MISA [Material gráfico]

Copia digital. Madrid : Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, 201

Marginal zone B cells control the response of follicular helper T cells to a high-cholesterol diet

Splenic marginal zone B (MZB) cells, positioned at the interface between circulating blood and lymphoid tissue, detect and respond to blood-borne antigens. Here we show that MZB cells in mice activate a homeostatic program in response to a high-cholesterol diet (HCD) and regulate both the differentiation and accumulation of T follicular helper (TFH) cells. Feeding mice an HCD resulted in upregulated MZB cell surface expression of the immunoregulatory ligand PDL1 in an ATF3-dependent manner and increased the interaction between MZB cells and pre-TFH cells, leading to PDL1-mediated suppression of TFH cell motility, alteration of TFH cell differentiation, reduced TFH abundance and suppression of the proatherogenic TFH response. Our findings reveal a previously unsuspected role for MZB cells in controlling the TFH–germinal center response to a cholesterol-rich diet and uncover a PDL1-dependent mechanism through which MZB cells use their innate immune properties to limit an exaggerated adaptive immune response.This work was supported by BHF grant no. PG/15/76/31756, BHF grant no. PG/13/73/30466, ERC grant no. 2891164 and EC FP7 VIA grant no. HEALTH-F4- 2013-603131 to Z.M. and by SAF2013-45543-R from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) to J.L.d.l.P. M.N. was first supported by a Sara Borrell grant (CD09/00452) from the Instituto Nacional de Salud Carlos III (Spain) and then by a 2-year BHF Project Grant. M.N. has also received funding from the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under REA grant agreement no. 608765. The Wellcome Trust supported the Cambridge Mouse Biochemistry Laboratory

BUILDING BRIDGES FOR INNOVATION IN AGEING : SYNERGIES BETWEEN ACTION GROUPS OF THE EIP ON AHA

The Strategic Implementation Plan of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP on AHA) proposed six Action Groups. After almost three years of activity, many achievements have been obtained through commitments or collaborative work of the Action Groups. However, they have often worked in silos and, consequently, synergies between Action Groups have been proposed to strengthen the triple win of the EIP on AHA. The paper presents the methodology and current status of the Task Force on EIP on AHA synergies. Synergies are in line with the Action Groups' new Renovated Action Plan (2016-2018) to ensure that their future objectives are coherent and fully connected. The outcomes and impact of synergies are using the Monitoring and Assessment Framework for the EIP on AHA (MAFEIP). Eight proposals for synergies have been approved by the Task Force: Five cross-cutting synergies which can be used for all current and future synergies as they consider overarching domains (appropriate polypharmacy, citizen empowerment, teaching and coaching on AHA, deployment of synergies to EU regions, Responsible Research and Innovation), and three cross-cutting synergies focussing on current Action Group activities (falls, frailty, integrated care and chronic respiratory diseases).Peer reviewe

Analysis of the health profiles and prevalence of falls for patients over 65 years of age in a thermal environment

International audienceA falls prevention programme has been initiated in balneotherapy at Balaruc-les-Bains.Aims: To determine the health profiles of subjects who are at risk of falls, over 65 years of age and attending balneotherapy.Methods: Questionnaires were used to evaluate people on their fear of falling. Fatigue was assessed by visual analog scale as well as by functional status over the past 12 months. EQ-5D-3L, the IPAQ questionnaire and Fried's frailty scale were all used. Patients' functional capabilities were tested using the Unipedal stance test, the TUG test, the SPPB, the Tandem walking test and the isometric manual grip strength test.Results: Out of the 1471 patients (72.45 years ± 5.10), the women (67%) were tested. In the last 12 months, 485 of these 1471 patients fell (33%) and 37% of them suffered a severe injury. 45-50% of these subjects are now in good health. Women had a significantly higher impaired perception of their health than men (0.02 < p < 0.0001). According to Fried's criteria, 10.2% of the population is considered frail, with a significantly greater number of women (p < 0.0001). Static equilibrium was subnormal (less than 12 s during the TUG). The number of steps in tandem position discriminates individuals and gender as does the speed of moving from A to B and muscular strength.Conclusions: More than one-third of the subjects (more women than men) aged 65 or older visiting the Balaruc-les-Bains health resort are pre-frail or frail. They all have a recent history of falls, suffer from impaired muscle strength, and have balance and gait disorders

