–Sbc galaxies. Further, the mean stellar ages of disks and bulges are correlated and with disks covering a wider range of ages, and late-type spirals hosting younger disks. However, age gradients are only mildly negative or flat beyond R ∼ 2 HLR (half light radius), indicating that star formation is more uniformly distributed or that stellar migration is important at these distances. The gradients in stellar mass surface density depend mostly on stellar mass, in the sense that more massive galaxies are more centrally concentrated. Whatever sets the concentration indices of galaxies obviously depends less on quenching/morphology than on the depth of the potential well. There is a secondary correlation in the sense that at the same M? early-type galaxies have steeper gradients. The µ? gradients outside 1 HLR show no dependence on Hubble type. We find mildly negative hlog Z?iM gradients, which are shallower than predicted from models of galaxy evolution in isolation. In general, metallicity gradients depend on stellar mass, and less on morphology, hinting that metallicity is affected by both – the depth of the potential well and morphology/quenching. Thus, the largest hlog Z?iM gradients occur in Milky Way-like Sb–Sbc galaxies, and are similar to those measured above the Galactic disk. Sc spirals show flatter hlog Z?iM gradients, possibly indicating a larger contribution from secular evolution in disks. The galaxies from the sample have decreasing-outward stellar extinction; all spirals show similar radial profiles, independent from the stellar mass, but redder than E and S0. Overall, we conclude that quenching processes act in manners that are independent of mass, while metallicity and galaxy structure are influenced by mass-dependent processes.CALIFA is the first legacy survey carried out at Calar Alto. The CALIFA collaboration would like to thank the IAA-CSIC and MPIA-MPG as major partners of the observatory, and CAHA itself, for the unique access to telescope time and support in manpower and infrastructures. We also thank the CAHA staff for the dedication to this project. Support from the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, through projects AYA2010-15081 (PI R.G.D.), and Junta de Andalucía FQ1580 (PI R.G.D.), AYA2010-22111-C03-03, and AYA2010-10904E (S.F.S.). We also thank the Viabilidad, Diseño, Acceso y Mejora funding program, ICTS-2009-10, for funding the data acquisition of this project. R.C.F. thanks the hospitality of the IAA and the support of CAPES and CNPq. R.G.D. acknowledges the support of CNPq (Brazil) through Programa Ciencia sem Fronteiras (401452/2012-3). A.G. acknowledges support from EU FP7/2007-2013 under grant agreement n.267251 (AstroFIt) and from the EU Marie Curie Integration Grant “SteMaGE” Nr. PCIG12-GA-2012-326466. C.J.W. acknowledges support through the Marie Curie Career Integration Grant 303912. E.P. acknowledges support from the Guillermo Haro program at INAOE. Support for L.G. is provided by the Ministry of Economy, Development, and Tourism’s Millennium Science Initiative through grant IC120009, awarded to The Millennium Institute of Astrophysics, MAS. L.G. acknowledges support by CONICYT through FONDECYT grant 3140566. J.I.P. acknowledges financial support from the Spanish MINECO under grant AYA2010-21887- C04-01 and from Junta de Andalucía Excellence Project PEX2011-FQM7058. I.M., J.M. and A.d.O. acknowledge support from the project AYA2013-42227-P. RAM is funded by the Spanish program of International Campus of Excellence Moncloa (CEI). J.M.A. acknowledges support from the European Research Council Starting Grant (SEDmorph; P.I. V. Wild

CIBERER : Spanish national network for research on rare diseases: A highly productive collaborative initiative

Altres ajuts: Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII); Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación.CIBER (Center for Biomedical Network Research; Centro de Investigación Biomédica En Red) is a public national consortium created in 2006 under the umbrella of the Spanish National Institute of Health Carlos III (ISCIII). This innovative research structure comprises 11 different specific areas dedicated to the main public health priorities in the National Health System. CIBERER, the thematic area of CIBER focused on rare diseases (RDs) currently consists of 75 research groups belonging to universities, research centers, and hospitals of the entire country. CIBERER's mission is to be a center prioritizing and favoring collaboration and cooperation between biomedical and clinical research groups, with special emphasis on the aspects of genetic, molecular, biochemical, and cellular research of RDs. This research is the basis for providing new tools for the diagnosis and therapy of low-prevalence diseases, in line with the International Rare Diseases Research Consortium (IRDiRC) objectives, thus favoring translational research between the scientific environment of the laboratory and the clinical setting of health centers. In this article, we intend to review CIBERER's 15-year journey and summarize the main results obtained in terms of internationalization, scientific production, contributions toward the discovery of new therapies and novel genes associated to diseases, cooperation with patients' associations and many other topics related to RD research

SARS-CoV-2 viral load in nasopharyngeal swabs is not an independent predictor of unfavorable outcome

The aim was to assess the ability of nasopharyngeal SARS-CoV-2 viral load at first patient’s hospital evaluation to predict unfavorable outcomes. We conducted a prospective cohort study including 321 adult patients with confirmed COVID-19 through RT-PCR in nasopharyngeal swabs. Quantitative Synthetic SARS-CoV-2 RNA cycle threshold values were used to calculate the viral load in log10 copies/mL. Disease severity at the end of follow up was categorized into mild, moderate, and severe. Primary endpoint was a composite of intensive care unit (ICU) admission and/or death (n = 85, 26.4%). Univariable and multivariable logistic regression analyses were performed. Nasopharyngeal SARS-CoV-2 viral load over the second quartile (≥ 7.35 log10 copies/mL, p = 0.003) and second tertile (≥ 8.27 log10 copies/mL, p = 0.01) were associated to unfavorable outcome in the unadjusted logistic regression analysis. However, in the final multivariable analysis, viral load was not independently associated with an unfavorable outcome. Five predictors were independently associated with increased odds of ICU admission and/or death: age ≥ 70 years, SpO2, neutrophils > 7.5 × 103/µL, lactate dehydrogenase ≥ 300 U/L, and C-reactive protein ≥ 100 mg/L. In summary, nasopharyngeal SARS-CoV-2 viral load on admission is generally high in patients with COVID-19, regardless of illness severity, but it cannot be used as an independent predictor of unfavorable clinical outcome