Die Dialektik von Grundrechten und Demokratie

Dieses Thesenpapier wurde von der Denknetz-Arbeitsgruppe Grundrechte erarbeitet. Ein Anstoss für die Arbeit war die Beobachtung, dass für bestimmte Gesellschaftsgruppen im Namen der Demokratie und mittels demokratischer Verfahren Grundrechte in Frage gestellt oder ausgehöhlt werden. Zudem wird in den politischen Debatten über die Geltung und Bedeutung von Grundrechten vermehrt ein Gegensatz zwischen Grundrechten und Demokratie konstruiert. In der Konsequenz wird die gegenseitige Bedingtheit von Demokratie und Grundrechten erklärungsbedürftig. Mit diesem Thesenpapier will die Arbeitsgruppe das Verhältnis von Grundrechten und Demokratie vor dem Hintergrund aktueller politischer und rechtlicher Entwicklungen vermessen. Dieses Vorhaben ist nicht Selbstzweck, sondern dient dem politischen Ziel, die Grundrechte breiter zu verankern und die Demokratisierung aller Lebensbereiche voranzubringen. Im besten Fall kann das Thesenpapier dazu beitragen, dem Grundrechts- und Demokratiediskurs innerhalb der Linken eine neue Dringlichkeit und Überzeugungskraft zu verleihen und einzelne politische Organisationen in diesem Bereich in Beziehung zueinander bringen. Auf der Basis der Grundwerte Freiheit, Gleichheit und Solidarität werden in diesem Papier entlang von neun Thesen wichtige Eckpunkte für ein emanzipatorisches Grundrechtsverständnis diskutiert. In einem ersten Schritt erläutern die AutorInnen ihr Verständnis von Grundrechten; anschliessend wird eine Zeitdiagnose zum Zustand (namentlich zur aktuellen Bedrohungslage für Grundrechte) gestellt. Das Papier mündet in die Skizze einer emanzipatorischen Grundrechtsperspektive

Athletes with Eating Disorders: Analysis of Their Clinical Characteristics, Psychopathology and Response to Treatment

Eating disorders (ED) have frequently been described among athletes. However, their specific features and therapy responses are lacking in the literature. The aims of this article were to compare clinical, psychopathological and personality traits between ED patients who were professional athletes (ED-A) with those who were not (ED-NA) and to explore differences in response to treatment. The sample comprised n = 104 patients with ED (n = 52 ED-A and n = 52 matched ED-NA) diagnosed according to DSM-5 criteria. Evaluation consisted of a semi-structured face-to-face clinical interview conducted by expert clinicians and a psychometric battery. Treatment outcome was evaluated when the treatment program ended. ED-A patients showed less body dissatisfaction and psychological distress. No differences were found in treatment outcome among the groups. Within the ED-A group, those participants who performed individual sport activities and aesthetic sports presented higher eating psychopathology, more general psychopathology, differential personality traits and poor therapy outcome. Individual and aesthetic sports presented more severity and worse prognosis. Although usual treatment for ED might be similarly effective in ED-A and ED-NA, it might be important to develop preventive and early detection programs involving sports physicians and psychologists, coaches and family throughout the entire athletic career and afterwards

long term treatment outcome in ipex syndrome patients an international multicenter retrospective study

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Aptamer-based multiplexed proteomic technology for biomarker discovery

Interrogation of the human proteome in a highly multiplexed and efficient manner remains a coveted and challenging goal in biology. We present a new aptamer-based proteomic technology for biomarker discovery capable of simultaneously measuring thousands of proteins from small sample volumes (15 [mu]L of serum or plasma). Our current assay allows us to measure ~800 proteins with very low limits of detection (1 pM average), 7 logs of overall dynamic range, and 5% average coefficient of variation. This technology is enabled by a new generation of aptamers that contain chemically modified nucleotides, which greatly expand the physicochemical diversity of the large randomized nucleic acid libraries from which the aptamers are selected. Proteins in complex matrices such as plasma are measured with a process that transforms a signature of protein concentrations into a corresponding DNA aptamer concentration signature, which is then quantified with a DNA microarray. In essence, our assay takes advantage of the dual nature of aptamers as both folded binding entities with defined shapes and unique sequences recognizable by specific hybridization probes. To demonstrate the utility of our proteomics biomarker discovery technology, we applied it to a clinical study of chronic kidney disease (CKD). We identified two well known CKD biomarkers as well as an additional 58 potential CKD biomarkers. These results demonstrate the potential utility of our technology to discover unique protein signatures characteristic of various disease states. More generally, we describe a versatile and powerful tool that allows large-scale comparison of proteome profiles among discrete populations. This unbiased and highly multiplexed search engine will enable the discovery of novel biomarkers in a manner that is unencumbered by our incomplete knowledge of biology, thereby helping to advance the next generation of evidence-based medicine

