Psychoneuroimmunology and Genetics

Psychoneuroimmunology is a study that investigates the interaction between human emotions and the immune system, which is mediated by the endocrine and nervous systems. The nervous and immune systems maintain extensive communication, including communication to lymphoid organs from deep-rooted sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves. Genetic factors are responsible for individual variation in emotional reactivity, and neuroendocrine stress responses were shown by earlier studies in humans. Several gene-environment studies have shown that long-term effects of stress are being moderated by genetic variations in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. There is a large interindividual variability of HPA axis stress reactivity on variants of the glucocorticoid (GR) or mineralocorticoid receptor genes, and it documents a sex-specific association between different GR gene polymorphisms and salivary cortisol responses to acute psychosocial stress. In conclusion, many kinds of mind-body behavioral interventions are effective in improving mood, quality of life, reducing stress, and anxiety, thereby altering neuroendocrine and immune functions, and ultimately altering the genetic aberrations. However, the question remains as to whether these latter effects are sufficiently large or last long enough to contribute to health benefits, or if they are even relevant to the development of a disease

The characteristics, experiences and perceptions of registered massage therapists in New Zealand: Results from a national survey of practitioners

© 2018, Multimed Inc. All rights reserved. Background: Massage therapy is widely recognized as offering many health benefits, with a growing number of studies finding it has value in stress management, pain reduction, and overcoming physical limitations. However, there are few studies of massage therapists practices and perceptions in New Zealand and internationally. This paper reports the findings from the first national survey examining the characteristics, perceptions, and experiences of New Zealand-based massage therapists on a range of aspects related to their role and practices. Purpose: This study sought to ascertain the characteristics, experiences, and perceptions of massage therapists in New Zealand, particularly in the aspects of: integration of health care; attitudes and practices related to research; and evidence and attitudes to registration. Setting: Massage practice in New Zealand (nationwide survey). Participants: Members of Massage New Zealand (a massage practitioners association). Research Design: Massage practitioners were surveyed online, using a 65-part questionnaire, on a range of characteristics of their practices and their attitudes to research, integration, and registration. Statistical analysis was performed using STATA. Statistical significance was set at 0.05. Main Outcome Measures: Four hundred massage therapists (MTs) were invited to participate and 115 responded, providing a response rate of 29%. MTs valued research (95%) and perceived that it had an impact for their practices (88%). Significant correlations were found for research value and: mean case-load (p = .009) and level of academic qualification (p = .004). The majority of MTs (79%) supported integration with conventional practitioners, and 83% referred clients to general practitioners, with 75% receiving referrals from general practitioners. Ninety-three percent of MTs supported registration, with 67% of those supporting statutory registration. Conclusion: Massage practitioners perceive that they make a significant contribution to health care, but area of practice, such as research, and referral and integration into mainstream health care require more in-depth investigation

The characteristics, experiences and perceptions of naturopathic and herbal medicine practitioners: Results from a national survey in New Zealand

© Cottingham et al.; licensee BioMed Central. Background: Despite the popularity of naturopathic and herbal medicine in New Zealand there remains limited data on New Zealand-based naturopathic and herbal medicine practice. Methods: An online survey (covering 6 domains: demographics; practice characteristics; research; integrative practice; regulation and funding; contribution to national health objectives) was administered to naturopaths and herbal medicine practitioners. From a total of 338 naturopaths and herbal medicine practitioners, 107 responded providing a response rate of 32%. Data were statistically analysed using STATA. Results: A majority of the naturopaths and herbal medicine practitioners surveyed were female (91%), and aged between 45 and 54 years. Most practiced part-time (64%), with practitioner caseloads averaging 8 new clients and over 20 follow-up clients per month. Conclusions: There is a need for greater understanding and communication between practitioners of conventional care and naturopathic and herbal medicine which could support informed, coordinated and effective health provision within the New Zealand health care system. There is a need for further in-depth research examining naturopaths and herbal medicine practitioners' perceptions and practices, to provide insights of benefit to all those practising and managing health services as well as those directing health policy in New Zealand

Lepton Masses and Flavor Violation in Randall Sundrum Model

Lepton masses and mixing angles via localization of 5D fields in the bulk are revisited in the context of Randall-Sundrum models. The Higgs is assumed to be localized on the IR brane. Three cases for neutrino masses are considered: (a) The higher dimensional LH.LH operator (b) Dirac masses (c) Type I see-saw with bulk Majorana mass terms. Neutrino masses and mixing as well as charged lepton masses are fit in the first two cases using $\chi^2$ minimisation for the bulk mass parameters, while varying the $\mathcal{O}(1)$ Yukawa couplings between 0.1 and 4. Lepton flavour violation is studied for all the three cases. It is shown that large negative bulk mass parameters are required for the right handed fields to fit the data in the LH LH case. This case is characterized by a very large Kaluza-Klein (KK) spectrum and relatively weak flavour violating constraints at leading order. The zero modes for the charged singlets are composite in this case and their corresponding effective 4-D Yukawa couplings to the KK modes could be large. For the Dirac case, good fits can be obtained for the bulk mass parameters, $c_i$, lying between 0 and 1. However, most of the `best fit regions' are ruled out from flavour violating constraints. In the bulk Majorana terms case, we have solved the profile equations numerically. We give example points for inverted hierarchy and normal hierarchy of neutrino masses. Lepton flavor violating rates are large for these points. We then discuss various minimal flavor violation (MFV) schemes for Dirac and bulk Majorana cases. In the Dirac case with MFV hypothesis, it is possible to simultaneously fit leptonic masses and mixing angles and alleviate lepton flavor violating constraints for Kaluza-Klein modes with masses of around 3 TeV. Similar examples are also provided in the Majorana case.Comment: 43 pages, 20 figures, Revtex; version 2:a few clarified comments, added references, Published in PRD versio

