Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Luteolin ameliorates cisplatin-induced acute kidney injury in mice by regulation of p53-dependent renal tubular apoptosis.

BACKGROUND Cisplatin chemotherapy often causes acute kidney injury in cancer patients. The causative mechanisms of cisplatin-induced acute kidney injury include renal inflammation, activation of p53 tumour suppressor protein and tubular apoptosis. Luteolin, a flavone found in medicinal herbs and plants, has been reported to exhibit anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and anticarcinogenic activities. The purpose of this study was to investigate the anti-apoptotic effect of luteolin on cisplatin-induced acute kidney injury and the molecular mechanism. METHODS C57BL/6 mice were treated with cisplatin (20 mg/kg) with or without treatment with luteolin (50 mg/kg for 3 days). Renal function, histological changes, degree of oxidative stress and tubular apoptosis were examined. The effects of luteolin on cisplatin-induced expression of renal p53, PUMA-α and Bcl-2 family proteins were evaluated. RESULTS Treatment of mice with cisplatin resulted in renal damage, showing an increase in blood urea nitrogen and creatinine levels, tubular damage, oxidative stress and apoptosis. Treatment of cisplatin-treated mice with luteolin significantly improved renal dysfunction, reducing tubular cell damage, oxidative stress and apoptosis. Examination of molecules involving apoptosis of the kidney revealed that treatment of cisplatin increased the levels of p53 and its phosphorylation, PUMA-α, Bax and caspase-3 activity that were significantly decreased by treatment with luteolin. CONCLUSION These results indicate that cisplatin induces acute kidney injury by regulation of p53-dependent renal tubular apoptosis and that luteolin ameliorates the cisplatin-mediated nephrotoxicity through down-regulation of p53-dependent apoptotic pathway in the kidney.
Vaccination against hepatitis B in liver transplant recipients: Pilot analysis of cellular immune response shows evidence of HBsAg‐specific regulatory T cells

After liver transplantation for hepatitis‐B‐related diseases, patients currently receive lifelong treatment with hepatitis B immunoglobulin to prevent endogenous reinfection with hepatitis B virus (HBV). Active immunization with hepatitis B vaccine would be a preferable alternative; however, most attempts to immunize these patients with standard vaccine have failed. A recent study with a new adjuvanted hepatitis B vaccine was exceptionally successful, leading to a high‐titered long‐lasting antibody response in 80% of all vaccinees. To identify the immunological mechanisms behind these unexpected results, the successfully vaccinated participants were tested for hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg)‐specific T and B cells, and their cellular responses to revaccination with conventional vaccine were studied. HBsAg‐specific CD4+ T lymphocytes could be detected in 13 of 16 patients after immunization with the new vaccine. Unexpectedly, these T cells produced almost exclusively interleukin (IL)‐10 and had a CD4+/CD25+ phenotype. They were functionally active, suppressing cytokine secretion in HBsAg‐specific (Th1) cells, thus representing antigen‐specific regulatory T cells (TReg). Following a booster dose with conventional vaccine 22‐31 months after completion of the initial vaccination series, the T‐cell pattern in the revaccinated individuals changed substantially: 7 days after revaccination 9 of 11 individuals showed a switch to a Th1‐type immune response with HBsAg‐specific T cells secreting IL‐2, interferon gamma and tumor necrosis factor alpha as observed in healthy controls. Four weeks after the booster, 4 patients still showed a Th1‐type cytokine pattern, whereas in 5 patients only IL‐10‐secreting cells were detectable. After 1 year, in 3 of 4 revaccinated individuals only IL‐10‐secreting cells could be found, whereas the specific T cells of the fourth patient still showed a Th1‐type of response. HBsAg‐specific TReg cells could be demonstrated in HBV‐positive liver transplant recipients successfully immunized with a new adjuvanted vaccine. Revaccination led to immediate disappearance of the these cells and the appearance of HBsAg‐specific T cells with a Th1‐type cytokine profile, which in most cases were replaced by the IL‐10‐secreting regulatory cells during the following months. The specific induction of TReg cells could contribute to the poor response of liver transplant recipients to conventional vaccine. In conclusion,, for successful vaccination of these patients, a vaccine with a strong inhibitory effect on TReg cells would be desirable. Liver Transpl 13:434–442, 2007. © 2007 AASLD.
Minimally Invasive Surgery in Patients With Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis: Is it Better than the Standard Approach? A 2-Year Follow-up Study

