‘Back to Life’—Using knowledge exchange processes to enhance lifestyle interventions for liver transplant recipients: A qualitative study

Interventions to prevent excessive weight gain after liver transplant are needed. The purpose of the present study was to enhance a specialist post-transplant well-being program through knowledge exchange with end-users.The study used an interactive process of knowledge exchange between researchers, clinicians and health system users. Data were collected as focus groups or telephone interviews and underwent applied thematic analysis.There were 28 participants (age 24-68 years; 64% male). The results identified experiences that may influence decisions around health behaviours during the course of transplant recovery. Three over-arching themes were identified that impact on liver transplant recipients post-transplant health behaviours. These include (i) Finding a coping mechanism which highlighted the need to acknowledge the significant emotional burden of transplant prior to addressing long-term physical wellness; (ii) Back to Life encompassing the desire to return to employment and prioritise family, while co-ordinating the burden of ongoing medical monitoring and self-management and (iii) Tailored, Personalised Care with a preference for health care delivery by transplant specialists via a range of flexible eHealth modalities.This person-centred process of knowledge exchange incorporated experiences of recipients into service design and identified life priorities most likely to influence health behaviours post-transplant. Patient co-creation of services has the potential to improve the integration of knowledge into health systems and future directions will require evaluation of effectiveness and sustainability of patient-centred multidisciplinary service development

Correspondence between geometrical and differential definitions of the sine and cosine functions and connection with kinematics

In classical physics, the familiar sine and cosine functions appear in two forms: (1) geometrical, in the treatment of vectors such as forces and velocities, and (2) differential, as solutions of oscillation and wave equations. These two forms correspond to two different definitions of trigonometric functions, one geometrical using right triangles and unit circles, and the other employing differential equations. Although the two definitions must be equivalent, this equivalence is not demonstrated in textbooks. In this manuscript, the equivalence between the geometrical and the differential definition is presented assuming no a priori knowledge of the properties of sine and cosine functions. We start with the usual length projections on the unit circle and use elementary geometry and elementary calculus to arrive to harmonic differential equations. This more general and abstract treatment not only reveals the equivalence of the two definitions but also provides an instructive perspective on circular and harmonic motion as studied in kinematics. This exercise can help develop an appreciation of abstract thinking in physics.Comment: 6 pages including 1 figur

A scaffold replacement approach towards new sirtuin 2 inhibitors

Sirtuins (SIRT1-SIRT7) are an evolutionary conserved family of NAD(+)-dependent protein deacylases regulating the acylation state of epsilon-N-lysine residues of proteins thereby controlling key biological processes. Numerous studies have found association of the aberrant enzymatic activity of SIRTs with various diseases like diabetes, cancer and neurodegenerative disorders. Previously, we have shown that substituted 2-alkyl-chroman-4-one/chromone derivatives can serve as selective inhibitors of SIRT2 possessing an antiproliferative effect in two human cancer cell lines. In this study, we have explored the bioisosteric replacement of the chroman-4-one/chromone core structure with different less lipophilic bicyclic scaffolds to overcome problems associated to poor physiochemical properties due to a highly lipophilic substitution pattern required for achieve a good inhibitory effect. Various new derivatives based on the quinolin-4(1H)-one scaffold, bicyclic secondary sulfonamides or saccharins were synthesized and evaluated for their SIRT inhibitory effect. Among the evaluated scaffolds, the benzothiadiazine-1,1-dioxide-based compounds showed the highest SIRT2 inhibitory activity. Molecular modeling studies gave insight into the binding mode of the new scaffold-replacement analogues.Peer reviewe

