The CEACAM1 expression is decreased in the liver of severely obese patients with or without diabetes

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Type 2 diabetes is mainly caused by insulin resistance. The carcinoembryonic antigen-related cell adhesion molecule 1 (CEACAM1) is an important candidate for causing insulin resistance.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The CEACAM1 expression was evaluated immunohistochemically in the liver tissues of 99 severely obese or non-obese subjects with or without diabetes. The CEACAM1 expression was classified into two categories: a normal expression or a decreased expression.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The CEACAM1 expression was markedly decreased in the hepatocytes with macrovesicular steatosis. A decreased CEACAM1 expression was noted in 29 (29%) of 99 cases. The incidence of a decreased CEACAM1 expression was significantly higher in high grade fatty liver as well as severe obesity with or without diabetes (p < 0.05). The incidence of a decreased CEACAM1 expression was not different between the diabetic and non-diabetic groups.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This data supports that a decreased CEACAM1 expression is related to obesity and a fatty liver.</p

Prevalence and correlates of frailty in an older rural African population:findings from the HAALSI cohort study

Background: Frailty is a key predictor of death and dependency, yet little is known about frailty in sub-Saharan Africa despite rapid population ageing. We describe the prevalence and correlates of phenotypic frailty using data from the Health and Aging in Africa: Longitudinal Studies of an INDEPTH Community cohort. Methods: We analysed data from rural South Africans aged 40 and over. We used low grip strength, slow gait speed, low body mass index, and combinations of self-reported exhaustion, decline in health, low physical activity and high self-reported sedentariness to derive nine variants of a phenotypic frailty score. Each frailty category was compared with self-reported health, subjective wellbeing, impairment in activities of daily living and the presence of multimorbidity. Cox regression analyses were used to compare subsequent all-cause mortality for non-frail (score 0), pre-frail (score 1–2) and frail participants (score 3+). Results: Five thousand fifty nine individuals (mean age 61.7 years, 2714 female) were included in the analyses. The nine frailty score variants yielded a range of frailty prevalences (5.4% to 13.2%). For all variants, rates were higher in women than in men, and rose steeply with age. Frailty was associated with worse subjective wellbeing, and worse self-reported health. Both prefrailty and frailty were associated with a higher risk of death during a mean 17 month follow up for all score variants (hazard ratios 1.29 to 2.41 for pre-frail vs non-frail; hazard ratios 2.65 to 8.91 for frail vs non-frail). Conclusions: Phenotypic frailty could be measured in this older South African population, and was associated with worse health, wellbeing and earlier death

Interleukin-6 gene (IL-6): a possible role in brain morphology in the healthy adult brain

Background: Cytokines such as interleukin 6 (IL-6) have been implicated in dual functions in neuropsychiatric disorders. Little is known about the genetic predisposition to neurodegenerative and neuroproliferative properties of cytokine genes. In this study the potential dual role of several IL-6 polymorphisms in brain morphology is investigated. Methodology: In a large sample of healthy individuals (N = 303), associations between genetic variants of IL-6 (rs1800795; rs1800796, rs2069833, rs2069840) and brain volume (gray matter volume) were analyzed using voxel-based morphometry (VBM). Selection of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) followed a tagging SNP approach (e.g., Stampa algorigthm), yielding a capture 97.08% of the variation in the IL-6 gene using four tagging SNPs. Principal findings/results: In a whole-brain analysis, the polymorphism rs1800795 (−174 C/G) showed a strong main effect of genotype (43 CC vs. 150 CG vs. 100 GG; x = 24, y = −10, z = −15; F(2,286) = 8.54, puncorrected = 0.0002; pAlphaSim-corrected = 0.002; cluster size k = 577) within the right hippocampus head. Homozygous carriers of the G-allele had significantly larger hippocampus gray matter volumes compared to heterozygous subjects. None of the other investigated SNPs showed a significant association with grey matter volume in whole-brain analyses. Conclusions/significance: These findings suggest a possible neuroprotective role of the G-allele of the SNP rs1800795 on hippocampal volumes. Studies on the role of this SNP in psychiatric populations and especially in those with an affected hippocampus (e.g., by maltreatment, stress) are warranted.Bernhard T Baune, Carsten Konrad, Dominik Grotegerd, Thomas Suslow, Eva Birosova, Patricia Ohrmann, Jochen Bauer, Volker Arolt, Walter Heindel, Katharina Domschke, Sonja Schöning, Astrid V Rauch, Christina Uhlmann, Harald Kugel and Udo Dannlowsk

Beyond knowing nature: Contact, emotion, compassion, meaning, and beauty are pathways to nature connection

Feeling connected to nature has been shown to be beneficial to wellbeing and pro-environmental behaviour. General nature contact and knowledge based activities are often used in an attempt to engage people with nature. However the specific routes to nature connectedness have not been examined systematically. Two online surveys (total n = 321) of engagement with, and value of, nature activities structured around the nine values of the Biophila Hypothesis were conducted. Contact, emotion, meaning, and compassion, with the latter mediated by engagement with natural beauty, were predictors of connection with nature, yet knowledge based activities were not. In a third study (n = 72), a walking intervention with activities operationalising the identified predictors, was found to significantly increase connection to nature when compared to walking in nature alone or walking in and engaging with the built environment. The findings indicate that contact, emotion, meaning, compassion, and beauty are pathways for improving nature connectedness. The pathways also provide alternative values and frames to the traditional knowledge and identification routes often used by organisations when engaging the public with nature.N/

TOLKIN – Tree of Life Knowledge and Information Network: Filling a Gap for Collaborative Research in Biological Systematics

