Identification of Damaged DNA Adducts from Exposure to Benzo[a]pyrene in the TP53 Gene

Benzo[a]pyrene is a carcinogen associated with tobacco smoke that can damage DNA after it is metabolized into highly reactive forms. Identifying the resulting DNA adducts can give greater insight into the mutations that frequently occur in lung cancer. This research aimed to identify damaged DNA adducts from exposure to benzo[a]pyrene in the TP53 gene. This gene codes for the p53 protein, which is frequently mutated in cancers. The oligomeric DNA sequence was exposed to myoglobin, benzo[a]pyrene, and hydrogen peroxide. Myoglobin acted as an heme enzyme mimic, and provided similar chemistry to bio-relevant cytochrome P450 enzymes that are involved in the metabolism of substances like benzo[a]pyrene. LC-MS was used to identify DNA adducts.Undergraduate Research and Creativity AwardB.S

Factors Associated with Parental Treatment Attitudes and Information-Seeking Behaviors for Childhood ADHD

Abstract Background: Childhood ADHD is an impairing neurodevelopmental disorder with associated long-term negative outcomes in a variety of domains. Despite this, there is a significant delay to treatment and a low rate of lifetime treatment contact for individuals with ADHD. Barriers to child treatment include parental poor symptom recognition, attitudinal barriers, evaluative barriers, fear of stigma, and structural barriers. These barriers are important to consider in the context of the family system, as parents serve as gatekeepers to mental health treatment for their children. In addition, parents’ perceptions of the quality and type of their children’s symptoms may also inform their information-seeking behaviors and ultimately, treatment decisions. The current study aimed to examine (a) variables associated with treatment-seeking attitudes, (b) variables associated with information-seeking behaviors, and (c) the relationship between treatment-seeking attitudes and information-seeking behaviors in a non-treatment-seeking parent sample. Method: Data from 169 non-treatment-seeking parents were analyzed. All parents participated in an online study that assessed their perceptions of their own children’s symptoms, parenting self-efficacy, satisfaction with treatment providers for themselves and their child, knowledge about ADHD and treatment, symptom recognition, stigma towards ADHD, and treatment attitudes. Information-seeking behaviors were also measured. Results: Linear and logistic regressions analyzed the association between parental factors and treatment attitudes and information-seeking behavior, as well as the association between attitudes and information-seeking behavior. In these non-treatment-seeking parents, attitudes towards ADHD treatment were significantly associated with ADHD knowledge and misconceptions, causal attributions and understanding of ADHD, parenting self-efficacy, ADHD stigma, ADHD knowledge, and satisfaction with past providers. No hypothesized factors were significantly associated with information-seeking behavior. Attitudes towards treatment and information-seeking behavior were also not significantly associated with each other. Discussion: Parental knowledge and understanding of ADHD symptoms and treatment, low levels of ADHD stigma, and positive experiences with past medical providers for oneself and one’s child were the best predictors of holding positive attitudes about ADHD treatment. Significant relations between these factors and treatment attitudes and information-seeking behavior did not emerge, however, highlighting the need for additional research on factors associated with treatment attitudes as well as continued study of how best to enhance treatment attitudes

Understanding And Improving Adhd Symptom Recall: An Investigation of Temperament And Childhood Symptom Recall Over Time

Background: ADHD is characterized by a high prevalence, functional impairment across the lifespan, negative long-term consequences, and a heterogeneous etiology, rendering it of significant public health import. Despite this, there is still a significant delay to treatment as well as low rate of lifetime treatment contact in the ADHD population, which may potentially increase the associated personal and public health burdens. Due to this delay to treatment and requirement of symptom onset before the age of 12, adults seeking ADHD assessments provide a challenge to clinicians to determine if symptoms were present in childhood. The current study investigated the consistency of retrospective parental and self-recall of childhood symptoms and explored potential avenues for improving assessment of symptoms of ADHD in childhood. Method: Participants were recruited from an outpatient mental health clinic and a developmental research program. Data were collected from 50 parents and 40 children (Time 2 age M=13.63; SD=3.09; range 6.87 - 20.50). who had previously completed a measure of ADHD symptoms (Time 1 age M=9.48; SD=2.65; range 5.44 - 14.92). Participants completed a retrospective recall of previous child ADHD symptoms using the same symptom measure they completed earlier. Participants also completed measures of child current ADHD symptoms and associated impairment, and a retrospective report of child temperament. Results: Repeated measures ANCOVAs were conducted to assess the difference between retrospective recall and past symptom reports. Results suggested that Time 1 childhood symptoms of ADHD were significantly higher than Time 2 retrospective reports. ADHD diagnostic status only affected self-report of childhood hyperactivity/impulsivity symptoms, such that youth with ADHD demonstrated more consistent report of hyperactivity/impulsivity over time. Multiple linear regressions suggested that Time 2 symptoms of ADHD were the most significant factor in predicting Time 1 childhood symptoms for parent report and child report of attention problems. Linear regressions assessed the relationship between retrospective recall of Time 1 temperament traits and past, current, and retrospective reports of ADHD symptoms. Parent reported child reward dependence, novelty-seeking, and self-directedness temperament traits were associated with parent report of childhood ADHD symptoms. Self-reported novelty-seeking, persistence, reward dependence, and self-directedness were the most significant temperament correlates with parent report of childhood ADHD symptoms. Discussion: Results were consistent with previous research and suggested that parents and youth tend to underreport previous symptom levels of inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity. Higher parent reported reward dependence was associated with lower inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity in childhood. Higher novelty-seeking was associated with both inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity in childhood. Lower parent reported self-directedness was associated with higher parent reported hyperactivity/impulsivity. Regarding self-report, higher novelty-seeking was associated with childhood inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity. Further, higher self-directedness and reward dependence were associated with childhood hyperactivity. Finally, higher self-reported persistence was associated with higher inattention in childhood. These results provide preliminary data suggesting that assessing child temperament, specifically related to motivational processes and reward seeking may aid ADHD diagnostic processes