Sigma-2 receptors as a biomarker of proliferation in solid tumours

Over the past several years, our group has provided considerable evidence that the expression of sigma-2 (σ2) receptors may serve as a biomarker of tumour cell proliferation. In these in vitro studies, σ2receptors were expressed 8–10 times more in proliferative (P) tumour cells than in quiescent (Q) tumour cells, and the extent and kinetics of their expression were independent of a number of biological, physiological and environmental factors often found in solid tumours. Moreover, the expression of σ2receptors followed both the population growth kinetics when Q-cells were recruited into the P-cell compartment and the proliferative status of human breast tumour cells treated with cytostatic concentrations of tamoxifen. However, these in vitro studies may or may not be indicative of what might occur in solid tumours. In the present study, the σ2receptor P:Q ratio was determined for the cells from subcutaneous 66 (diploid) and 67 (aneuploid) tumours grown in female nude mice. The σ2receptor P:Q ratio of the 66 tumours was 10.6 compared to the σ2receptor P:Q ratio of 9.5 measured for the 66 tissue culture model. The σ2receptor P:Q ratio of the 67 tumours was 4.5 compared to the σ2receptor P:Q ratio of ≈ 8 measured for the 67 tissue culture model. The agreement between the solid tumour and tissue culture data indicates that: (1) the expression of σ2receptors may be a reliable biomarker of the proliferative status of solid tumours and (2) radioligands with both high affinity and high selectivity for σ2receptors may have the potential to non-invasively assess the proliferative status of human solid tumours using imaging techniques such as positron emission tomography or single-photon emission computerized tomography. © 2000 Cancer Research Campaig

Conversion of the Mycotoxin Patulin to the Less Toxic Desoxypatulinic Acid by the Biocontrol Yeast Rhodosporidium kratochvilovae Strain LS11

Se describe en este artículo el descubrimiento de la degradación de la micotoxina patulina por una levaduraThe infection of stored apples by the fungus Penicillium expansum causes the contamination of fruits and fruit-derived products with the mycotoxin patulin, which is a major issue in food safety. Fungal attack can be prevented by beneficial microorganisms, so-called biocontrol agents. Previous time-course thin layer chromatography analyses showed that the aerobic incubation of patulin with the biocontrol yeast Rhodosporidium kratochvilovae strain LS11 leads to the disappearance of the mycotoxin spot and the parallel emergence of two new spots, one of which disappears over time. In this work, we analyzed the biodegradation of patulin effected by LS11 through HPLC. The more stable of the two compounds was purified and characterized by nuclear magnetic resonance as desoxypatulinic acid, whose formation was also quantitated in patulin degradation experiments. After R. kratochvilovae LS11 had been incubated in the presence of 13C-labeled patulin, label was traced to desoxypatulinic acid, thus proving that this compound derives from the metabolization of patulin by the yeast. Desoxypatulinic acid was much less toxic than patulin to human lymphocytes and, in contrast to patulin, did not react in vitro with the thiol-bearing tripeptide glutathione. The lower toxicity of desoxypatulinic acid is proposed to be a consequence of the hydrolysis of the lactone ring and the loss of functional groups that react with thiol groups. The formation of desoxypatulinic acid from patulin represents a novel biodegradation pathway that is also a detoxification process

Effect of ploidy, recruitment, environmental factors, and tamoxifen treatment on the expression of sigma-2 receptors in proliferating and quiescent tumour cells

Recently, we demonstrated that sigma-2 receptors may have the potential to be a biomarker of tumour cell proliferation (Mach et al (1997) Cancer Res57: 156–161). If sigma-2 receptors were a biomarker of tumour cell proliferation, they would be amenable to detection by non-invasive imaging procedures, thus eliminating many of the problems associated with the flow cytometric measures of tumour cell proliferation presently used in the clinic. To be a good biomarker of tumour cell proliferation, the expression of sigma-2 receptors must be essentially independent of many of the biological, physiological, and/or environmental properties that are found in solid tumours. In the investigation reported here, the mouse mammary adenocarcinoma lines, 66 (diploid) and 67 (aneuploid), 9L rat brain tumour cells, and MCF-7 human breast tumour cells were used to study the extent and kinetics of expression of sigma-2 receptors in proliferative (P) and quiescent (Q) tumour cells as a function of species, cell type, ploidy, pH, nutrient depletion, metabolic state, recruitment from the Q-cell compartment to the P-cell compartment, and treatment with tamoxifen. In these experiments, the expression of sigma-2 receptors solely reflected the proliferative status of the tumour cells. None of the biological, physiological, or environmental properties that were investigated had a measurable effect on the expression of sigma-2 receptors in these model systems. Consequently, these data suggest that the proliferative status of tumours and normal tissues can be non-invasively assessed using radiolabelled ligands that selectively bind sigma-2 receptors. © 1999 Cancer Research Campaig