Twenty years of ozone air quality in Europe: trends in models and measurements

The EURODELTA-Trends exercise is a multi-model experiment in which seven regional models performed an air quality hindcast over Europe for the 1990-2010 period at regional-scale resolution (25km). This twenty-year lookback was designed to complement an investigation of observed European air quality trends over the same time period, undertaken by the European Monitoring and Evaluation Program Task Force on Measurements and Modeling (EMEP-TFMM). Observations at rural ground-based monitoring stations indicate that peak episodic ozone, represented by, e.g., 98th percentile of maximum daily 8-hour average ozone (MDA8), have decreased in Europe over the 1990-2010 period. Annual average ozone, on the other hand, was increasing during the 1990-2000 period, but showed a decreasing trend over the 2000-2010 period. Here, the first results of the Eurodelta-Trends exercise for ozone will be presented, with a focus on (1) the capability of the participating models to reproduce the observed trends in European ozone between 1990 and 2010 and (2) the assessment of trends causes, such as changes in precursor emissions and/or meteorology. Seven regional models, including six regional Chemistry-Transport Models (EMEP-MSCW, Chimere, CMAQ, LOTOS-EUROS, MINNI, and Polyphemus) and the online coupled model WRF-Chem, participated in the EURODELTA-Trends exercise, which builds upon previous iterations of the CITYDELTA and EURODELTA projects (Thunis et al., 2007; Bessagnet et al., 2014; Cuvelier et al., 2007). Model simulations for EURODELTATrends included a number of time-slice sensitivity experiments for the years 1990, 2000, and 2010, designed to isolate the contribution of European emission changes, boundary conditions (i.e. extra-European influence), and meteorology on surface ozone concentrations. Four of the participating models performed a full 21-year hindcast for 1990-2010. A second 21-year simulation was performed using 2010 emissions for the whole time period, in order to investigate the role of meteorological variability in the modeled trends. Based on these model results, our understanding of tropospheric ozone drivers in Europe will be discussed

Impacts of different representations of SOA on simulated trends : multi-model analysis in the framework of the Eurodelta-Trends exercise

Particulate organic matter represents an important fraction of PM2.5 mass in Europe (20 to 60%). The Chemistry Transport Models (CTM) tend to under-estimate secondary organic aerosol (SOA) concentrations and the causes are still poorly understood, due to the complexity of the formation process and the large number of species involved, originating from anthropogenic and biogenic sources. The formation of SOA is one of the topics addressed in the context of the Eurodelta-Trends exercise. For this exercise a common set of input data (meteorology, emissions, and boundary conditions) covering Europe for a twenty years period (1990-2010) has been developed. Seven regional models are used within this exercise (Chimere, CMAQ, MINNI, LOTOS-EUROS, EMEP-MSCW, Polyphemus, and WRF-Chem) to perform simulations at 25km resolution. In this work the SOA simulated by each participating model are compared for the three reference years (1990, 2000, and 2010). For the three years the models show similar features: similar anthropogenic SOA (ASOA) spatial distributions, but with large variability between models in terms of concentration levels. The same tendency is observed for the anthropogenic VOC, from which ASOA are formed. Concerning the biogenic fraction of SOA (BSOA), the results show a large variability in the spatial distributions while the distributions of the biogenic VOC emissions are similar. These differences can be attributed to the various oxidation processes included in the models, leading to different patterns of SOA precursors, formed from the oxidation of the emitted VOC. Furthermore, the gas phase chemical mechanisms and organic aerosol models are different for each regional model, leading to differences in the SOA precursor concentrations and in the gas/particles partitioning. Finally, the SOA analysis is extended to the whole Eurodelta-Trends period (1990-2010), in order to study the impact of these differences on the simulated trends over Europe during the last twenty years

An evaluation of European nitrogen and sulfur wet deposition and their trends estimated by six chemistry transport models for the period 1990-2010

