Sleep Disturbances in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis

BACKGROUND: Sleep problems are frequent in chronic diseases like rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The present study was conducted to determine frequency of sleep disturbances and their relations with disease severity.METHODS: The present case-control study was performed on 100  rheumatoid patients who were referred to the rheumatology clinic at the Avicenna hospital. A hundred age- and sex- matched healthy individuals were recruited in the study as a control group. Pittsburgh Sleep Quality questionnaire, Insomnia Severity Index questionnaire and EpworthSleepiness Scale were used. The disease activity was calculated with the disease activity score 28. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS version 19.RESULTS: Mean scores of the sleep quality were 6.2±4.3 in patients and 4.6±2.5 in control group. 28% of the patients had good sleep quality whereas 72% had poor sleep quality. Daytime sleepiness was present in24.8% of the patients and 15% of the control group. Multiple logistic regressions showed that insomnia, pain and disease intensity were the most important factors that determine patients' sleep quality.CONCLUSION: The present study showed that sleep disturbances are frequent in patients with RA and may contribute to disease severity. It is recommended that rheumatoid patients be evaluated for sleep  disturbances during routine examinations.KEY WORDS: Rheumatoid arthritis, Sleep quality, Insomnia, Daytime sleepines

Decreased endogenous progesterone and ratio of progesterone to estrogen in stroke ischemia

Progesterone and estrogen are two steroid hormones whose exposure may decrease the risk and delay the onset of ischemic stroke. The main objective of this study was to determine the plasma level of progesterone, estrogen and ratio of progesterone/estrogen in ischemic stroke patients. The plasma levels of progesterone, estrogen and ratio of  progesterone/estrogen in 30 patients (15 men and 15 women) with acute ischemic stroke was determined within 12 h of the onset of the attack as well as in 30 control subjects (15 men and 15 women) of comparable age. There were significant differences between the progesterone and ratio of progesterone/estrogen of stroke and control group (p = 0.022 and p = 0.001, respectively). Compared with control, stroke patients had lower levels of progesterone and ratio of progesterone/estrogen. There were not significant differences between levels of estradiol in stroke and control groups. The results showed ischemic stroke is accompanied by reduction ofprogesterone and ratio of progesterone/estradiol. These reductions might be involved in the decreased protection of brain to ischemic injury

Point group symmetry of cadmium arsenide thin films determined by convergent beam electron diffraction

Cadmium arsenide (Cd3As2) is one of the first materials to be discovered to belong to the class of three-dimensional topological semimetals. Reported room temperature crystal structures of Cd3As2 reported differ subtly in the way the Cd vacancies are arranged within its antifluorite-derived structure, which determines if an inversion center is present and if Cd3As2 is a Dirac or Weyl semimetal. Here, we apply convergent beam electron diffraction (CBED) to determine the point group of Cd3As2 thin films grown by molecular beam epitaxy. Using CBED patterns from multiple zone axes, high-angle annular dark-field images acquired in scanning transmission electron microscopy, and Bloch wave simulations, we show that Cd3As2 belongs to the tetragonal 4/mmm point group, which is centrosymmetric. The results show that CBED can distinguish very subtle differences in the crystal structure of a topological semimetal, a capability that will be useful for designing materials and thin film heterostructures with topological states that depend on the presence of certain crystal symmetries.Comment: Accepted for publication in Physical Review Material

Fuzzy Based PC-PUSH in CR-MANETs

In cognitive radio (CR), the secondary user (SU) needs to hand off its ongoing communication to an idle channel in order to avoid interference to the primary user (PU). Spectrum hand off issue becomes challenging in CR mobile ad hoc networks (CR-MANETs) because of the uncertainty in spectrum availability, broad range of spectrum bands and lack of central entity. The purpose of this study is to design a unified spectrum handoff (USH) scheme for CR-MANETs that considers the spectrum heterogeneity and its availability over time and space. A local flow hand off is performed when spectrum hand off cannot be carried out due to the SUs mobility. To improve further USH, preemptive unified spectrum handoff (PUSH) algorithm is proposed in which two different preemptive hand off threshold regions are defined. The PUSH algorithm also predicts the cognitive link availability considering the PU interference boundary. Although the PUSH scheme improves the hand off performance, the number of spectrum hand offs due to the PU activity should be reduced in this scheme. Therefore, the PC-PUSH (Power Controller-PUSH) scheme is proposed in which the fuzzy logic is used to improve the PUSH in terms of the number of spectrum handoffs because of the PU activity. The PC-PUSH decreases the interference to the PUs, while reducing the number of spectrum handoffs. The results show that the proposed scheme improves the link maintenance probability, decreases the hand off delay, and reduces the number of spectrum handoffs

Targetfinder.org: a resource for systematic discovery of transcription factor target genes

Targetfinder.org (http://targetfinder.org/) provides a web-based resource for finding genes that show a similar expression pattern to a group of user-selected genes. It is based on a large-scale gene expression compendium (>1200 experiments, >13 000 genes). The primary application of Targetfinder.org is to expand a list of known transcription factor targets by new candidate target genes. The user submits a group of genes (the ‘seed’), and as a result the web site provides a list of other genes ranked by similarity of their expression to the expression of the seed genes. Additionally, the web site provides information on a recovery/cross-validation test to check for consistency of the provided seed and the quality of the ranking. Furthermore, the web site allows to analyse affinities of a selected transcription factor to the promoter regions of the top-ranked genes in order to select the best new candidate target genes for further experimental analysis

Development of the conditional moment closure method for modelling turbulent combustion

Abstract Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of low-level laser irradiation (LLLI) on the in vitro growth characteristics and in vivo pathogenicity of Candida albicans in a murine model in the absence of a photosensitizer. Background data: C. albicans is an opportunistic commensal organism that causes a wide variety of diseases in human beings, ranging from superficial infections to life-threatening invasive candidiasis. The incidence of C. albicans infection is increasing, because of the greater frequency of acquired immunodeficiency conditions. A high recurrence rate has been reported for vulvovaginal and oral candidiasis, despite the best available treatments. Therefore, the search for new treatment modalities seems quite rational. Methods: Candida culture plates were exposed to common clinical energies of LLLI: 3, 5, 10, and 20 J at 685 nm (BTL Laser 5000, Medicinos Projektai, Czech Republic, Prague, max power output 50 mW) and 3, 5, 10, 30, and 50 J at 830 nm (BTL Laser 5000, Medicinos Projektai, Czech Republic, Prague, max power output 400 mW). Results: Following LLLI with energies >10 J at both 685 and 830 nm wavelengths, statistically significant effects were observed in vitro on the turbidimetric growth kinetics of C. albicans and in vivo on the survival rate of infected mice (p value </=0.05). Therefore, this energy could be considered a threshold for clinical investigation. Conclusions: Translating our data into the clinical setting, it can be proposed that a direct laser-based approach without using a photosensitizing dye can significantly reduce the pathogenicity of Candida albicans. It can also be concluded that laser light at specific wavelengths could be a possible promising novel treatment for superficial and mucocutaneous C. albicans infections

Enhanced Critical Field of Superconductivity at an Oxide Interface

The nature of superconductivity and its interplay with strong spin-orbit coupling at the KTaO3(111) interfaces remains a subject of debate. To address this problem, we grew epitaxial LaMnO3/KTaO3(111) heterostructures. We show that superconductivity is robust against the in-plane magnetic field, with the critical field of superconductivity reaching 25 T in optimally doped heterostructures. The superconducting order parameter is highly sensitive to carrier density. We argue that spin-orbit coupling drives the formation of anomalous quasiparticles with vanishing magnetic moment, providing the condensate significant immunity against magnetic fields beyond the Pauli paramagnetic limit. These results offer design opportunities for superconductors with extreme resilience against magnetic field

NF-κB Mediates Tumor Necrosis Factor α-Induced Expression of Optineurin, a Negative Regulator of NF-κB

Optineurin is a ubiquitously expressed multifunctional cytoplasmic protein encoded by OPTN gene. The expression of optineurin is induced by various cytokines. Here we have investigated the molecular mechanisms which regulate optineurin gene expression and the relationship between optineurin and nuclear factor κB (NF-κB). We cloned and characterized human optineurin promoter. Optineurin promoter was activated upon treatment of HeLa and A549 cells with tumor necrosis factor α (TNFα). Mutation of a putative NF-κB-binding site present in the core promoter resulted in loss of basal as well as TNFα-induced activity. Overexpression of p65 subunit of NF-κB activated this promoter through NF-κB site. Oligonucleotides corresponding to this putative NF-κB-binding site showed binding to NF-κB. TNFα-induced optineurin promoter activity was inhibited by expression of inhibitor of NF-κB (IκBα) super-repressor. Blocking of NF-κB activation resulted in inhibition of TNFα-induced optineurin gene expression. Overexpressed optineurin partly inhibited TNFα-induced NF-κB activation in Hela cells. Downregulation of optineurin by shRNA resulted in an increase in TNFα-induced as well as basal NF-κB activity. These results show that optineurin promoter activity and gene expression are regulated by NF-κB pathway in response to TNFα. In addition these results suggest that there is a negative feedback loop in which TNFα-induced NF-κB activity mediates expression of optineurin, which itself functions as a negative regulator of NF-κB