Is there a relationship between increased aortic stiffness and segmental left ventricular deformation in elite athletes? (Insights from the MAGYAR-Sport Study)

Introduction. Myocardial contractility of the left ventricle (LV) is related to arterial distensibility. Sport activity is frequently associated with changes in both LV and arterial functions. This study aimed to find correlations between three-dimensional speckle-tracking echocardiography-derived segmental LV deformation parameters and echocardiographically assessed aortic stiffness index (ASI) in athletes. This study comprised 26 young elite athletes (mean age: 26.7 ± 8.4 years, nine men). Results Among segmental circumferential strains (CSs), only that of apical anterior (r = 0.40, p = 0.05), septal (r = 0.47, p = 0.01), inferior (r = 0.59, p = 0.001), lateral (r = 0.44, p < 0.05), and midventricular anteroseptal (r = 0.44, p < 0.05) segments correlated with ASI, whereas LV-CS of the midventricular anterior segment showed a correlation tendency. Only longitudinal strain of basal anteroseptal (r = −0.46, p < 0.05) and inferoseptal (r = −0.57, p < 0.01) segments showed correlations with ASI, whereas that of the basal anterior segment had only a tendency to correlate. Some segmental multidirectional strains also correlated with ASI. Conclusions Correlations could be demonstrated between increased aortic stiffness and circular function of the apical and midventricular LV fibers and longitudinal motion of the basal septum and LV anterior wall (part of LV outflow tract) in maintaining circulation in the elite athletes

Changes in the Provision of Institutionalized Mental Health Care in Post-Communist Countries

PMCID: PMC3371010This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

A mathematical model for breath gas analysis of volatile organic compounds with special emphasis on acetone

Recommended standardized procedures for determining exhaled lower respiratory nitric oxide and nasal nitric oxide have been developed by task forces of the European Respiratory Society and the American Thoracic Society. These recommendations have paved the way for the measurement of nitric oxide to become a diagnostic tool for specific clinical applications. It would be desirable to develop similar guidelines for the sampling of other trace gases in exhaled breath, especially volatile organic compounds (VOCs) which reflect ongoing metabolism. The concentrations of water-soluble, blood-borne substances in exhaled breath are influenced by: (i) breathing patterns affecting gas exchange in the conducting airways; (ii) the concentrations in the tracheo-bronchial lining fluid; (iii) the alveolar and systemic concentrations of the compound. The classical Farhi equation takes only the alveolar concentrations into account. Real-time measurements of acetone in end-tidal breath under an ergometer challenge show characteristics which cannot be explained within the Farhi setting. Here we develop a compartment model that reliably captures these profiles and is capable of relating breath to the systemic concentrations of acetone. By comparison with experimental data it is inferred that the major part of variability in breath acetone concentrations (e.g., in response to moderate exercise or altered breathing patterns) can be attributed to airway gas exchange, with minimal changes of the underlying blood and tissue concentrations. Moreover, it is deduced that measured end-tidal breath concentrations of acetone determined during resting conditions and free breathing will be rather poor indicators for endogenous levels. Particularly, the current formulation includes the classical Farhi and the Scheid series inhomogeneity model as special limiting cases.Comment: 38 page

Reconstruction of Genome-Scale Active Metabolic Networks for 69 Human Cell Types and 16 Cancer Types Using INIT

Development of high throughput analytical methods has given physicians the potential access to extensive and patient-specific data sets, such as gene sequences, gene expression profiles or metabolite footprints. This opens for a new approach in health care, which is both personalized and based on system-level analysis. Genome-scale metabolic networks provide a mechanistic description of the relationships between different genes, which is valuable for the analysis and interpretation of large experimental data-sets. Here we describe the generation of genome-scale active metabolic networks for 69 different cell types and 16 cancer types using the INIT (Integrative Network Inference for Tissues) algorithm. The INIT algorithm uses cell type specific information about protein abundances contained in the Human Proteome Atlas as the main source of evidence. The generated models constitute the first step towards establishing a Human Metabolic Atlas, which will be a comprehensive description (accessible online) of the metabolism of different human cell types, and will allow for tissue-level and organism-level simulations in order to achieve a better understanding of complex diseases. A comparative analysis between the active metabolic networks of cancer types and healthy cell types allowed for identification of cancer-specific metabolic features that constitute generic potential drug targets for cancer treatment