Study Design:This is a retrospective controlled study. Objective:To compare the safety and efficacy of minimally invasive surgery (MIS) for the surgical management of adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) to the standard open posterior approach (PSF). Summary of Background Data:MIS approaches offer the potential to reduce soft-tissue trauma, intraoperative blood loss, and surgical-site infection. Thus far, MIS has been successfully utilized for the surgical correction of multilevel spine pathology in adults. It is not yet known if these results can be replicated in the surgical management of AIS. Materials and Methods:Seven MIS patients were compared with 15 PSF patients using minimum 2-year follow-up data. Parameters studied included preoperative patient and deformity characteristics, perioperative details, extent of deformity correction, and complications. Data were compared using Mann-Whitney tests for continuous variables and Fisher exact tests for categorical variables. Results:The MIS and PSF groups were similar for all preoperative characteristics collected (P>0.05). MIS patients had fewer fixation points (P=0.015), but a longer median operative time (P=0.011). There was no significant difference in estimated blood loss (EBL) (P=0.051), EBL/fixation point (P=0.204), or amount of fluids administered (P=0.888). Postoperative recovery did not differ between the 2 groups in number of intensive care unit days (P=0.362), length of hospital stay (P=0.472), time to mobilization (P=1.00), Visual Analogue Scale pain scores (P=0.698), or patient-controlled analgesia (P=1.00). The MIS technique had similar deformity correction, screw placement accuracy, and fusion status when compared with the PSF group. MIS patients had lower blood transfusion rate (P=0.02), shorter fusion (P=0.046) and fewer pedicle screws (P=0.015). Conclusions:The short-term advantages seen in MIS for adult scoliosis were not as obvious in our series. We found similar deformity correction and adequate fusion, however shortcomings related to learning curve, and instrumentation persist. MIS surgery is an innovative treatment for AIS that is technically feasible with significantly lower transfusion rate, shorter fusion lenghts and lesser pedicle screw fixation. Despite these advanatges, its role in AIS is currently difficut to define.
The Key Elements of Elder Neglect: A Survey of Adult Protective Service Workers

ABSTRACT Description of the key elements of elder neglect is critical to the development of a case definition. In this brief report, experienced protective service workers were surveyed to capture their field experiences with neglected elders. The workers cited environmental filth, poor personal hygiene and health related factors as the three most common observations. Workers also describe their definitions of the differences between self and caregiver neglect.
Systematic Review of Biomarkers To Monitor Therapeutic Response in Leishmaniasis

ABSTRACT Recently, there has been a renewed interest in the development of new drugs for the treatment of leishmaniasis. This has spurred the need for pharmacodynamic markers to monitor and compare therapies specifically for visceral leishmaniasis, in which the primary recrudescence of parasites is a particularly long-term event that remains difficult to predict. We performed a systematic review of studies evaluating biomarkers in human patients with visceral, cutaneous, and post-kala-azar dermal leishmaniasis, which yielded a total of 170 studies in which 53 potential pharmacodynamic biomarkers were identified. In conclusion, the large majority of these biomarkers constituted universal indirect markers of activation and subsequent waning of cellular immunity and therefore lacked specificity. Macrophage-related markers demonstrate favorable sensitivity and times to normalcy, but more evidence is required to establish a link between these markers and clinical outcome. Most promising are the markers directly related to the parasite burden, but future effort should be focused on optimization of molecular or antigenic targets to increase the sensitivity of these markers. In general, future research should focus on the longitudinal evaluation of the pharmacodynamic biomarkers during treatment, with an emphasis on the correlation of studied biomarkers and clinical parameters.
MILK OR FORMULA VOLUME INGESTED BY INFANTS FED AD LIBITUM.

Because of a paucity of published data on amounts of food ingested by normal infants fed ad libitum, the following summary is presented. Subjects and Feedings The data pertain to observations made during the course of metabolic balance studies with normal fullterm infants. At the time of each balance study the infant was judged to be in excellent health; even mild rhinorrhea was considered a contraindication to proceeding with the balance study. The occurrence of fever, loose stools, or vomiting during the three days of a balance study resulted in immediate termination of the study, which was then rescheduled for the next week. In studies performed between 1954 and May, 1959, all infants lived continuously in the metabolism ward. After May, 1959, infants lived at home and were admitted to the metabolism ward only as necessary for performance of 72-hour balance studies. The majority of the infants were studied at
Feature Extraction or Feature Selection for Text Classification: A Case Study on Phishing Email Detection

Dimensionality reduction is generally performed when high dimensional data like text are classified. This can be done either by using feature extraction techniques or by using feature selection techniques. This paper analyses which dimension reduction technique is better for classifying text data like emails. Email classification is difficult due to its high dimensional sparse features that affect the generalization performance of classifiers. In phishing email detection, dimensionality reduction techniques are used to keep the most instructive and discriminative features from a collection of emails, consists of both phishing and legitimate, for better detection. Two feature selection techniques - Chi-Square and Information Gain Ratio and two feature extraction techniques - Principal Component Analysis and Latent Semantic Analysis are used for the analysis. It is found that feature extraction techniques offer better performance for the classification, give stable classification results with the different number of features chosen, and robustly keep the performance over time.
Positive relationships between public awareness activity and recognition of the impacts of depression in Australia.

