Curcumin supplementation for relief of pain associated with osteoarthritis

NSAID Nonsteroidal Anti-inflammatory drug OA Osteoarthritis WOMAC Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index VAS Visual analogue scale LPFI Lequesne Pain and Function Index KOA Knee osteoarthritis ROS Reactive oxygen species ADL Activity of daily living BMI Body mass index Objective: To determine if curcumin supplementation compared to nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), placebo, and rescue medications is an effective treatment of arthritic symptoms in males and females between the ages of 50 and 80 with a diagnosis of osteoarthritis. Design: Systematic Literature Review Methods: Searches were done in PubMed, Google Scholar, and Scopus utilizing the terms “turmeric”, “curcumin”, “osteoarthritis”, “NSAIDs”, “ibuprofen”, and “placebo.” The following limits were applied: excluded if compared greater than two remedies for treatment of osteoarthritis or if turmeric was used as an “add-on” for treatment. Articles were included if they only dealt with human subjects, were published in 2014 or later, and were full-text. Results: A randomized control trial byKuptniratsaikul, V. et al concluded that curcumin was as efficacious as ibuprofen in reducing pain and improving function associated with Osteoarthritis (OA) with the benefit that curcumin resulted in less gastrointestinal complaints. Srivastave, S. et al concluded that curcumin can be used with diclofenac to provide relief in patients with knee OA. The results demonstrated that patients in the curcumin and diclofenac group had improvement in all three measures of the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) score when compared to patients in the placebo group. Panahi Y. et al study showed a statistical significant improvement in measures of the WOMAC score in the curcumin group while the placebo group showed no change in WOMAC parameters. The curcumin group also had significant reduction in Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) and Lequesne Pain and Function Index (LPFI) scores compared to placebo. Conclusion: Curcumin may provide relief of osteoarthritic symptoms as demonstrated by subjective measures of pain and objective measures of inflammation. Additionally, curcumin has a strong safety profile, a low potential for toxicity, and few adverse side effects those of which include gastrointestinal symptoms such as diarrhea and flatulence. Further research is needed to investigate the relationship between curcumin and the impact on osteoarthritic symptoms independent of NSAIDs. Additionally, population based studies are needed to see if the results of a small sample size can be applied to the general population

"You are what you eat": How diet can influence the gut microbiota of marine invertebrates

Microorganisms are omnipresent in every ecosystem on earth and the majority of identified species belong to the domains Bacteria and Archaea of which bacteria are considered to represent the greatest diversity (Staley et al., 2007). Microbes are organised in complex and diverse communities depending on the environmental conditions, and they commonly live closely associated with eukaryotic hosts. The body surfaces of nearly all higher organisms are populated by diverse microbial communities and this microbiota is understood to have large impacts on the hosts’ biology (Ley et al., 2008). The greater part of the microbiota consists of microorganisms that are beneficial to the host and interactions between the host and its microbiota are often of symbiotic nature. For instance, the presence of bacteria can enhance the immune response of the host and protect it from other pathogenic microorganisms, and in return the host offers a habitat to the bacteria and provides them with nutrients (Fraune and Bosch, 2010)..

Vapor-phase growth technique and system for several III-V compound semiconductors Interim scientific report

Vapor phase growth technique for III-V compound semiconductors containing aluminu

Resilience trinity: safeguarding ecosystem functioning and services across three different time horizons and decision contexts