Medical-grade honey enriched with antimicrobial peptides has enhanced activity against antibiotic-resistant pathogens

Honey has potent activity against both antibiotic-sensitive and -resistant bacteria, and is an interesting agent for topical antimicrobial application to wounds. As honey is diluted by wound exudate, rapid bactericidal activity up to high dilution is a prerequisite for its successful application. We investigated the kinetics of the killing of antibiotic-resistant bacteria by RS honey, the source for the production of Revamil® medical-grade honey, and we aimed to enhance the rapid bactericidal activity of RS honey by enrichment with its endogenous compounds or the addition of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs). RS honey killed antibiotic-resistant isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Enterococcus faecium, and Burkholderia cepacia within 2 h, but lacked such rapid activity against methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) and extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL)-producing Escherichia coli. It was not feasible to enhance the rapid activity of RS honey by enrichment with endogenous compounds, but RS honey enriched with 75 μM of the synthetic peptide Bactericidal Peptide 2 (BP2) showed rapid bactericidal activity against all species tested, including MRSA and ESBL E. coli, at up to 10–20-fold dilution. RS honey enriched with BP2 rapidly killed all bacteria tested and had a broader spectrum of bactericidal activity than either BP2 or honey alone

Isoprene and acetone concentration profiles during exercise on an ergometer

A real-time recording setup combining exhaled breath VOC measurements by proton transfer reaction mass spectrometry (PTR-MS) with hemodynamic and respiratory data is presented. Continuous automatic sampling of exhaled breath is implemented on the basis of measured respiratory flow: a flow-controlled shutter mechanism guarantees that only end-tidal exhalation segments are drawn into the mass spectrometer for analysis. Exhaled breath concentration profiles of two prototypic compounds, isoprene and acetone, during several exercise regimes were acquired, reaffirming and complementing earlier experimental findings regarding the dynamic response of these compounds reported by Senthilmohan et al. [1] and Karl et al. [2]. While isoprene tends to react very sensitively to changes in pulmonary ventilation and perfusion due to its lipophilic behavior and low Henry constant, hydrophilic acetone shows a rather stable behavior. Characteristic (median) values for breath isoprene concentration and molar flow, i.e., the amount of isoprene exhaled per minute are 100 ppb and 29 nmol/min, respectively, with some intra-individual day-to-day variation. At the onset of exercise breath isoprene concentration increases drastically, usually by a factor of ~3-4 within about one minute. Due to a simultaneous increase in ventilation, the associated rise in molar flow is even more pronounced, leading to a ratio between peak molar flow and molar flow at rest of ~11. Our setup holds great potential in capturing continuous dynamics of non-polar, low-soluble VOCs over a wide measurement range with simultaneous appraisal of decisive physiological factors affecting exhalation kinetics.Comment: 35 page

Arbuscular mycorrhizal colonisation of roots of grass species differing in invasiveness

