COVID-19 through Adverse Outcome Pathways: Building networks to better understand the disease - 3rd CIAO AOP Design Workshop

ALTEX - Alternatives to Animal ExperimentationCopyright © 2022 the author(s). On April 28-29, 2021, 50 scientists from different fields of expertise met for the 3rd online CIAO workshop. The CIAO project “Modelling the Pathogenesis of COVID-19 using the Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) framework” aims at building a holistic assembly of the available scientific knowledge on COVID-19 using the AOP framework. An individual AOP depicts the disease progression from the initial contact with the SARS-CoV-2 virus through biological key events (KE) toward an adverse outcome such as respiratory distress, anosmia or multiorgan failure. Assembling the individual AOPs into a network highlights shared KEs as central biological nodes involved in multiple outcomes observed in COVID-19 patients. During the workshop, the KEs and AOPs established so far by the CIAO members were presented and posi­tioned on a timeline of the disease course. Modulating factors influencing the progression and severity of the disease were also addressed as well as factors beyond purely biological phenomena. CIAO relies on an interdisciplinary crowd­sourcing effort, therefore, approaches to expand the CIAO network by widening the crowd and reaching stakeholders were also discussed. To conclude the workshop, it was decided that the AOPs/KEs will be further consolidated, inte­grating virus variants and long COVID when relevant, while an outreach campaign will be launched to broaden the CIAO scientific crowd.The CIAO project is steered by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (EC-JRC), the Humane Society International (HSI), and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM). For Jorid Birkelund Sørli, the research is supported by FIKA, Focused Research Effort on Chemicals in the Working Environment from the Danish Government. For Daniel Jacobson, this work was supported by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, managed by UT-Battelle, LLC for the US Department of Energy (LOIS:10074) and the National Institutes of Health 3RF1AG053303-01S2

Ace Lake: three decades of research on a meromictic, Antarctic lake

Ace Lake (Vestfold Hills, Antarctica) has been investigated since the 1970s. Its close proximity to Davis Station has allowed year-long, as well as summer only, investigations. Ace Lake is a saline meromictic (permanently stratified) lake with strong physical and chemical gradients. The lake is one of the most studied lakes in continental Antarctica. Here we review the current knowledge of the history, the physical and chemical environment, community structure and functional dynamics of the mixolimnion, littoral benthic algal mats, the lower anoxic monimolimnion and the sediment within the monimolimnion. In common with other continental meromictic Antarctic lakes, Ace Lake possesses a truncated food web dominated by prokaryote and eukaryote microorganisms in the upper aerobic mixolimnion, and an anaerobic prokaryote community in the monimolimnion, where methanogenic Archaea, sulphate-reducing and sulphur-oxidizing bacteria occur. These communities are functional in winter at subzero temperatures, when mixotrophy plays an important role in survival in dominant photosynthetic eukaryotic microorganisms in the mixolimnion. The productivity of Ace Lake is comparable to other saline lakes in the Vestfold Hills, but higher than that seen in the more southerly McMurdo Dry Valley lakes. Finally we identify gaps in the current knowledge and avenues that demand further investigation, including comparisons with analogous lakes in the North Polar region

The course of thyroid abnormalities during lithium treatment: a two-year follow-up study

A total of 116 patients on lithium treatment were followed up for 2 years to determine the course and the clinical relevance of thyroid abnormalities. Elevated thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) concentrations were transitory in most patients, except those with serum antithyroid antibodies. The patients who initially had microsomal antibodies remained positive, with an increase in titre in two-thirds of cases. Three young patients of both sexes developed thyroid autoimmunity early in the treatment. The risk of developing hypothyroidism was higher in women, especially in the presence of antibodies. TSH concentrations were significantly lower when carbamazepine was combined with lithium