The wet deposition of nitrogen and sulfur in Europe for the period 1990–2010 was estimated by six atmospheric chemistry transport models (CHIMERE, CMAQ, EMEP MSC-W, LOTOS-EUROS, MATCH and MINNI) within the framework of the EURODELTA-Trends model intercomparison. The simulated wet deposition and its trends for two 11-year periods (1990–2000 and 2000–2010) were evaluated using data from observations from the EMEP European monitoring network. For annual wet deposition of oxidised nitrogen (WNOx), model bias was within 30 % of the average of the observations for most models. There was a tendency for most models to underestimate annual wet deposition of reduced nitrogen (WNHx), although the model bias was within 40 % of the average of the observations. Model bias for WNHx was inversely correlated with model bias for atmospheric concentrations of NH3+NH+4 , suggesting that an underestimation of wet deposition partially contributed to an overestimation of atmospheric concentrations. Model bias was also within about 40 % of the average of the observations for the annual wet deposition of sulfur (WSOx) for most models. Decreasing trends in WNOx were observed at most sites for both 11-year periods, with larger trends, on average, for the second period. The models also estimated predominantly decreasing trends at the monitoring sites and all but one of the models estimated larger trends, on average, for the second period. Decreasing trends were also observed at most sites for WNHx, although larger trends, on average, were observed for the first period. This pattern was not reproduced by the models, which estimated smaller decreasing trends, on average, than those observed or even small increasing trends. The largest observed trends were for WSOx, with decreasing trends at more than 80 % of the sites. On average, the observed trends were larger for the first period. All models were able to reproduce this pattern, although some models underestimated the trends (by up to a factor of 4) and others overestimated them (by up to 40 %), on average. These biases in modelled trends were directly related to the tendency of the models to under- or overestimate annual wet deposition and were smaller for the relative trends (expressed as % yr−1 relative to the deposition at the start of the period). The fact that model biases were fairly constant throughout the time series makes it possible to improve the predictions of wet deposition for future scenarios by adjusting the model estimates using a bias correction calculated from past observations. An analysis of the contributions of various factors to the modelled trends suggests that the predominantly decreasing trends in wet deposition are mostly due to reductions in emissions of the precursors NOx, NH3 and SOx. However, changes in meteorology (e.g. precipitation) and other (non-linear) interactions partially offset the decreasing trends due to emission reductions during the first period but not the second. This suggests that the emission reduction measures had a relatively larger effect on wet deposition during the second period, at least for the sites with observations.publishedVersio

EURODELTA-Trends, a multi-model experiment of air quality hindcast in Europe over 1990–2010

International audienceThe EURODELTA-Trends multi-model chemistry-transport experiment has been designed to facilitate a better understanding of the evolution of air pollution and its drivers for the period 1990–2010 in Europe. The main objective of the experiment is to assess the efficiency of air pollutant emissions mitigation measures in improving regional-scale air quality. The present paper formulates the main scientific questions and policy issues being addressed by the EURODELTA-Trends modelling experiment with an emphasis on how the design and technical features of the modelling experiment answer these questions. The experiment is designed in three tiers, with increasing degrees of computational demand in order to facilitate the participation of as many modelling teams as possible. The basic experiment consists of simulations for the years 1990, 2000, and 2010. Sensitivity analysis for the same three years using various combinations of (i) anthropogenic emissions, (ii) chemical boundary conditions, and (iii) meteorology complements it. The most demanding tier consists of two complete time series from 1990 to 2010, simulated using either time-varying emissions for corresponding years or constant emissions.Eight chemistry-transport models have contributed with calculation results to at least one experiment tier, and five models have – to date – completed the full set of simulations (and 21-year trend calculations have been performed by four models). The modelling results are publicly available for further use by the scientific community. The main expected outcomes are (i) an evaluation of the models' performances for the three reference years, (ii) an evaluation of the skill of the models in capturing observed air pollution trends for the 1990–2010 time period, (iii) attribution analyses of the respective role of driving factors (e.g. emissions, boundary conditions, meteorology), (iv) a dataset based on a multi-model approach, to provide more robust model results for use in impact studies related to human health, ecosystem, and radiative forcing