Neurofilaments in spinocerebellar ataxia type 3: blood biomarkers at the preataxic and ataxic stage in humans and mice

With molecular treatments coming into reach for spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (SCA3), easily accessible, cross-species validated biomarkers for human and preclinical trials are warranted, particularly for the preataxic disease stage. We assessed serum levels of neurofilament light (NfL) and phosphorylated neurofilament heavy (pNfH) in ataxic and preataxic subjects of two independent multicentric SCA3 cohorts and in a SCA3 knock-in mouse model. Ataxic SCA3 subjects showed increased levels of both NfL and pNfH. In preataxic subjects, NfL levels increased with proximity to the individual expected onset of ataxia, with significant NfL elevations already 7.5 years before onset. Cross-sectional NfL levels correlated with both disease severity and longitudinal disease progression. Blood NfL and pNfH increases in human SCA3 were each paralleled by similar changes in SCA3 knock-in mice, here also starting already at the presymptomatic stage, closely following ataxin-3 aggregation and preceding Purkinje cell loss in the brain. Blood neurofilaments, particularly NfL, might thus provide easily accessible, cross-species validated biomarkers in both ataxic and preataxic SCA3, associated with earliest neuropathological changes, and serve as progression, proximity-to-onset and, potentially, treatment-response markers in both human and preclinical SCA3 trials.Acknowledgements: This work was supported by the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant 779257 Solve-RD to MS and RS), the National Ataxia Foundation (grant to CW and MS), the Wilhelm Vaillant Stiftung (grant to CW), the EU Joint Programme—Neurodegenerative Disease Research (JPND) through participating national funding agencies, and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 643417. BM was supported in part from the grant NKFIH 119540. HJ was funded by the Medical Faculty of the University of Heidelberg. CB was funded by the University of Basel (PhD Program in Health Sciences). The funding sources had no role in the study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation or writing of the manuscript

New and atypical combinations: An assessment of novelty and interdisciplinarity

Novelty indicators are increasingly important for science policy. This paper challenges the indicators of novelty as an atypical combination of knowledge (Uzzi et al., 2013) and as the first appearance of a knowledge combination (Wang et al., 2017). We exploit a sample of 230,854 articles (1985 - 2005), published on 8 journals of the American Physical Society (APS) and 2.4 million citations to test the indicators using (i) a Configuration Null Model, (ii) an external validation set of articles related to Nobel Prize winning researches and APS Milestones, (iii) a set of established interdisciplinarity indicators, and (iv) the relationship with the articles\u2019 impact. We find that novelty as the first appearance of a knowledge combination captures the key structural properties of the citation network and finds it difficult to tell novel and non-novel articles apart, while novelty as an atypical combination of knowledge overlaps with interdisciplinarity. We suggest that the policy evidence derived from these measures should be reassessed

Long-term follow-up of IPEX syndrome patients after different therapeutic strategies : an international multicenter retrospective study

Background: Immunodysregulation polyendocrinopathy enteropathy x-linked(IPEX) syndrome is a monogenic autoimmune disease caused by FOXP3 mutations. Because it is a rare disease, the natural history and response to treatments, including allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) and immunosuppression (IS), have not been thoroughly examined. Objective: This analysis sought to evaluate disease onset, progression, and long-term outcome of the 2 main treatments in long-term IPEX survivors. Methods: Clinical histories of 96 patients with a genetically proven IPEX syndrome were collected from 38 institutions worldwide and retrospectively analyzed. To investigate possible factors suitable to predict the outcome, an organ involvement (OI) scoring system was developed. Results: We confirm neonatal onset with enteropathy, type 1 diabetes, and eczema. In addition, we found less common manifestations in delayed onset patients or during disease evolution. There is no correlation between the site of mutation and the disease course or outcome, and the same genotype can present with variable phenotypes. HSCT patients (n = 58) had a median follow-up of 2.7 years (range, 1 week-15 years). Patients receiving chronic IS (n 5 34) had a median follow-up of 4 years (range, 2 months-25 years). The overall survival after HSCT was 73.2% (95% CI, 59.4-83.0) and after IS was 65.1% (95% CI, 62.8-95.8). The pretreatment OI score was the only significant predictor of overall survival after transplant (P = .035) but not under IS. Conclusions: Patients receiving chronic IS were hampered by disease recurrence or complications, impacting long-term.disease-free survival. When performed in patients with a low OI score, HSCT resulted in disease resolution with better quality of life, independent of age, donor source, or conditioning regimen