Comparative studies on the therapeutic and adverse effects of mirtazapine and fluoxetine in the treatment of adult depression

Purpose: To evaluate comparatively the therapeutic and adverse effects of mirtazapine and fluoxetine for the management of adult depression.Methods: Adults (58) with depression admitted to the Neurology Department of Zaozhuang Municipal Hospital from August 2014 to July 2016 were randomly assigned to either mirtazapine group or fluoxetine group. Those in mirtazapine group were given mirtazapine while the fluoxetine group took fluoxetine. The patients were graded for Hamilton Depression Scale (HAMD) and Treatment Emergent Symptoms Scale (TESS) scores before treatment and at weeks 2, 4, 6, and 8 post-treatment, with the aim of comparing therapeutic effects and adverse reactions to mirtazapine and fluoxetine.Results: The therapeutic effects seen in the two groups did not differ significantly (p > 0.05), but mirtazapine had a slight advantage over fluoxetine. Effectiveness appeared after 2 weeks in the mirtazapine group, and 4 weeks in the other group. Moreover, there were significant differences in HAMD scores between the two groups after 2 and 4 weeks of treatment (p < 0.05), but the differences in scores after 6 and 8 weeks of treatment were not significant (p > 0.05). However, there were significant differences in score between pretreatment and 8-week post-treatment scores (p < 0.05). Mirtazapine group also had lower incidents of adverse reactions (sleepiness, dyspepsia, nausea, vomiting, excitation, and headache) than the fluoxetine group (p < 0.05).Conclusion: Mirtazapine has similar effect as fluoxetine in the treatment of adult depression, but works faster, with low incidence of adverse reactions. Thus, it is a safer and quicker antidepressant for clinical application.Keywords: Mirtazapine, Fluoxetine, Adult depression, Clinical effect, Adverse reaction

Positive selection for the male functionality of a co-retroposed gene in the hominoids

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>New genes generated by retroposition are widespread in humans and other mammalian species. Usually, this process copies a single parental gene and inserts it into a distant genomic location. However, retroposition of two adjacent parental genes, <it>i.e</it>. co-retroposition, had not been reported until the hominoid chimeric gene, <it>PIPSL</it>, was identified recently. It was shown how two genes linked in tandem (phosphatidylinositol-4-phosphate 5-kinase, type I, alpha, <it>PIP5K1A </it>and proteasome 26S subunit, non-ATPase, 4, <it>PSMD4</it>) could be co-retroposed from a single RNA molecule to form this novel chimeric gene. However, understanding of the origination and biological function of <it>PIPSL </it>requires determination of the coding potential of this gene as well as the evolutionary forces acting on its hominoid copies.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We tackled these problems by analyzing the evolutionary signature in both within-species variation and between species divergence in the sequence and structure of the gene. We revealed a significant evolutionary signature: the coding region has significantly lower sequence variation, especially insertions and deletions, suggesting that the human copy may encode a protein. Moreover, a survey across five different hominoid species revealed that all adaptive changes of <it>PSMD4</it>-derived regions occurred on branches leading to human and chimp rather than other hominoid lineages. Finally, computational analysis suggests testis-specific transcription of <it>PIPSL </it>is regulated by tissue-dependent methylation rather than some transcriptional leakage.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Therefore, this set of analyses showed that <it>PIPSL </it>is an extraordinary co-retroposed protein-coding gene that may participate in the male functions of humans and its close relatives.</p

Low CPNE3 expression is associated with risk of acute myocardial infarction: A feasible genetic marker of acute myocardial infarction in patients with stable coronary artery disease

