Anti-Neuroinflammatory effects of the extract of Achillea fragrantissima

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The neuroinflammatory process plays a central role in the initiation and progression of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, and involves the activation of brain microglial cells. During the neuroinflammatory process, microglial cells release proinflammatory mediators such as cytokines, matrix metalloproteinases (MMP), Reactive oxygen species (ROS) and nitric oxide (NO). In the present study, extracts from 66 different desert plants were tested for their effect on lipopolysaccharide (LPS) - induced production of NO by primary microglial cells. The extract of <it>Achillea fragrantissima </it>(<it>Af</it>)<it/>, which is a desert plant that has been used for many years in traditional medicine for the treatment of various diseases, was the most efficient extract, and was further studied for additional anti-neuroinflammatory effects in these cells.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In the present study, the ethanolic extract prepared from <it>Af </it>was tested for its anti-inflammatory effects on lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-activated primary cultures of brain microglial cells. The levels of the proinflammatory cytokines interleukin1β (IL-1β) and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNFα) secreted by the cells were determined by reverse transcriptase-PCR and Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), respectively. NO levels secreted by the activate cells were measured using Griess reagent, ROS levels were measured by 2'7'-dichlorofluorescein diacetate (DCF-DA), MMP-9 activity was measured using gel zymography, and the protein levels of the proinflammatory enzymes cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) and induced nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) were measured by Western blot analysis. Cell viability was assessed using Lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) activity in the media conditioned by the cells or by the crystal violet cell staining.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We have found that out of the 66 desert plants tested, the extract of <it>Af </it>was the most efficient extract and inhibited ~70% of the NO produced by the LPS-activated microglial cells, without affecting cell viability. In addition, this extract inhibited the LPS - elicited expression of the proinflammatory mediators IL-1β, TNFα, MMP-9, COX-2 and iNOS in these cells.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Thus, phytochemicals present in the <it>Af </it>extract could be beneficial in preventing/treating neurodegenerative diseases in which neuroinflammation is part of the pathophysiology.</p

Disability, physical activity, health, health status and chronic diseases in adults

There is a great deal of concern regarding the levels of physical inactivity in people with disability, which is more prevalent than in the general population. Inactivity in individuals with disabilities can lead to higher rates of chronic diseases and obesity and vice versa. Moreover, disability is increasing in middle-aged adults while decreasing among older adults. This purpose of this dissertation was to: 1) evaluate the prevalence of disability across the lifespan, 2) to examine the relationships between disability (DA), physical activity (PA), and factors associated with them, and 3) to look at the trends in these factors to understand the patterns occurring in middle-aged adults compared with older adults. Data analyzed for this dissertation were collected as part of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS) conducted between 2003 and 2011. Measures included DA, PA, chronic diseases, sociodemographics, health risk behaviors, and health status. In our first study, we found that respondents categorized as disabled or functionally limited reported less PA, more chronic diseases, and poorer health behaviors than those categorized as able bodied. There was a higher prevalence of DA in the middle-aged and older adults compared to younger adults. Individuals with lower incomes and those with chronic diseases were more likely to be classified as having a disability compared to individuals with higher incomes and individuals without chronic disease. Our second study showed that middle-aged people were less likely to meet physical activity recommendations compared with older adults. Having a DA and being in poor health were strongly associated with not meeting the PA recommendations. In our third study, we found all the age groups showed an increase in functional limitation and DA over time. Further, among all age groups there was an increase in meeting aerobic recommendations over time. Our studies showed that DA and functional limitation are strongly associated with unhealthy behaviors and chronic diseases and poorer health. Moreover, middle-aged and older adults showed similar results in DA and PA recommendations. Given that physical inactivity has the potential to reduce disability, prevent chronic disease and enhance health, greater public health attention to what is warranted

Cross-language prominence detection

We explore the ability to perform automatic prosodic analysis in one language using models trained on another. If we are successful, we should be able to identify prosodic elements in a language for which little or no prosodically labeled training data is available, using models trained on a language for which such training data exists. Given the laborious nature of manual prosodic annotation, such a process would vastly improve our ability to identify prosodic events in many languages and therefore to make use of such information in downstream processing tasks. The task we address here is the detection of intonational prominence, performing experiments using material from four languages: American English, Italian, French and German. While we do find that cross-language prominence detection is possible, we also find significant language-dependent differences. While we hypothesized that language family might serve as a reliable predictor of cross-language prosodic event detection accuracy, in our experiments this did not prove to be the case. Based upon our results, we suggest some directions that may be able to improve our cross-language approach. Index Terms: prosody, prominence, language independence 1

Cross-Language Prominence Detection: Presentation Slides

We explore the ability to perform automatic prosodic analysis in one language using models trained on another. If we are successful, we should be able to identify prosodic elements in a language for which little or no prosodically labeled training data is available, using models trained on a language for which such training data exists. Given the laborious nature of manual prosodic annotation, such a process would vastly improve our ability to identify prosodic events in many languages and therefore to make use of such information in downstream processing tasks. The task we address here is the detection of intonational prominence, performing experiments using material from four languages: American English, Italian, French and German. While we do find that cross-language prominence detection is possible, we also find significant language-dependent differences. While we hypothesized that language family might serve as a reliable predictor of cross-language prosodic event detection accuracy, in our experiments this did not prove to be the case. Based upon our results, we suggest some directions that may be able to improve our cross-language approach

Bioremediation of Artificial Diesel-Contaminated Soil Using Bacterial Consortium Immobilized to Plasma-Pretreated Wood Waste

Bioaugmentation is a bioremediation option based on increasing the natural in-situ microbial population that possesses the ability to degrade the contaminating pollutant. In this study, a diesel-degrading consortium was obtained from an oil-contaminated soil. The diesel-degrading consortium was grown on wood waste that was plasma-pretreated. This plasma treatment led to an increase of bacterial attachment and diesel degradation rates. On the 7th day the biofilm viability on the plasma-treated wood waste reached 0.53 ± 0.02 OD 540 nm, compared to the non-treated wood waste which was only 0.34 ± 0.02. Biofilm attached to plasma-treated and untreated wood waste which was inoculated into artificially diesel-contaminated soil (0.15% g/g) achieved a degradation rate of 9.3 mg day−1 and 7.8 mg day−1, respectively. While, in the soil that was inoculated with planktonic bacteria, degradation was only 5.7 mg day−1. Exposing the soil sample to high temperature (50 °C) or to different soil acidity did not influence the degradation rate of the biofilm attached to the plasma-treated wood waste. The two most abundant bacterial distributions at the family level were Xanthomonadaceae and Sphingomonadaceae. To our knowledge, this is the first study that showed the advantages of biofilm attached to plasma-pretreated wood waste for diesel biodegradation in soil