The assessment of selected factors influencing intent to get pregnant in the Greater Poland Region

introduction and objective. Nowadays, people decide to have a baby by first analysing their financial situation. Tradition is no longer a factor which determines the decision whether or not to have a baby. A prognosis of the Polish Central Statistical Office (GUS) shows that the population of Poland will fall from 38 to 36 million by 2035. The aim of this study is to assess the procreation behaviour of women in Greater Poland Region. materials and methods. For the research purpose, 3,120 women of reproductive age were examined by using an author designed questionnaire and a synthetic Family Financial Standard Index. results: 74.6% of the respondents lived in an urban area, 25.4% of women come from a rural area. 49% of examined women did not want to have a bigger family, 45% would like to have another child. Analysis of the reasons why women did not want to have another baby revealed that predominance of the financial factor – 67%, living conditions – 18.4% and health– 13.2%. Only 11.9% of the women declared their high financial status, 4.8% of families received family allowance from the government; 88.4% of the examined families did not receive any social benefits. Bad housing situation was declared by 5% of the respondents, 26.7% of the interviewees lived with family members, i.e. parents or grandparents. Analysis of the data concerning religious bonds showed that 67.6% of women declared their indifference to religion. conclusions. The economic factor was an important reason limiting procreation. The bad situation on the real estate market combined with an insufficient range of social welfare led to a decrease in the birth-rate in the Greater Poland region. The impact of religion on family planning was less important. The influence of the analysed socio-economic factors on family planning was similar in rural and urban areas

Hypertension and renin-angiotensin system blockers are not associated with expression of angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) in the kidney

AIMS: Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) is the cellular entry point for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2)-the cause of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). However, the effect of renin-angiotensin system (RAS)-inhibition on ACE2 expression in human tissues of key relevance to blood pressure regulation and COVID-19 infection has not previously been reported. METHODS AND RESULTS: We examined how hypertension, its major metabolic co-phenotypes, and antihypertensive medications relate to ACE2 renal expression using information from up to 436 patients whose kidney transcriptomes were characterized by RNA-sequencing. We further validated some of the key observations in other human tissues and/or a controlled experimental model. Our data reveal increasing expression of ACE2 with age in both human lungs and the kidney. We show no association between renal expression of ACE2 and either hypertension or common types of RAS inhibiting drugs. We demonstrate that renal abundance of ACE2 is positively associated with a biochemical index of kidney function and show a strong enrichment for genes responsible for kidney health and disease in ACE2 co-expression analysis. CONCLUSION: Our results indicate that neither hypertension nor antihypertensive treatment is likely to alter the expression of the key entry receptor for SARS-CoV-2 in the human kidney. Our data further suggest that in the absence of SARS-CoV-2 infection, kidney ACE2 is most likely nephro-protective but the age-related increase in its expression within lungs and kidneys may be relevant to the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection

Gene expression data

Normalised gene expression values from RNA sequencing. Gene-level TPM values from Kallisto were log-transformed, normalised by robust quantile normalisation, outliers replaced with imputed values and transformed using the rank-based inverse normal transformation method. Please see methods of linked publication for further details

Genetic imputation of kidney transcriptome, proteome and multi-omics illuminates new blood pressure and hypertension targets

Genetic mechanisms of blood pressure (BP) regulation remain poorly defined. Using kidney-specific epigenomic annotations and 3D genome information we generated and validated gene expression prediction models for the purpose of transcriptome-wide association studies in 700 human kidneys. We identified 889 kidney genes associated with BP of which 399 were prioritised as contributors to BP regulation. Imputation of kidney proteome and microRNAome uncovered 97 renal proteins and 11 miRNAs associated with BP. Integration with plasma proteomics and metabolomics illuminated circulating levels of myo-inositol, 4-guanidinobutanoate and angiotensinogen as downstream effectors of several kidney BP genes (SLC5A11, AGMAT, AGT, respectively). We showed that genetically determined reduction in renal expression may mimic the effects of rare loss-of-function variants on kidney mRNA/protein and lead to an increase in BP (e.g., ENPEP). We demonstrated a strong correlation (r = 0.81) in expression of protein-coding genes between cells harvested from urine and the kidney highlighting a diagnostic potential of urinary cell transcriptomics. We uncovered adenylyl cyclase activators as a repurposing opportunity for hypertension and illustrated examples of BP-elevating effects of anticancer drugs (e.g. tubulin polymerisation inhibitors). Collectively, our studies provide new biological insights into genetic regulation of BP with potential to drive clinical translation in hypertension.</p

Prevalence of uncoupling protein one genetic polymorphisms and their relationship with cardiovascular and metabolic health

Contribution of UCP1 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to susceptibility for cardiometabolic pathologies (CMP) and their involvement in specific risk factors for these conditions varies across populations. We tested whether UCP1 SNPs A-3826G, A-1766G, Ala64Thr and A-112C are associated with common CMP and their risk factors across Armenia, Greece, Poland, Russia and United Kingdom. This case-control study included genotyping of these SNPs, from 2,283 Caucasians. Results were extended via systematic review and meta-analysis. In Armenia, GA genotype and A allele of Ala64Thr displayed ~2-fold higher risk for CMP compared to GG genotype and G allele, respectively (p0.05). Concluding, the studied SNPs could be associated with the most common CMP and their risk factors in some populations. Copyright: © 2022 Dinas et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited