Deriving the number of jobs in proximity services from the number of inhabitants in French rural municipalities

We use a minimum requirement approach to derive the number of jobs in proximity services per inhabitant in French rural municipalities. We first classify the municipalities according to their time distance to the municipality where the inhabitants go the most frequently to get services (called MFM). For each set corresponding to a range of time distance to MFM, we perform a quantile regression estimating the minimum number of service jobs per inhabitant, that we interpret as an estimation of the number of proximity jobs per inhabitant. We observe that the minimum number of service jobs per inhabitant is smaller in small municipalities. Moreover, for municipalities of similar sizes, when the distance to the MFM increases, we find that the number of jobs of proximity services per inhabitant increases.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Potential antiproteolytic effects of L-leucine: observations of in vitro and in vivo studies

The purpose of present review is to describe the effect of leucine supplementation on skeletal muscle proteolysis suppression in both in vivo and in vitro studies. Most studies, using in vitro methodology, incubated skeletal muscles with leucine with different doses and the results suggests that there is a dose-dependent effect. The same responses can be observed in in vivo studies. Importantly, the leucine effects on skeletal muscle protein synthesis are not always connected to the inhibition of skeletal muscle proteolysis. As a matter of fact, high doses of leucine incubation can promote suppression of muscle proteolysis without additional effects on protein synthesis, and low leucine doses improve skeletal muscle protein ynthesis but have no effect on skeletal muscle proteolysis. These research findings may have an important clinical relevancy, because muscle loss in atrophic states would be reversed by specific leucine supplementation doses. Additionally, it has been clearly demonstrated that leucine administration suppresses skeletal muscle proteolysis in various catabolic states. Thus, if protein metabolism changes during different atrophic conditions, it is not surprising that the leucine dose-effect relationship must also change, according to atrophy or pathological state and catabolism magnitude. In conclusion, leucine has a potential role on attenuate skeletal muscle proteolysis. Future studies will help to sharpen the leucine efficacy on skeletal muscle protein degradation during several atrophic states

Identification of cathepsin L as a differentially expressed message associated with skeletal muscle wasting.

Alteration of skeletal muscle protein breakdown is a hallmark of a set of pathologies, including sepsis, with negative consequences for recovery. The aim of the present study was to search for muscle markers associated with protein loss, which could help in predicting and understanding pathological wasting. With the use of differential display reverse transcription-PCR, we screened differentially expressed genes in muscle from septic rats in a long-lasting catabolic state. One clone was isolated, confirmed as being overexpressed in septic skeletal muscle and identified as encoding the lysosomal cysteine endopeptidase cathepsin L. Northern- and Western-blot analysis of cathepsin L in gastrocnemius or tibialis anterior muscles of septic rats confirmed an elevation (up to 3-fold) of both mRNA and protein levels as early as 2 days post-infection, and a further increase 6 days post-infection (up to 13-fold). At the same time, the increase in mRNAs encoding other lysosomal endopeptidases or components of the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway did not exceed 4-fold. Cathepsin L mRNA was also increased in tibialis anterior muscle of rats treated with the glucocorticoid analogue, dexamethasone, or rats bearing the Yoshida Sarcoma. The increase in cathepsin L mRNA was reduced by 40% when the tumour-bearing animals were treated with pentoxifylline, an inhibitor of tumour necrosis factor-alpha production. In conclusion, these results demonstrate a positive and direct correlation between cathepsin L mRNA and protein level and the intensity of proteolysis, and identify cathepsin L as an appropriate early marker of muscle wasting. Cathepsin L presumably participates in the pathological response leading to muscle loss, with glucocorticoids and tumour necrosis factor-alpha potentially being involved in the up-regulation of cathepsin L