Ensuring ecosystem resilience is an intuitive approach to safeguard the functioning of ecosystems and hence the future provisioning of ecosystem services (ES). However, resilience is a multi‐faceted concept that is difficult to operationalize. Focusing on resilience mechanisms, such as diversity, network architectures or adaptive capacity, has recently been suggested as means to operationalize resilience. Still, the focus on mechanisms is not specific enough. We suggest a conceptual framework, resilience trinity, to facilitate management based on resilience mechanisms in three distinctive decision contexts and time‐horizons: 1) reactive, when there is an imminent threat to ES resilience and a high pressure to act, 2) adjustive, when the threat is known in general but there is still time to adapt management and 3) provident, when time horizons are very long and the nature of the threats is uncertain, leading to a low willingness to act. Resilience has different interpretations and implications at these different time horizons, which also prevail in different disciplines. Social ecology, ecology and engineering are often implicitly focussing on provident, adjustive or reactive resilience, respectively, but these different notions of resilience and their corresponding social, ecological and economic tradeoffs need to be reconciled. Otherwise, we keep risking unintended consequences of reactive actions, or shying away from provident action because of uncertainties that cannot be reduced. The suggested trinity of time horizons and their decision contexts could help ensuring that longer‐term management actions are not missed while urgent threats to ES are given priority

Single-Cell Transcriptional Analysis of Neuronal Progenitors

AbstractThe extraordinary cellular heterogeneity of the mammalian nervous system has largely hindered the molecular analysis of neuronal identity and diversity. In order to uncover mechanisms involved in neuronal differentiation and diversification, we have monitored the expression profiles of individual neurons and progenitor cells collected from dissociated tissue or captured from intact slices. We demonstrate that this technique provides a sensitive and reproducible representation of the single-cell transcriptome. In the olfactory system, hundreds of transcriptional differences were identified between olfactory progenitors and mature sensory neurons, enabling us to define the large variety of signaling pathways expressed by individual progenitors at a precise developmental stage. Finally, we show that regional differences in gene expression can be predicted from transcriptional analysis of single neuronal precursors isolated by laser capture from defined areas of the developing brain

Benthic enrichment in the Georgia Bight related to Gulf Stream intrusions and estuarine outwelling

The distribution patterns of benthic biomass (microbiota, meiofauna, and macrofauna) over the expansive continental shelf of the Georgia Bight suggest nutrient inputs from intrusions of deep Gulf Stream waters at the shelf break…

Forming and Sustaining a Learning Community and Developing Implicit Collective Goals in an Open Future Learning Space

This study investigates the role of space, material, and affect in undergraduate and graduate students’ lived experiences within an open Future Learning Space (FLS) and speaks to the call for research on learning communities in learning spaces, as described in Hod, Bielaczyc, and Ben-Zvi (2018). The methodological approach consists of semi-structured phenomenological interviews with thirteen users of the FLS and thematic analysis to uncover themes. Findings suggest the FLS was able to: (1) bring together individuals by producing individual and shared affective responses; (2) hold community together and inform perceptions; and (3) move the community together and shape practices. This study indicates that open FLSs are complex systems constructed by users and can meet some of the criteria for a learning community (LC), especially if we broaden the definitions to take into account implicit versions of an LC

Migraine and vascular disease biomarkers: A population-based case-control study.

Background The underpinnings of the migraine-stroke association remain uncertain, but endothelial activation is a potential mechanism. We evaluated the association of migraine and vascular disease biomarkers in a community-based population. Methods Participants (300 women, 117 men) were recruited as a part of the Dutch CAMERA 1 (Cerebral Abnormalities in Migraine, an Epidemiologic Risk Analysis) study. Participants were aged 30-60 (mean 48) years, 155 migraine had with aura (MA), 128 migraine without aura (MO), and 134 were controls with no severe headaches. Plasma concentrations of fibrinogen, Factor II, D-dimer, high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), and von Willebrand factor antigen were compared between groups, also stratifying by sex. Results Fibrinogen and hs-CRP were elevated in migraineurs compared to controls. In logistic regression analyses, MO and MA had increased likelihood of elevated fibrinogen, and MA had increased likelihood of elevated Factor II and hs-CRP. Fibrinogen and Factor II were associated with MA in women but not men. In the migraine subgroup, the total number of years of aura, but not headache, predicted elevated hs-CRP, and the average number of aura, but not headache, attacks predicted all biomarkers but Factor II. Conclusions Elevated vascular biomarkers were associated with migraine, particularly MA, as well as with years of aura and number of aura attacks