Trust as a mediator in the relationship between childhood sexual abuse and IL-6 level in adulthood

Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) has been shown to predict the coupling of depression and inflammation in adulthood. Trust within intimate relationships, a core element in marital relations, has been shown to predict positive physical and mental health outcomes, but the mediating role of trust in partners in the association between CSA and inflammation in adulthood requires further study. The present study aimed to examine the impact of CSA on inflammatory biomarkers (IL-6 and IL-1β) in adults with depression and the mediating role of trust. A cross-sectional survey data set of adults presenting with mood and sleep disturbance was used in the analysis. CSA demonstrated a significant negative correlation with IL-6 level (r = -0.28, p<0. 01) in adults with clinically significant depression, while trust showed a significant positive correlation with IL-6 level (r = 0.36, p < .01). Sobel test and bootstrapping revealed a significant mediating role for trust between CSA and IL-6 level. CSA and trust in partners were revealed to have significant associations with IL-6 level in adulthood. Counterintuitively, the directions of association were not those expected. Trust played a mediating role between CSA and adulthood levels of IL-6. Plausible explanations for these counterintuitive findings are discussed

Foreign language learning as potential treatment for mild cognitive impairment

As the number of older adults increases, age-related health issues (both physical and cognitive) and associated costs are expected to increase, placing emotional and financial stress on family members and the health system. Dementia is one of the most devastating and costly diseases that older adults face. The present study aimed to determine whether foreign language learning can improve cognitive outcomes of older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). The objectives are to determine whether foreign language learning is (1) effective in boosting cognitive reserve and promoting healthy cognitive function and (2) superior to other established cognitively stimulating activities such as crossword and logic puzzles

A targeted gene panel that covers coding, non-coding and short tandem repeat regions improves the diagnosis of patients with neurodegenerative diseases

Genetic testing for neurodegenerative diseases (NDs) is highly challenging because of genetic heterogeneity and overlapping manifestations. Targeted-gene panels (TGPs), coupled with next-generation sequencing (NGS), can facilitate the profiling of a large repertoire of ND-related genes. Due to the technical limitations inherent in NGS and TGPs, short tandem repeat (STR) variations are often ignored. However, STR expansions are known to cause such NDs as Huntington\u27s disease and spinocerebellar ataxias type 3 (SCA3). Here, we studied the clinical utility of a custom-made TGP that targets 199 NDs and 311 ND-associated genes on 118 undiagnosed patients. At least one known or likely pathogenic variation was found in 54 patients; 27 patients demonstrated clinical profiles that matched the variants; and 16 patients whose original diagnosis were refined. A high concordance of variant calling were observed when comparing the results from TGP and whole-exome sequencing of four patients. Our in-house STR detection algorithm has reached a specificity of 0.88 and a sensitivity of 0.82 in our SCA3 cohort. This study also uncovered a trove of novel and recurrent variants that may enrich the repertoire of ND-related genetic markers. We propose that a combined comprehensive TGPs-bioinformatics pipeline can improve the clinical diagnosis of NDs

Effects of Helicobacter pylori Treatment on Incidence of Gastric Cancer in Older Individuals.

BACKGROUND & AIMS: Although eradication of Helicobacter pylori infection reduces the risk of gastric cancer, few data are available on its effects in older subjects. We compared the age-specific risk of gastric cancer in a large cohort of subjects who received H pylori eradication therapy vs a matched general population. METHODS: We searched the Hospital Authority database of Hong Kong to identify individuals with H pylori infection who had received a course of clarithromycin-containing eradication therapy from January 2003 through December 2012. We compared the gastric cancer incidence in this cohort with the expected incidence for the local general population by retrieving the gastric cancer incidence of the age- and sex-matched population from 2003 through 2014 (the latest available year) from the Hong Kong Cancer Registry. The primary outcome was the incidence of gastric cancer development in the cohort treated for H pylori infection vs the expected number of gastric cancer cases in the general population. Analyses were conducted by a priori age groups of less than 40 years, 40-59 years, and 60 years or older. RESULTS: Among 73,237 subjects infected with H pylori who received eradication therapy, 200 (0.27%) developed gastric cancer during a median follow-up time of 7.6 years. Compared with the matched general population, the gastric cancer risk was significantly lower in subjects 60 years or older who had received H pylori treatment (standardized incidence ratio [SIR], 0.82; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.69-0.97; P = .02) but not in younger groups. When data were stratified based on time from H pylori treatment (less than 5 years, 5-9 years, and 10 or more years), the risk of gastric cancer was significantly lower than the general population 10 or more years after eradication in the group 40-59 years old (SIR 0.32; 95% CI, 0.08-0.88; P = .04) and the group 60 years or older (SIR, 0.42; 95% CI, 0.42-0.84; P = .02) than the other age groups. CONCLUSIONS: In an analysis of data from a public hospital database on Hong Kong, we associated treatment of H pylori infection with a lower risk of gastric cancer, particularly in older subjects, 10 or more years after treatment

Extremal Bundles on Calabi-Yau Threefolds

We study constructions of stable holomorphic vector bundles on Calabi–Yau threefolds, especially those with exact anomaly cancellation which we call extremal. By going through the known databases we find that such examples are rare in general and can be ruled out for the spectral cover construction for all elliptic threefolds. We then introduce a general Hartshorne–Serre construction and use it to find extremal bundles of general ranks and study their stability, as well as computing their Chern numbers. Based on both existing and our new constructions, we revisit the DRY conjecture for the existence of stable sheaves on Calabi–threefolds, and provide theoretical and numerical evidence for its correctness. Our construction can be easily generalized to bundles with no extremal conditions imposed