Bitter Taste Receptors and Endocrine Disruptors: Cellular and Molecular Insights from an In Vitro Model of Human Granulosa Cells

Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are compounds that interfere with the synthesis, transport and binding action of hormones responsible for reproduction and homeostasis. Some EDCs compounds are activators of Taste bitter Receptors, a subclass of taste receptors expressed in many extraoral locations, including sperm and follicular somatic cells. This makes TAS2Rs attractive molecules to study and investigate to shed light on the effect of EDCs on female reproduction and fertility. This study aims to assess the effect of selected EDCs [namely Biochanin A (BCA), caffeine, Daidzein, Genistein and Isoflavone] on hGL5, an immortalized cell line exhibiting characteristics coherent with primary follicular granulosa cells. After demonstrating that this model expresses all the TAS2Rs (TAS2R3, TAS2R4, TAS2R14, TAS2R19, TAS2R43) specifically expressed by the primary human granulosa cells, we demonstrated that BCA and caffeine significantly affect mitochondrial footprint and intracellular lipid content, indicating their contribution in steroidogenesis. Our results showed that bitter taste receptors may be involved in steroidogenesis, thus suggesting an appealing mechanism by which these compounds affect the female reproductive system

Ion Pairing in ePPC-SAFT for Aqueous and Mixed-solvent Alkali Halide Solutions

International audienceShort-range ion-solvent and ion-ion interactions need to be taken into account in molecule-based electrolyte equations of state. The ePPC-SAFT (electrolyte polar perturbed train statistical associating fluid theory) model consists of hard chain, dispersion, association, multi-polar, non-additive hard sphere, mean spherical approximation, and Born contributions. Using Wertheim’s first-order thermodynamic perturbation theory for associating fluids to account for short-range cation-anion interactions offers significant advantages over models that use ion-ion dispersion interactions only. However, the ionic association framework assigns the same number of sites for ion-solvent and cation-anion interactions, assuming the formation of ion clusters.This work proposes a new association framework in which ion-ion and ion-solvent association sites are labelled, restricting the ion-ion association site number to one per ion to prevent the formation of larger ion clusters. This approach improves modeling accuracy compared to the original model, in which ion clustering was considered, without increasing the number of adjustable parameters. Furthermore, this work proposes a generalized Bjerrum’s theory with one adjustable parameter in the association strength function, as in Wertheim’s theory, and proposes an analytical approximation for the Bjerrum integral to speed up calculations. This work uses Wertheim’s theory for short-range ion-solvent interactions, and compares Wertheim’s theory and Bjerrum’s theory for short-range ion-ion interaction, i.e., ion pairing. The new association framework with Wertheim’s theory for both short-range ion-ion and ion-solvent association demonstrates to be significantly more accurate compared to Bjerrum’s theory, and slightly more accurate than the previous best practice. The model extends to mixed-solvent electrolyte solutions. Furthermore, the contributions of Helmholtz free energy terms and number of bonds of the ions are analyzed

Ion Pairing in ePPC-SAFT for Aqueous and Mixed-Solvent Alkali Halide Solutions

Short-range ion-solvent and ion-ion interactions need to be taken into account in molecule-based electrolyte equations of state. The ePPC-SAFT (electrolyte polar perturbed chain statistical associating fluid theory) model consists of hard chain, dispersion, association, multipolar, nonadditive hard sphere, mean spherical approximation, and Born contributions. Using Wertheim’s first-order thermodynamic perturbation theory for associating fluids to account for short-range cation-anion interactions offers significant advantages over models that use ion-ion dispersion interactions only. However, the ionic association framework assigns the same number of sites for ion-solvent and cation-anion interactions, assuming the formation of ion clusters. This work proposes a new association framework in which ion-ion and ion-solvent association sites are labeled, restricting the ion-ion association site number to one per ion to prevent the formation of larger ion clusters. This approach improves modeling accuracy compared to the original model, in which ion clustering was considered, without increasing the number of adjustable parameters. Furthermore, this work proposes a generalized Bjerrum theory with one adjustable parameter in the association strength function, as in Wertheim’s theory, and proposes an analytical approximation for the Bjerrum integral to speed up calculations. This work uses Wertheim’s theory for short-range ion-solvent interactions and compares Wertheim’s theory and Bjerrum’s theory for short-range ion-ion interactions, i.e., ion pairing. The new association framework with Wertheim’s theory for both short-range ion-ion and ion-solvent associations is demonstrated to be significantly more accurate compared to Bjerrum’s theory and slightly more accurate than the previous best practice. The model extends to mixed-solvent electrolyte solutions. Furthermore, the contributions of Helmholtz free energy terms and number of bonds of the ions are analyzed.</p

The diagnosis and management of a patient with acute pyelonephritis

Lower urinary tract infections account for more than 224 000 hospital admissions each year and nearly all of these have the pathophysiological possibility to develop into pyelonephritis, known clinically as an upper urinary tract infection. Acute pyelonephritis is characterised by inflammation of the renal parenchyma caused by bacteriuria ascending from the bladder, up the ureters to the kidneys. Effective history taking, combined with refined physical examination skills, are the two most powerful tools to differentiate upper and lower urinary tract infections as well as assisting the practitioner to exclude other differential diagnoses. Utilisation of these skills by the practitioner, together with the recognised presenting symptom triad of flank pain, fever and nausea in this case study, enabled the diagnosis of acute pyelonephritis to be given.N/