Pre-receptor Regulation of Cortisol in Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis Functioning an Metabolism

Glucocorticoids (GCs) are ubiquitous, nuclear hormones, which are essential for life. In man, the main GC is cortisol, produced by the adrenals, endocrine glands that are situated on top of the kidneys. Cortisol exerts its functions in nearly all tissues and is crucial in the mediation of the stress response. Furthermore, cortisol is implicated in glucose and lipid metabolism, modulation of the immune system, maintenance of the vascular tone, bone formation, and skeletal and cardiac muscle function. Cortisol also aff ects brain function including memory modulation and mood regulation. Because of its anti-infl ammatory eff ects, cortisol and its synthetic analogues are now widely used in clinical practice. Indications include rheumatoid arthritis, infl ammatory bowel disease, sarcoidosis, asthma, and dermatological diseases. Additionally, GCs have an important role in prevention of graft versus host disease in organ transplant patients and haematological malignancies. Unfortunately, GC excess due to treatment or endogenous production, e.g. Cushing’s syndrome, has serious adverse eff ects, such as truncal obesity, striae, osteoporosis, hypertension, hypokalaemia, hyperglycaemia, mood disorders and when prescribed to children growth retardation

Effectiveness on the Horizon

The thesis Effectiveness on the Horizon gives an account of a study on research into results of child protection measures and the interventions that could take place within this legal framework. The central question of this study is: to what extent, and in what way in The Netherlands between 1945 and 2005 were results of interventions studied that took place within the framework of a legal child protection measure ? This question was answered through an analysis of journal articles from the field of child protection and of research reports published between 1945-2005.This study led to the conclusion that professionals and academics involved in legal child protection measures and the resulting interventions have between 1945-2005 always been interested in studying the results of these interventions. Also, grounding this work in a scientific knowledge base has been a constant ambition. At the same time, ideas about how a ‘good result’ can be defined, operationalized and studied in research changed during the second half of the twentieth century. It also became clear that ideas about how to study results changed over time and that throughout the period studied there was discussion regarding this topic. Therefore, those involved in developing, studying and carrying out interventions should always be aware of what exactly is seen as a ‘good result’ and reflect on the question of what this means for research methods

Ten-year plateau phase in human immunodeficiency virus induced motor neuron disease upon antiretroviral therapy: a first case from Eastern Africa.

We report an individual with rapidly progressive motor neuron disease (MND), phenotypically compatible with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The patient described in this case report proved positive for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and was initiated on antiretroviral therapy (ART). Following ART he clinically stabilised over 10 years and deteriorated again due to noncompliance or ART resistance. HIV infection can give rise to an MND mimic, HIV-ALS. The improvement in response to ART supports the notion that HIV-ALS is a treatable entity also in Africa. This is the first case report of a patient with HIV-ALS and long term follow up in Sub-Saharan Africa. The report raises the suggestion that an additional (retro)virus can play a role in the aetiology of ALS

A randomized controlled study of a social skills training for preadolescent children with autism spectrum disorders:generalization of skills by training parents and teachers?

Background: Social skills training (SST) is a common intervention for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) to improve their social and communication skills. Despite the fact that SSTs are often applied in clinical practice, the evidence for the effectiveness of these trainings for children with ASD is inconclusive. Moreover, long term outcome and generalization of learned skills are little evaluated. Additionally, there is no research on the influence of involvement of parents and teachers on effectiveness of SST and on the generalization of learned social skills to daily life. We expect parent and teacher involvement in SST to enhance treatment efficacy and to facilitate generalization of learned skills to daily life. Method/Design: In a randomized controlled trial (RCT) with three conditions, 120 participants with ASD at the end of primary school (10-12 years of calendar age) have been randomized to SST, SST-PTI SST with Parent & Teacher Involvement), or care-as-usual. The SST consists of 18 group sessions of 1.5 hours for the children. In the SST-PTI condition, parents additionally participate in 8 parent sessions and parents and teachers are actively involved in homework assignments. Assessment takes place at three moments: before and immediately after the intervention period and at 6 months follow-up. Primary outcome is socialization, as an aspect of adaptive functioning. Secondary outcomes focus on specific social skills children learn during SST and on more general social skills pertaining to home and community settings from a multi informant perspective. Additionally, possible predictors of treatment outcome will be assessed. Discussion: The current study is an RCT study evaluating SST in a large sample of Dutch children with ASD in a specific age range (10-12 years). Strengths of the study are the use of one manualized protocol, application of standardized and internationally used rating instruments, use of multiple raters, investigation of generalization of learned skills to daily life, and the evaluation of efficacy in the longer term by follow-up measures at 6 months after the end of training

Evaluating named entity recognition tools for extracting social networks from novels

The analysis of literary works has experienced a surge in computer-assisted processing. To obtain insights into the community structures and social interactions portrayed in novels, the creation of social networks from novels has gained popularity. Many methods rely on identifying named entities and relations for the construction of these networks, but many of these tools are not specifically created for the literary domain. Furthermore, many of the studies on information extraction from literature typically focus on 19th and early 20th century source material. Because of this, it is unclear if these techniques are as suitable to modern-day literature as they are to those older novels. We present a study in which we evaluate natural language processing tools for the automatic extraction of social networks from novels as well as their network structure. We find that there are no significant differences between old and modern novels but that both are subject to a large amount of variance. Furthermore, we identify several issues that complicate named entity recognition in our set of novels and we present methods to remedy these. We see this work as a step in creating more culturally-aware AI systems