BioAssay Ontology (BAO): a semantic description of bioassays and high-throughput screening results

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>High-throughput screening (HTS) is one of the main strategies to identify novel entry points for the development of small molecule chemical probes and drugs and is now commonly accessible to public sector research. Large amounts of data generated in HTS campaigns are submitted to public repositories such as PubChem, which is growing at an exponential rate. The diversity and quantity of available HTS assays and screening results pose enormous challenges to organizing, standardizing, integrating, and analyzing the datasets and thus to maximize the scientific and ultimately the public health impact of the huge investments made to implement public sector HTS capabilities. Novel approaches to organize, standardize and access HTS data are required to address these challenges.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We developed the first ontology to describe HTS experiments and screening results using expressive description logic. The BioAssay Ontology (BAO) serves as a foundation for the standardization of HTS assays and data and as a semantic knowledge model. In this paper we show important examples of formalizing HTS domain knowledge and we point out the advantages of this approach. The ontology is available online at the NCBO bioportal <url>http://bioportal.bioontology.org/ontologies/44531</url>.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>After a large manual curation effort, we loaded BAO-mapped data triples into a RDF database store and used a reasoner in several case studies to demonstrate the benefits of formalized domain knowledge representation in BAO. The examples illustrate semantic querying capabilities where BAO enables the retrieval of inferred search results that are relevant to a given query, but are not explicitly defined. BAO thus opens new functionality for annotating, querying, and analyzing HTS datasets and the potential for discovering new knowledge by means of inference.</p

Intermediate Phases, structural variance and network demixing in chalcogenides: the unusual case of group V sulfides

We review Intermediate Phases (IPs) in chalcogenide glasses and provide a structural interpretation of these phases. In binary group IV selenides, IPs reside in the 2.40 < r < 2.54 range, and in binary group V selenides they shift to a lower r, in the 2.29< r < 2.40 range. Here r represents the mean coordination number of glasses. In ternary alloys containing equal proportions of group IV and V selenides, IPs are wider and encompass ranges of respective binary glasses. These data suggest that the local structural variance contributing to IP widths largely derives from four isostatic local structures of varying connectivity r; two include group V based quasi-tetrahedral (r = 2.29) and pyramidal (r = 2.40) units, and the other two are group IV based corner-sharing (r = 2.40) and edge-sharing (r = 2.67) tetrahedral units. Remarkably, binary group V (P, As) sulfides exhibit IPs that are shifted to even a lower r than their selenide counterparts; a result that we trace to excess Sn chains either partially (As-S) or completely (P-S) demixing from network backbone, in contrast to excess Sen chains forming part of the backbone in corresponding selenide glasses. In ternary chalcogenides of Ge with the group V elements (As, P), IPs of the sulfides are similar to their selenide counterparts, suggesting that presence of Ge serves to reign in the excess Sn chain fragments back in the backbone as in their selenide counterparts

Prospective Telehealth Analysis of Functional Performance, Frailty, Quality of Life, and Mental Health after COVID-19 hospitalization

Background COVID-19 is a global pandemic with poorly understood long-term consequences. Determining the trajectory of recovery following COVID-19 hospitalization is critical for prioritizing care, allocating resources, facilitating prognosis, and informing rehabilitation. The purpose of this study was to prospectively evaluate recovery following COVID-19 hospitalization. Methods Participants age 18 years or older who were hospitalized for ≥24 h due to COVID-19 completed phone/video call virtual assessments (including the 10-time chair rise test) and survey forms at three time points (2–6, 12, and 18 weeks) after hospital discharge. Univariate logistic and linear regression models assessed the associations of the outcomes with primary predictors (categorical age, sex, race/ethnicity group, and categorical pre-hospitalization frailty) at baseline; the same were used to assess differences in change from week 2–6 (continuous outcomes) or outcome persistence/worsening (categorical) at last contact. Results One hundred nine adults (age 53.0 [standard deviation 13.1]; 53% female) participated including 43 (39%) age 60 or greater; 59% identified as an ethnic and/or racial minority. Over 18 weeks, the mean time to complete the 10-time chair rise test decreased (i.e., improved) by 6.0 s (95% CI: 4.1, 7.9 s; p \u3c 0.001); this change did not differ by pre-hospital frailty, race/ethnicity group, or sex, but those age ≥ 60 had greater improvement. At weeks 2–6, 67% of participants reported a worse Clinical Frailty Scale category compared to their pre-hospitalization level, whereas 42% reported a worse frailty score at 18 weeks. Participants who did not return to pre-hospitalization levels were more likely to be female, younger, and report a pre-hospitalization category of ‘very fit’ or ‘well’. Conclusions We found that functional performance improved from weeks 2–6 to 18 weeks of follow-up; that incident clinical frailty developed in some individuals following COVID-19; and that age, sex, race/ethnicity, and pre-hospitalization frailty status may impact recovery from COVID-19. Notably, individuals age 60 and older were more likely than those under age 45 years to return to their pre-hospitalization status and to make greater improvements in functional performance. The results of the present study provide insight into the trajectory of recovery among a representative cohort of individuals hospitalized due to COVID-19. Background Coronavirus disease (COVID)-19 is a global pandemic with poorly understood long-term consequences. Recent data suggest that even mild cases of COVID-19 can result in significant long-term morbidity [1]. Determining the trajectory of recovery in patients following COVID-19 hospitalization is critical for prioritizing care, allocating resources, facilitating prognosis, and informing rehabilitation