OBJECTIVE This report records the level of exposure to depression-related information across the Australian community and explores associations with recognition of depression and relevant sociodemographic factors. METHOD A cross-sectional telephone survey was conducted with a representative community sample. Participants consisted of 3200 respondents (400 respondents across each Australian State/Territory). RESULTS Sixty-five point four per cent (n=2089/3193) of respondents indicated that they or someone close to them had experienced depression, of whom 18.7% (n=391/2089) reported a personal experience of this illness. Various measures of recent exposure to depression-related information were high with 69.0% (n=2207/3200) reporting that they had seen, read or heard something in the media in the last 12 months. Recognition of beyondblue: the national depression initiative was also surprisingly high (61.9%, 1982/3200). Those with greater understanding that depression is common and debilitating were more likely to recall recent media stories, spontaneously recall relevant organizations such as beyondblue, to have had direct or family experiences, to be younger and to have achieved higher levels of education. Depression, however, is rarely mentioned (1.3%, 47/3720) as a major general health as distinct from a mental health problem. CONCLUSION The active promotion of depression-related material to the community appears to have contributed to recognition of the commonality and impacts of this illness. Although depression is commonly recognized as a mental health problem, it is not yet considered a major general health problem. Further, like many public health campaigns, those initially reached appear more likely to be female, younger, better educated and residing in metropolitan areas.
Interactive Pathway for Learning Design through Agent and Library Augmented Shared Knowledge Areas (ALASKA)

This paper outlines a recently funded NSF-funded effort to integrate three learning technologies (perceptual agents; collaborative workspaces; and digital libraries). Each has emerged and matured over the past decade and each has presented compelling and oftentimes moving opportunities to alter educational practice and to render learning more effective. The project seeks a novel way to blend these technologies and to create and test a new model for human-machine partnership in learning settings. The innovation we are prototyping in this project creates an applet-rich shared space whereby a pedagogical agent at each learner's station functions as an instructional assistant to the teacher or professor and tutor to the student. The platform is intended to open a series of new - and instructionally potent nteractive pathways.
Notice of RetractionDynamic Nucleosome Positioning around Functional Transcription Factor Binding Sites in the Promoters of Inducible NF-kappaB Target Genes

Transcription is the initial and crucial step of gene expression. It is shaped by the interaction between nucleosomes, transcription factors (TFs) and other proteins and protein complexes. These DNA binding factors compete with one another for binding along the genome and dynamically regulate the transcription level. It has been considered that gene activation is often associated with nucleosome eviction and active regulatory sequences tend to be depleted of nucleosomes. Here we investigate the nucleosome positioning pattern and the NF-κB transcription factor binding sites (TFBSs) in the promoters of inducible NF-κB target genes in the human genome. The results demonstrate that there is high nucleosome occupancy over functional NF-κB binding sites and their surrounding region in resting CD4+T cells and the high nucleosome occupancy reduces significantly after cell activation, which suggests nucleosomes are either removed or shifted to facilitate the binding of NF-κB. Our results are consistent with a recent study about p53. It may suggest that in contrast to yeast, there is generally high nucleosome occupancy which reduces markedly upon cell activation around active regulatory regions in the human genome.
Assessment of blood glucose using gingival crevicular blood in diabetic and non-diabetic patients: a chair side method.

AIM Diabetes mellitus is undiagnosed in approximately half of the patients actually suffering from the disease. The prevalence of diabetes mellitus is nearly twice in patients with periodontitis as compared to periodontally healthy subjects.In addition, the prevalence of Diabetes mellitus is more than twice as high as in patients with periodontitis when compared to periodontally healthy subjects. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate whether blood oozing from gingival crevice during routine periodontal examination can be used for determining glucose levels. MATERIAL AND METHODS In the present study 50 patients(25 diabetic and 25 non-diabetic) with chronic periodontitis were selected and were divided into two groups i.e. Group I and Group II, respectively. Blood glucose measurements were made using gingival crevicular blood, finger stick blood using glucose self-monitoring device (Finetest(TM); Infopia Co.Ltd;Korea) and at the same time intra venous blood was collected for measurement in a laboratory glucose analyzer. Each laboratory measurement was corrected from a serum glucose value to a whole blood glucose value by a function of the patient's haematocrit. RESULTS The patient's blood glucose values ranged from 83.6 to 483mg/dl in diabetic patients(Group I) and 70-218 mg/dl in non-diabetic individuals (Group II) to 83.6 to 483mg/dl. The comparison between gingival crevicular blood, finger-prick blood and corrected intra venous blood showed a very strong correlation with an r value of 0.99(P level< 0.001) CONCLUSION: The data from this study has shown that gingival crevicular blood collected during diagnostic periodontal examination can be an excellent source of blood for glucometric analysis.
Objective assessment of nasal resistance in patients with nasal disease