The development of biological informatics infrastructure capable of supporting growing data management and analysis environments is an increasing need within the systematics biology community. Although significant progress has been made in recent years on developing new algorithms and tools for analyzing and visualizing large phylogenetic data and trees, implementation of these resources is often carried out by bioinformatics experts, using one-off scripts. Therefore, a gap exists in providing data management support for a large set of non-technical users. The TOLKIN project (Tree of Life Knowledge and Information Network) addresses this need by supporting capabilities to manage, integrate, and provide public access to molecular, morphological, and biocollections data and research outcomes through a collaborative, web application. This data management framework allows aggregation and import of sequences, underlying documentation about their source, including vouchers, tissues, and DNA extraction. It combines features of LIMS and workflow environments by supporting management at the level of individual observations, sequences, and specimens, as well as assembly and versioning of data sets used in phylogenetic inference. As a web application, the system provides multi-user support that obviates current practices of sharing data sets as files or spreadsheets via email

Are all ‘research fields’ equal? Rethinking practice for the use of data from crowd-sourcing market places

New technologies like large-scale social media sides (e.g., Facebook and Twitter) and crowdsourcing services (e.g., Amazon Mechanical Turk, Crowdflower, Clickworker) impact social science research and provide many new and interesting avenues for research. The use of these new technologies for research has not been without challenges and a recently published psychological study on Facebook led to a widespread discussion on the ethics of conducting large-scale experiments online. Surprisingly little has been said about the ethics of conducting research using commercial crowdsourcing market places. In this paper, I want to focus on the question of which ethical questions are raised by data collection with crowdsourcing tools. I briefly draw on implications of internet research more generally and then focus on the specific challenges that research with crowdsourcing tools faces. I identify fair-pay and related issues of respect for autonomy as well as problems with power dynamics between researcher and participant, which has implications for ‘withdrawal-withoutprejudice’, as the major ethical challenges with crowdsourced data. Further, I will to draw attention on how we can develop a ‘best practice’ for researchers using crowdsourcing tools

Rapid Implementation of an Integrated Large-Scale HIV Counseling and Testing, Malaria, and Diarrhea Prevention Campaign in Rural Kenya

BACKGROUND: Integrated disease prevention in low resource settings can increase coverage, equity and efficiency in controlling high burden infectious diseases. A public-private partnership with the Ministry of Health, CDC, Vestergaard Frandsen and CHF International implemented a one-week integrated multi-disease prevention campaign. METHOD: Residents of Lurambi, Western Kenya were eligible for participation. The aim was to offer services to at least 80% of those aged 15-49. 31 temporary sites in strategically dispersed locations offered: HIV counseling and testing, 60 male condoms, an insecticide-treated bednet, a household water filter for women or an individual filter for men, and for those testing positive, a 3-month supply of cotrimoxazole and referral for follow-up care and treatment. FINDINGS: Over 7 days, 47,311 people attended the campaign with a 96% uptake of the multi-disease preventive package. Of these, 99.7% were tested for HIV (87% in the target 15-49 age group); 80% had previously never tested. 4% of those tested were positive, 61% were women (5% of women and 3% of men), 6% had median CD4 counts of 541 cell/µL (IQR; 356, 754). 386 certified counselors attended to an average 17 participants per day, consistent with recommended national figures for mass campaigns. Among women, HIV infection varied by age, and was more likely with an ended marriage (e.g. widowed vs. never married, OR.3.91; 95% CI. 2.87-5.34), and lack of occupation. In men, quantitatively stronger relationships were found (e.g. widowed vs. never married, OR.7.0; 95% CI. 3.5-13.9). Always using condoms with a non-steady partner was more common among HIV-infected women participants who knew their status compared to those who did not (OR.5.4 95% CI. 2.3-12.8). CONCLUSION: Through integrated campaigns it is feasible to efficiently cover large proportions of eligible adults in rural underserved communities with multiple disease preventive services simultaneously achieving various national and international health development goals

The stellar and sub-stellar IMF of simple and composite populations

The current knowledge on the stellar IMF is documented. It appears to become top-heavy when the star-formation rate density surpasses about 0.1Msun/(yr pc^3) on a pc scale and it may become increasingly bottom-heavy with increasing metallicity and in increasingly massive early-type galaxies. It declines quite steeply below about 0.07Msun with brown dwarfs (BDs) and very low mass stars having their own IMF. The most massive star of mass mmax formed in an embedded cluster with stellar mass Mecl correlates strongly with Mecl being a result of gravitation-driven but resource-limited growth and fragmentation induced starvation. There is no convincing evidence whatsoever that massive stars do form in isolation. Various methods of discretising a stellar population are introduced: optimal sampling leads to a mass distribution that perfectly represents the exact form of the desired IMF and the mmax-to-Mecl relation, while random sampling results in statistical variations of the shape of the IMF. The observed mmax-to-Mecl correlation and the small spread of IMF power-law indices together suggest that optimally sampling the IMF may be the more realistic description of star formation than random sampling from a universal IMF with a constant upper mass limit. Composite populations on galaxy scales, which are formed from many pc scale star formation events, need to be described by the integrated galactic IMF. This IGIMF varies systematically from top-light to top-heavy in dependence of galaxy type and star formation rate, with dramatic implications for theories of galaxy formation and evolution.Comment: 167 pages, 37 figures, 3 tables, published in Stellar Systems and Galactic Structure, Vol.5, Springer. This revised version is consistent with the published version and includes additional references and minor additions to the text as well as a recomputed Table 1. ISBN 978-90-481-8817-