Skidmore Clips of Neutral and Expressive Scenarios (SCENES): Novel Dynamic Stimuli for Social Cognition Research

Social cognition research has relied primarily on photographic emotional stimuli. Such stimuli likely have limited ecological validity in terms of representing real world social interactions. The current study presents evidence for the validity of a new stimuli set of dynamic social SCENES (Skidmore Clips of Emotional and Neutral Expressive Scenarios). To develop these stimuli, ten undergraduate theater students were recruited to portray members of an audience. This audience was configured to display (seven) varying configurations of social feedback, ranging from unequivocally approving to unequivocally disapproving (including three different versions of balanced/neutral scenes). Validity data were obtained from 383 adult participants recruited from Amazon\u27s Mechanical Turk. Each participant viewed three randomly assigned scenes and provided a rating of the perceived criticalness of each scene. Results indicate that the SCENES reflect the intended range of emotionality, and pairwise comparisons suggest that the SCENES capture distinct levels of critical feedback. Overall, the SCENES stimuli set represents a publicly available (www.scenesstimuli.com) resource for researchers interested in measuring social cognition in the presence of dynamic and naturalistic social stimuli

A natural carbohydrate fraction Actigen™ from Saccharomyces cerevisiae cell wall: effects on goblet cells, gut morphology and performance of broiler chickens

A study was conducted to evaluate a natural carbohydrate fraction Actigen™ (NCF), derived from mannanoligosaccharide, in feed on growth performance, intestinal morphology and goblet cell number and area of male broilers'. Dietary treatments included: 1) control diet (antibiotic and NCF free), 2) NCF at 200g/t, 3) NCF at 400g/t, and 4) NCF 800g/t. Two hundred and forty birds were placed into 12 replicate pens per treatment (5 birds/pen), sixty birds per treatment. Body weight and feed intake were recorded weekly up to day 42. At this time a 2.5cm section of jejunum and duodenum were excised post mortem for morphological analysis. Birds fed 200g/t and 800g/t NCF were significantly (P<0.01) heavier from day 14 onwards than the control birds. Feed intake was significantly higher in birds fed 200g/t NCF compared to those fed the control at 21 and 35 days (P<0.05). Diets containing 200g/t and 800g/t of NCF significantly decreased broiler feed conversion ratio (FCR) compared to the control in the first phase (1-14 days) (P<0.01) and levels of NCF decreased FCR (P<0.05) in the second phase (15-28 days). NCF had no significant effect on villus height, villus width, crypt depth or villus to crypt ratio in either duodenum or jejunum. NCF did not significantly affect goblet cell area or goblet cell number in the duodenum, however, in the jejunum, 800g/t NCF significantly (P<0.05) increased goblet cell area over the control. In conclusion, NCF showed a positive effect on broiler performance in the starter and grower phases, and increased goblet cell area in the jejunum, suggesting higher levels of mucin production. This indicated that the performance benefit of NCF could be age-dependent, with younger birds responding more than the older ones. There were no additional benefits to performance when feeding NCF for a longer period (after 28 d of age), however it is postulated that birds fed NCF would have greater defence to pathogenic challenge through increased storage capacity of muci

Beneath the surface of talking about physicians: A statistical model of language for patient experience comments

This study applies natural language processing (NLP) techniques to patient experience comments. Our goal was to examine the language describing care experiences with two groups of physicians: those with scores in the top 100 and those with scores in the bottom 100 among all physicians (n=498) who received scores from patient satisfaction surveys. Our analysis showed a statistically significant difference in the language used to describe care experiences with these two distinct groups of physicians. This analysis illustrates how to apply NLP techniques in categorizing and building a statistical model for language use in order to identify meaningful language and significant phrasing in a dataset of natural language. We provide a review of limited work at the intersection of language analysis and patient experience. We present our analysis and conclude with a discussion on what care providers and patient experience leaders can learn from language used in patient experience comments for the delivery of patient-centered care. Experience Framework This article is associated with the Innovation & Technology lens of The Beryl Institute Experience Framework. (http://bit.ly/ExperienceFramework) Access other PXJ articles related to this lens. Access other resources related to this len