Nasal obstruction is a subjective complaint in patients with nasal disease.The ability to quantitate the nasal ventilation dysfunction would be useful for making the appropriate choice of nasal disease management. This cross-sectional study comprised of 200 adult subjects. They underwent assessment of relevant symptoms, nasal examination and investigations before undergoing active anterior rhinomanometry (AAR) assessment. A group of 88 normal subjectsand 112 patients with nasal disease were included. The mean total nasal air resistance (NAR) was significantly higher in patients with nasal disease (0.33 Pa/cm3/s) as compared tonormal subjects (0.24 Pa/cm3/s). There was no significant difference in total NAR between patients with symptoms of nasal obstruction and those without the symptoms (p = 0.42). It is concluded that AAR is a sensitive but not a specific tool for the detection of abnormalities in NAR and it failed to relate to the symptom of nasal obstruction.
Uncovering the Potential of Termite Gut Microbiome for Lignocellulose Bioconversion in Anaerobic Batch Bioreactors

Termites are xylophages, being able to digest a wide variety of lignocellulosic biomass including wood with high lignin content. This ability to feed on recalcitrant plant material is the result of complex symbiotic relationships, which involve termite-specific gut microbiomes. Therefore, these represent a potential source of microorganisms for the bioconversion of lignocellulose in bioprocesses targeting the production of carboxylates. In this study, gut microbiomes of four termite species were studied for their capacity to degrade wheat straw and produce carboxylates in controlled bioreactors. All of the gut microbiomes successfully degraded lignocellulose and up to 45% w/w of wheat straw degradation was observed, with the Nasutitermes ephratae gut-microbiome displaying the highest levels of wheat straw degradation, carboxylate production and enzymatic activity. Comparing the 16S rRNA gene diversity of the initial gut inocula to the bacterial communities in lignocellulose degradation bioreactors revealed important changes in community diversity. In particular, taxa such as Spirochaetes and Fibrobacteres that were highly abundant in the initial gut inocula were replaced by Firmicutes and Proteobacteria at the end of incubation in wheat straw bioreactors. Overall, this study demonstrates that termite-gut microbiomes constitute a reservoir of lignocellulose-degrading bacteria that can be harnessed in artificial conditions for biomass conversion processes that lead to the production of useful molecules.
Health Promotion and Risk Behaviors Among Adolescents in Turkey

Adolescents experience the onset and development of several health-related behaviors. The purpose of this study is to determine health risk and promotion behaviors of adolescents between the ages of 11 and 19 who were attending and to test the reliability and validity analysis of the Turkish version of Adolescent Health Promotion Scale (AHPS). The study was a cross-sectional survey and the sample consisted of 1,351 participants. A questionnaire that included demographic information, health risk behaviors, and AHPS was used to collect data. In the current study, the Cronbach’s α coefficient for the AHPS was calculated as . 92. Female students had significantly higher mean total scale scores than males (p < .05). The 11–14 age group had a statistically significant higher scale total mean score than the 15–19 age group (p = .001). International directives highlight the important function nurses fulfill in health promotion. Nurses may play a key role in school health services.
Identification of nuclear proteins that interact differentially with Plasmodium falciparum var gene promoters

The Plasmodium falciparum virulence factor PfEMP1 is responsible for both antigenic variation and cytoadherence of infected erythrocytes in malaria. Approximately 50 var genes per parasite genome code for this highly polymorphic surface protein. We showed recently that chromosome‐central and subtelomeric var genes are controlled by different promoters. Here, we report that transcriptional repression of var genes located in different chromosomal regions occurs by different mechanisms. Subtelomeric var gene transcription is repressed 4–8 h before that of chromosome‐central var genes. Both repression events coincide with the shifted expression of two distinct nuclear proteins binding specifically to conserved sequence motifs, SPE1 and CPE, present in the respective promoter. Furthermore, a reiterated and highly conserved subtelomeric var promoter element (SPE2) interacts with a nuclear factor exclusively expressed during S‐phase. Promoter analysis by transient transfection suggested direct involvement of these interactions in var gene repression and silencing, and identified regions implicated in transcriptional activation of var genes.
Analysis of MEG relating to subjective preference of visual motion stimuli

The aim of this study is to identify the relationship between subjective preference and the human brain responses to visual motion under changing period. First, preference judgments using the paired-comparison method for sinusoidal movements of a single circular target in the horizontal direction were performed. Then, MEG data were recorded during presentations of the most preferred and the least preferred moving stimuli. From the initial delay range of the autocorrelation function (ACF) of the alpha wave, the effective duration (/spl tau//sub e/) was analyzed. Results show that the stimulus with most preferred periods has a greater value of /spl tau//sub e/ than that with least preferred periods at the occipital area, especially in the left hemisphere.