Narcissus dubius, Narcisse Douteux

This species is endemic to southern France and eastern Spain. It is assessed as Least Concern because it has a widespread distribution, occurs in several protected areas throughout its range and its population is not expected to significantly decline in the near future. Further studies on the genetic structure of its population and trends in population size at global level are needed

Influence of indoor hygrothermal conditions on human quality of life in social housing

Background: Modern societies spend most of their time indoors, namely at home, and the indoor environment quality turns out to be a crucial factor to health, quality of life and well-being of the residents. The present study aims to understand how indoor environment relates with quality of life and how improving housing conditions impacts on individuals’ health. Design and Methods: This study case will rely on the following assessments in both rehabilitated and non-rehabilitated social housing: i) field measurements, in social dwellings (namely temperature, relative humidity, carbon dioxide concentration, air velocity, air change rate, level of mould spores and energy consumption); ii) residents’ questionnaires on social, demogaphic, behavioural, health characteristics and quality of life. Also, iii) qualitative interviews performed with social housing residents from the rehabilitated houses, addressing the self-perception of living conditions and their influence in health status and quality of life. All the collected information will be combined and analysed in order to achieve the main objective. Expected impact: It is expected to define a Predicted Human Life Quality (PHLQ) index, that combines physical parameters describing the indoor environment measured through engineering techniques with residents’ and neighbourhood quality of life characteristics assessed by health questionnaires. Improvement in social housing should be related with better health indicators and the new index might be an important tool contributing to enhance quality of life of the residents

How do early socioeconomic circumstances impact inflammatory trajectories? Findings from Generation XXI

© 2020. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. This version of the article [S. Soares, A. López-Cheda, A. C. Santos, H. Barros, y S. Fraga, «How do early socioeconomic circumstances impact inflammatory trajectories? Findings from Generation XXI», Psychoneuroendocrinology, vol. 119, p. 104755, sep. 2020] has been accepted for publication in Psychoneuroendocrinology. The Version of Record is available online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2020.104755.[Abstract]: Background: The association between socioeconomic position and markers of inflammation in adults, including C-reactive protein (CRP), is well-established. We hypothesized that children from families of less-advantaged socioeconomic circumstances may be at higher inflammatory risk during childhood and, consequently, throughout their life course. Thus, we aimed to investigate whether early socioeconomic circumstances impact CRP trajectories using repeated measures of data from a population-based birth cohort. Methods: Data from 2510 participants of Generation XXI, a prospective Portuguese population-based birth cohort, were included in this study. Early socioeconomic circumstances comprised maternal education and occupation, paternal education and occupation, and household income at the child’s birth. Venous blood samples were collected from the children at ages four, seven, and ten years, and high-sensitivity CRP (Hs-CRP) was quantified. Hs-CRP trajectories were computed using a linear mixed-model approach. Results: Participants from less-advantaged socioeconomic circumstances presented higher levels of Hs-CRP by age of ten years. The higher the mother´s education and disposable household income, the lower the minimum value of the log Hs-CRP observed throughout childhood. Further, the age at which that minimum log Hs-CRP value was reached occurs later, meaning that children born in more-advantaged socioeconomic circumstances had lower levels of log Hs-CRP compared with children from less-advantaged families. Conclusions: Poor socioeconomic circumstances early in life are associated with increased inflammation levels throughout the first decade of life. This study demonstrates that social inequalities may impact population health beginning at very early ages.This work was supported by the European Regional Development Fund through the Operational Programme Competitiveness and Internationalization and national funding from the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology, and Higher Education under the projects “BioAdversity: How childhood social adversity shapes health: The biology of social adversity” (POCI-01- 0145-FEDER-016838; reference FCT PTDC/DTP-EPI/1687/2014), “HIneC: When do health inequalities start? Understanding the impact of childhood social adversity on health trajectories from birth to early adolescence” (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-029567; reference: FCT PTDC/SAU-PUB/29,567/2017). It is also supported by the Unidade de Investigação em Epidemiologia–Instituto de Saúde Pública da Universidade do Porto (EPIUnit) (reference UIDB/04750/2020), Administração Regional de Saúde Norte (Regional Department of Ministry of Health) and Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian; PhD grant SFRH/BD/108742/2015 (to SS) co-funded by FCT and the Human Capital Operational Programme (POCH/FSE Program); FCT Investigator contracts CEECIND/01516/2017 (to SF) and IF/01060/2015 (to ACS); and BEATRIZ GALINDO JUNIOR Spanish Grant (code BEAGAL18/00143) from MICINN (Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades), reference BGP18/00154 (to ALC). This study is also a result of the project DOCnet (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000003), supported by the Norte Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement.Portugal. Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior; FCT PTDC/DTP-EPI/1687/2014Portugal. Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior; FCT PTDC/SAU-PUB/29,567/2017Universidade do Porto; UIDB/04750/202

