Effect of prednisolone on inflammatory markers in pericardial tuberculosis: A pilot study

Background: Pericardial disorders are a common cause of heart disease, and the most common cause of pericarditis in developing countries is tuberculous (TB) pericarditis. It has been shown that prednisolone added to standard anti-TB therapy leads to a lower rate of constrictive pericarditis. We conducted a pilot study to evaluate the effect of adjunctive prednisolone treatment on the concentration of inflammatory markers in pericardial tuberculosis, in order to inform immunological mechanisms at the disease site. Methods: Pericardial fluid, plasma and saliva samples were collected from fourteen patients with pericardial tuberculosis, at multiple time points. Inflammatory markers were measured using multiplex luminex analysis and ELISA. Results: In samples from 14 patients we confirmed a strongly compartmentalized immune response at the disease site and found that prednisolone significantly reduced IL-6 concentrations in plasma by 8 hours of treatment, IL-1beta concentrations in saliva, as well as IL-8 concentrations in both pericardial fluid and saliva by 24 hours. Conclusion: Monitoring the early effect of adjunctive immunotherapy in plasma or saliva is a possibility in pericarditis

ANIMA: Association network integration for multiscale analysis [version 1; referees: 2 approved with reservations]

Contextual functional interpretation of -omics data derived from clinical samples is a classical and difficult problem in computational systems biology. The measurement of thousands of data points on single samples has become routine but relating ‘big data’ datasets to the complexities of human pathobiology is an area of ongoing research. Complicating this is the fact that many publically available datasets use bulk transcriptomics data from complex tissues like blood. The most prevalent analytic approaches derive molecular ‘signatures’ of disease states or apply modular analysis frameworks to the data. Here we describe ANIMA (association network integration for multiscale analysis), a network-based data integration method using clinical phenotype and microarray data as inputs. ANIMA is implemented in R and Neo4j and runs in Docker containers. In short, the build algorithm iterates over one or more transcriptomics datasets to generate a large, multipartite association network by executing multiple independent analytic steps (differential expression, deconvolution, modular analysis based on co-expression, pathway analysis) and integrating the results. Once the network is built, it can be queried directly using Cypher, or via custom functions that communicate with the graph database via language-specific APIs. We developed a web application using Shiny, which provides fully interactive, multiscale views of the data. Using our approach, we show that we can reconstruct multiple features of disease states at various scales of organization, from transcript abundance patterns of individual genes through co-expression patterns of groups of genes to patterns of cellular behaviour in whole blood samples, both in single experiments as well as in a meta-analysis of multiple datasets

Bilateral pedicle stress fracture in the lumbar spine of a sedentary office worker

A case of bilateral pedicle fracture in the lumbar spine of a sedentary office worker is being presented. No such case has been reported in the literature previously. Bilateral pedicle fracture is a rare entity. Few cases have been reported in literature. All the reported cases had some underlying causative factors like degenerative spine disease, previous spinal surgery or stress-related activities, e.g. athletes. Our case is a 36-year-old sedentary office worker with none of the factors mentioned. We present a case of a 36-year-old sedentary worker with long-standing low backache. There were no root tension signs. Plain radiographs were inconclusive. The patient had a CT scan. The CT scan revealed long-standing defects in the pedicles of L2 vertebra with pseudoarthrosis. Infiltration with anaesthetic relieved the symptoms. Our patient was managed conservatively with spine rehabilitation physiotherapy program. Pedicle fracture can develop due to abnormal stresses in the pedicle either because of previous spinal surgery or spondylitic changes in the spine. Bilateral pedicle fracture in the absence of these conditions is extremely rare

Emotional intelligence buffers the effect of physiological arousal on dishonesty

We studied the emotional processes that allow people to balance two competing desires: benefitting from dishonesty and keeping a positive self-image. We recorded physiological arousal (skin conductance and heart rate) during a computer card game in which participants could cheat and fail to report a certain card when presented on the screen to avoid losing their money. We found that higher skin conductance corresponded to lower cheating rates. Importantly, emotional intelligence regulated this effect; participants with high emotional intelligence were less affected by their physiological reactions than those with low emotional intelligence. As a result, they were more likely to profit from dishonesty. However, no interaction emerged between heart rate and emotional intelligence. We suggest that the ability to manage and control emotions can allow people to overcome the tension between doing right or wrong and license them to bend the rules

Attitudes and perceptions of Australian pharmacy students towards Complementary and Alternative Medicine – a pilot study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>With the increased usage of CAM worldwide comes the demand for its integration into health professional education. However, the incorporation of CAM into health professional curricula is handled quite differently by different institutions and countries. Furthermore, the evaluation of CAM curricula is complicated because students' ability to learn about CAM may be influenced by factors such as student's prior knowledge and motivation, together with the perceptions and attitudes of clinical preceptors.</p> <p>The study aimed to describe the attitudes, perceptions and beliefs of second, third and fourth year pharmacy students towards complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and to explore factors that might affect attitudes such as learning, preceptors and placements.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Pharmacy students from a University in South East Queensland, Australia participated in the study. The study consisted of a cross-sectional survey (n = 110) and semi-structured interviews (n = 9).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The overall response rate for the survey was 75%, namely 50% (36/72) for second year, 77.3% (34/44) for third year and 97.6% (40/41) for fourth year students. Overall, 95.5% of pharmacy students believe that pharmacists should be able to advise patients about CAM and most (93.7%) have used CAM prior to course enrolment. Students' attitudes to CAM are influenced by the use of CAM by family, friends and self, CAM training, lecturers and to a lesser degree by preceptors. The majority of pharmacy students (89.2%) perceive education about CAM as a core and integral part of their professional degree and favour it over an additional postgraduate degree. However, they see a greater need for education in complementary medicines (such as herbal medicines, vitamins and minerals) than for education in complementary therapies (such as acupuncture, meditation and bio-magnetism). Knowledge and educational input rationalised rather than marginalised students' attitudes towards CAM.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Pharmacy students perceive education about CAM as a core and integral part of their professional degree. Students' attitudes towards CAM can be influenced by learning, lecturers, preceptors and practice experience. The content and focus of CAM education has to be further investigated and tailored to meet the professional needs of our future health professionals.</p

