Findings from the University of East Anglia's evaluation of the Ipswich/Suffolk multi-agency strategy on prostitution following the five murders in 2006

This paper provides a summary of the main findings of an evaluation of a new multi-agency Strategy set up to tackle on-street sex-working, after five prostitutes were murdered in the English county town of Ipswich. It focuses on the outcomes of the Strategy’s four objectives, including their cost-effectiveness. It also offers an insight into the lives of the women who were previously involved in street sex-working, the means by which the Strategy helped them to move towards exiting this work, and the ways in which younger people identified as being at risk of entering it might be prevented from doing so

Effects of Axonal Demyelination, Inflammatory Cytokines and Divalent Cation Chelators on Thalamic HCN Channels and Oscillatory Bursting

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a demyelinating disease of the central nervous system that is characterized by the progressive loss of oligodendrocytes and myelin and is associated with thalamic dysfunction. Cuprizone (CPZ)-induced general demyelination in rodents is a valuable model for studying different aspects of MS pathology. CPZ feeding is associated with the altered distribution and expression of different ion channels along neuronal somata and axons. However, it is largely unknown whether the copper chelator CPZ directly influences ion channels. Therefore, we assessed the effects of different divalent cations (copper; zinc) and trace metal chelators (EDTA; Tricine; the water-soluble derivative of CPZ, BiMPi) on hyperpolarization-activated cyclic nucleotide-gated (HCN) channels that are major mediators of thalamic function and pathology. In addition, alterations of HCN channels induced by CPZ treatment and MS-related proinflammatory cytokines (IL-1beta; IL-6; INF-alpha; INF-beta) were characterized in C57Bl/6J mice. Thus, the hyperpolarization-activated inward current (I_h) was recorded in thalamocortical (TC) neurons and heterologous expression systems (mHCN2 expressing HEK cells; hHCN4 expressing oocytes). A number of electrophysiological characteristics of I_h (potential of half-maximal activation (V_0.5); current density; activation kinetics) were unchanged following the extracellular application of trace metals and divalent cation chelators to native neurons, cell cultures or oocytes. Mice were fed a diet containing 0.2% CPZ for 35 days, resulting in general demyelination in the brain. Withdrawal of CPZ from the diet resulted in rapid remyelination, the effects of which were assessed at three time points after stopping CPZ feeding (Day1, Day7, Day25). In TC neurons, I_h was decreased on Day1 and Day25 and revealed a transient increased availability on Day7. In addition, we challenged naive TC neurons with INF-alpha and IL-1beta. It was found that I_h parameters were differentially altered by the application of the two cytokines to thalamic cells, while IL-1beta increased the availability of HCN channels (depolarized V_0.5; increased current density) and the excitability of TC neurons (depolarized resting membrane potential (RMP); increased the number of action potentials (APs); produced a larger voltage sag; promoted higher input resistance; increased the number of burst spikes; hyperpolarized the AP threshold), INF-alpha mediated contrary effects. The effect of cytokine modulation on thalamic bursting was further assessed in horizontal slices and a computational model of slow thalamic oscillations. Here, IL-1beta and INF-alpha increased and reduced oscillatory bursting, respectively. We conclude that HCN channels are not directly modulated by trace metals and divalent cation chelators but are subject to modulation by different MS-related cytokines