Recent research indicates that the soil microbial community, particularly arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), can influence plant invasion in several ways. We tested if 1) invasive species are colonised by AMF to a lower degree than resident native species, and 2) AMF colonisation of native plants is lower in a community inhabited by an invasive species than in an uninvaded resident community. The two tests were run in semiarid temperate grasslands on grass (Poaceae) species, and the frequency and intensity of mycorrhizal colonisation, and the proportion of arbuscules and vesicles in plant roots have been measured. In the first test, grasses representing three classes of invasiveness were included: invasive species, resident species becoming abundant upon disturbance, and non-invasive native species. Each class contained one C3 and one C4 species. The AMF colonisation of the invasive Calamagrostis epigejos and Cynodon dactylon was consistently lower than that of the non-invasive native Chrysopogon gryllus and Bromus inermis, and contained fewer arbuscules than the post-disturbance dominant resident grasses Bothriochloa ischaemum and Brachypodium pinnatum. The C3 and C4 grasses behaved alike despite their displaced phenologies in these habitats. The second test compared AMF colonisation for sand grassland dominant grasses Festuca vaginata and Stipa borysthenica in stands invaded by either C. epigejos or C. dactylon, and in the uninvaded natural community. Resident grasses showed lower degree of AMF colonisation in the invaded stand compared to the uninvaded natural community with F. vaginata responding so to both invaders, while S. borysthenica responding to C. dactylon only. These results indicate that invasive grasses supposedly less reliant on AMF symbionts have the capacity of altering the soil mycorrhizal community in such a way that resident native species can establish a considerably reduced extent of the beneficial AMF associations, hence their growth, reproduction and ultimately abundance may decline. Accumulating evidence suggests that such indirect influences of invasive alien plants on resident native species mediated by AMF or other members of the soil biota is probably more the rule than the exception

Advanced glycoxidation and lipoxidation end products (AGEs and ALEs): an overview of their mechanisms of formation

Advanced lipoxidation end products (ALEs) and advanced glycation end products (AGEs) have a pathogenetic role in the development and progression of different oxidative-based diseases including diabetes, atherosclerosis, and neurological disorders. AGEs and ALEs represent a quite complex class of compounds that are formed by different mechanisms, by heterogeneous precursors and that can be formed either exogenously or endogenously. There is a wide interest in AGEs and ALEs involving different aspects of research which are essentially focused on set-up and application of analytical strategies (1) to identify, characterize, and quantify AGEs and ALEs in different pathophysiological conditions ; (2) to elucidate the molecular basis of their biological effects ; and (3) to discover compounds able to inhibit AGEs/ALEs damaging effects not only as biological tools aimed at validating AGEs/ALEs as drug target, but also as promising drugs. All the above-mentioned research stages require a clear picture of the chemical formation of AGEs/ALEs but this is not simple, due to the complex and heterogeneous pathways, involving different precursors and mechanisms. In view of this intricate scenario, the aim of the present review is to group the main AGEs and ALEs and to describe, for each of them, the precursors and mechanisms of formation

Proteomic Analysis Reveals That Iron Availability Alters the Metabolic Status of the Pathogenic Fungus Paracoccidioides brasiliensis

Paracoccidioides brasiliensis is a thermodimorphic fungus and the causative agent of paracoccidioidomycosis (PCM). The ability of P. brasiliensis to uptake nutrients is fundamental for growth, but a reduction in the availability of iron and other nutrients is a host defense mechanism many pathogenic fungi must overcome. Thus, fungal mechanisms that scavenge iron from host may contribute to P. brasiliensis virulence. In order to better understand how P. brasiliensis adapts to iron starvation in the host we compared the two-dimensional (2D) gel protein profile of yeast cells during iron starvation to that of iron rich condition. Protein spots were selected for comparative analysis based on the protein staining intensity as determined by image analysis. A total of 1752 protein spots were selected for comparison, and a total of 274 out of the 1752 protein spots were determined to have changed significantly in abundance due to iron depletion. Ninety six of the 274 proteins were grouped into the following functional categories; energy, metabolism, cell rescue, virulence, cell cycle, protein synthesis, protein fate, transcription, cellular communication, and cell fate. A correlation between protein and transcript levels was also discovered using quantitative RT-PCR analysis from RNA obtained from P. brasiliensis under iron restricting conditions and from yeast cells isolated from infected mouse spleens. In addition, western blot analysis and enzyme activity assays validated the differential regulation of proteins identified by 2-D gel analysis. We observed an increase in glycolytic pathway protein regulation while tricarboxylic acid cycle, glyoxylate and methylcitrate cycles, and electron transport chain proteins decreased in abundance under iron limiting conditions. These data suggest a remodeling of P. brasiliensis metabolism by prioritizing iron independent pathways