Background: Gene COPINE III may be related to a phosphoprotein with intrinsic kinase activity and  belongs to an unconventional kinase family. The CPNE3 gene may be used as a biomarker for assess- ment of occurrence and prognosis of various tumors. Methods: Peripheral blood was collected from 87 stable coronary artery disease (CAD) patients and 91 acute myocardial infarction (AMI) patients. Real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction test and the western blot method were adopted to measure expression quantity of CPNE3 gene at the mRNA level and the protein level.  Results: The expression of the CPNE3 gene in peripheral blood of AMI patients was significantly lower than those in peripheral blood of stable CAD patients. Low expression of CPNE3 gene was found to be unrelated to level of fasting blood glucose and serum blood lipid of patients, quantity of cardiac troponin and time of onset but was found to be correlated to the Gensini score for coronary artery. When the ex- pression of CPNE3 gene at the mRNA level in peripheral blood was used as the criterion for diagnosing AMI, its sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value were 69%, 64.8%, 68.6% and 65.2%, respectively.  Conclusions: Compared to stable CAD patients, AMI patients have a lower expression of CPNE3 gene in their peripheral blood. Patients who have low CPNE3 expression in peripheral blood are more likely to suffer from AMI than those with stable CAD. Low expression of CPNE3 gene serves as an potential independent risk factor of AMI.

Feeding a low-protein maternal diet affects qinghai bamei piglet jejunal structure and microbial function response

This experiment investigated the impacts of feeding a maternal low-CP concentration diet having iso-essential amino acids on newborn suckling piglet"s intestinal microbial composition and function. Forty randomly selected purebred Bamei sows were divided into two groups and fed a low dietary CP (12%, LP) or a normal CP (14%, CON) diet, respectively, but formulated to contain similar (iso-) essential amino acid concentrations per current recommendations. At 21 days, 12 piglets were randomly selected from each treatment and euthanized with jejunum content samples collected. The 16S rRNA gene sequencing was combined as an integrated approach for evaluating the functional impact of maternal CP concentrations on piglet intestinal microbiome. Even though piglets demonstrated similar 0 to 21 d ADG among treatments, the jejunum relative weight, villus width, crypt depth and muscular thickness were increased (P<0.05), while villus height, and villus height/crypt depth were reduced (P<0.05) for the material LP compared to the maternal fed CON diet. Maternal CP concentrations can modify the intestinal microbial composition of Bamei suckling piglets. The relative abundances of the bacterial species Escherichia-Shigella, Actinobacillus, Clostridium_sensu_stricto_1, Veillonella, and Turicibacter were increased (P<0.05) in the maternal LP fed diet compared with the maternal fed CON diet microbiota metabolites. Overall, LP diet contributed to improve piglet intestinal histomorphology, microbial composition and function

Evaluation of candidate reference genes for expression study in Saccharum spp. hybrids under heavy metal stress

Heavy metal contamination has been a significant problem limiting agricultural development, but sugarcane has recently emerged as a valuable phytoremediator. To better understand the molecular mechanism behind sugarcane&apos;s metal tolerance, it is necessary to analyze the expression of a novel gene(s) by qRT-PCR. Importantly, introducing internal reference gene(s) should be selected based upon gene stable expression, the inclusion of which could enhance both the accuracy and reliability of this method. In this study, 13 candidate genes were selected and evaluated stability of each genes. The results derived by statistical algorithms were then validated by normalizing the expression of metal related gene ScMTP (GenBank Accession No. KP864146), ScMT2-1-

Working Memory for Spatial Sequences: Developmental and Evolutionary Factors in Encoding Ordinal and Relational Structures

Sequence learning is a ubiquitous facet of human and animal cognition. Here, using a common sequence reproduction task, we investigated whether and how the ordinal and relational structures linking consecutive elements are acquired by human adults, children, and macaque monkeys. While children and monkeys exhibited significantly lower precision than adults for spatial location and temporal order information, only monkeys appeared to exceedingly focus on the first item. Most importantly, only humans, regardless of age, spontaneously extracted the spatial relations between consecutive items and used a chunking strategy to compress sequences in working memory. Monkeys did not detect such relational structures, even after extensive training. Monkey behavior was captured by a conjunctive coding model, whereas a chunk-based conjunctive model explained more variance in humans. These age- and species-related differences are indicative of developmental and evolutionary mechanisms of sequence encoding and may provide novel insights into the uniquely human cognitive capacities.Journal of Neuroscienc