Antimicrobial activity of natural extracts and commercial elixirs in oral pathogens

Although Streptococcus mutans has been responsible for decades as the etiological agent of dental caries, recent evidence indicates a high prevalence for S. mutans in dental biofilms where Candida albicans resides; which suggests that the interaction between these two species may mediate cariogenic development [1].info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Childhood Exposure to Violence: Looking through a Life-Course Perspective

Childhood is the most important period of development during life course, highly sensitive to external influences and with a profound impact on children’s well-being. During this period, the foundations for every individual’s physical and mental health capacities and attainment are laid, influencing children’s lives throughout adolescence, adulthood and aging. Violence is one of the most traumatic experiences that can impact the healthy development of the child, compromising its growth and future health. Although violence assessment in the scope of a cohort study comprises methodological and ethical challenges, a life-course perspective allows researchers to understand the effects of multiple forms of violence by distinguishing between repetitive violence over time and isolated incidents, the occurrence of violent experiences in different contexts and settings, as well as the interconnection between different experiences of trauma. This chapter aims to demonstrate the importance of a life-course perspective to understand the detrimental relationship between early exposure to violence and worse health in the first years of life

Composição corporal de pacientes renais crônicos em hemodiálise: antropometria e análise vetorial por bioimpedância

OBJECTIVE: to compare the body composition of patients undergoing hemodialysis with that of healthy individuals using different methods. METHOD: cross-sectional study assessing male individuals using anthropometric markers, electrical bioimpedance and vector analysis. RESULTS: the healthy individuals presented larger triceps skinfold and arm circumference (pOBJETIVO: comparar la composición corporal de pacientes en hemodiálisis con sujetos sanos, por diferentes métodos de evaluación. MÉTODOS: estudio transversal realizado con sujetos del sexo masculino con evaluaciones antropométricas, impedancia bioeléctrica y análisis vectorial. RESULTADOS: el pliegue cutáneo tricipital y la circunferencia de brazo fueron mayores (pOBJETIVO: comparar a composição corporal de pacientes em hemodiálise com sujeitos saudáveis, por diferentes métodos de avaliação. MÉTODOS: estudo transversal realizado com sujeitos do sexo masculino com avaliações antropométricas, bioimpedância elétrica e análise vetorial. RESULTADOS: a prega cutânea tricipital e a circunferência de braço foram maiores (

Assessing the nonlinear decay of community similarity: permutation and site-block resampling significance tests

Modelling how community similarity decays with spatial distance is a key tool for the study of the processes behind community variation (beta diversity). Distance-decay models are computed from pairwise metrics (i.e. community similarity and spatial distance between localities) and hence suffer from pairwise dependence in the data, precluding the use of standard significance tests. Besides, distance-decay patterns are inherently nonlinear because similarity is bounded between 1 and 0. However, the only standard method to assess model significance under pairwise dependency is the Mantel test, which considers a linear model. To allow the use of nonlinear models in the assessment of distance-decay patterns, we introduce here a nonlinear significance test combining a pseudo-R2 statistic with either permutations or block-site resampling with replacementWe thank Xavier Picó, Christine Meynard, Simone Fattorini and two anonymous reviewers for insightful comments and suggestions to earlier versions of the manuscript. This research was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through grants CGL2016-76637-P and PID2020-112935GB-I00, PID2020-116587GB-I00 and a FPI scholarship to S.M.-S (BES-2017-081643). R.M.D. was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education through a FPU scholarship (Ref.: FPU17/03016; Ministry of Education)S

Juncus fernandez-carvajaliae

This species is endemic to central Spain, where it is currently only known from two sites in the Guadiana River basin located in the western half of Ciudad Real Province. Suitable habitat is frequent around both known sites, and the potential distribution area of this new species could be much larger. However, very little data are available at present regarding its population size, trends or threats and therefore it is assessed as Data Deficient; further research is required