Mood and neural responses to social rejection do not seem to be altered in resilient adolescents with a history of adversity

Childhood adversity (CA) increases the risk of subsequent mental health problems. Adolescent social support (from family and/or friends) reduces the risk of mental health problems after CA. However, the mechanisms of this effect remain unclear, and we speculate that they are manifested on neurodevelopmental levels. Therefore, we investigated whether family and/or friendship support at ages 14 and 17 function as intermediate variables for the relationship between CA before age 11 and affective or neural responses to social rejection feedback at age 18. We studied 55 adolescents with normative mental health at age 18 (26 with CA and therefore considered “resilient”), from a longitudinal cohort. Participants underwent a Social Feedback Task in the magnetic resonance imaging scanner. Social rejection feedback activated the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and the left anterior insula. CA did not predict affective or neural responses to social rejection at age 18. Yet, CA predicted better friendships at age 14 and age 18, when adolescents with and without CA had comparable mood levels. Thus, adolescents with CA and normative mood levels have more adolescent friendship support and seem to have normal mood and neural responses to social rejection

Gaze following in an asocial reptile (Eublepharis macularius)

Gaze following is the ability to utilise information from another's gaze. It is most often seen in a social context or as a reflexive response to interesting external stimuli. Social species can potentially reveal utilisable knowledge about another's future intentions by attending to the target of their gaze. However, in even more fundamental situations, being sensitive to another's gaze can also be useful such as when it can facilitate greater foraging efficiency or lead to earlier predator detection. While gaze sensitivity has been shown to be prevalent in a number of social species, little is currently known about the potential for gaze following in asocial species. The current study investigated whether an asocial reptile, the leopard gecko (Eublepharis macularius), could reliably use the visual indicators of attention to follow the gaze of a conspecific around a barrier. We operated three trial conditions and found subjects (N = 6) responded significantly more to the conspecific demonstrator looking up at a laser stimulus projected onto an occluder during the experimental condition compared to either of two control conditions. The study's findings point toward growing evidence for gaze-following ability in reptiles, who are typically categorised as asocial. Furthermore, our findings support developing comparative social cognition research showing the origins of gaze following and other cognitive behaviours that may be more widely distributed across taxonomic groups than hitherto thought

An Assessment of Mobile Predator Populations along Shallow and Mesophotic Depth Gradients in the Hawaiian Archipelago.

Large-bodied coral reef roving predators (sharks, jacks, snappers) are largely considered to be depleted around human population centers. In the Hawaiian Archipelago, supporting evidence is primarily derived from underwater visual censuses in shallow waters (=30?m). However, while many roving predators are present or potentially more abundant in deeper strata (30-100?m+), distributional information remains sparse. To partially fill that knowledge gap, we conducted surveys in the remote Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI) and populated Main Hawaiian Islands (MHI) from 2012-2014 using baited remote underwater stereo-video. Surveys between 0-100?m found considerable roving predator community dissimilarities between regions, marked conspicuous changes in species abundances with increasing depth, and largely corroborated patterns documented during shallow water underwater visual censuses, with up to an order of magnitude more jacks and five times more sharks sampled in the NWHI compared to the MHI. Additionally, several species were significantly more abundant and larger in mesophotic versus shallow depths, which remains particularly suggestive of deep-water refugia effects in the MHI. Stereo-video extends the depth range of current roving predator surveys in a more robust manner than was previously available, and appears to be well-suited for large-scale roving predator work in the Hawaiian Archipelago

Principals' reports of adults' alcohol use in Australian secondary schools

Background - Schools provide opportunities for parents and the wider community to connect and support the physical and emotional wellbeing of their children. Schools therefore have the potential to play a role in the socialisation of alcohol use through school policies and practices regarding consumption of alcohol by adults at school events in the presence of children. Methods - This survey was undertaken to a) compare the extent to which alcohol is used at secondary school events, when children are present, in the states of New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria (VIC), Australia; b) describe principals’ level of agreement with these practices; c) their awareness of state policies on this issue; and d) the predictors of such events. A random sample of secondary schools, stratified to represent metropolitan and non-metropolitan schools were invited to participate. Bivariate and multivariate analysis were conducted with p values < 0.05 considered significant. Results - A total of 241 (43 %) schools consented to participate in the study. Fifteen percent of participating NSW schools and 57 % of VIC schools held at least one event in which alcohol was consumed by adults in the presence of children in the year before the survey. Of the 100 reported events, 78 % were Year 12 graduation dinners, and 18 % were debutante balls. Compared to NSW principals, VIC principals were significantly more likely to agree with the use of alcohol at these events; significantly less likely to be aware of their state education department policy on this issue; have a policy at their own school or support policy that prohibits alcohol use at such events; and less likely to report having enough Information to make decisions about this. Conclusions - There is a growing focus on adults’ use of alcohol at school events when children are present. Schools can play an important role in educating and socialising children about alcohol via both the curriculum and policies regarding adults’ alcohol use at school events. Findings from this study suggest education department and school-based policies that prohibit or restrict the use of alcohol, are significant predictors of adults’ alcohol use at school events when children are present