Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sensorimotor Gating in Cocaine-Related Disorder with Comorbid Schizophrenia or Antisocial Personality Disorder

Abstract Objective: Schizophrenia, cocaine-related disorder, antisocial personality disorder, and psychopathy share biological bases, but few studies discriminate between these disorders by means of prepulse inhibition. This work studies the phenotype of patients with cocaine-related disorders who are vulnerable to presenting a dual diagnosis of schizophrenia or antisocial personality disorder, by evaluating their prepulse inhibition, impulsivity and psychopathy personality traits. Methods: The sample (n = 38) was divided into three groups: (1) cocaine-related disorder (8 individuals diagnosed with cocaine-related disorder who did not present any other mental disorder), (2) cocaine-related disorder and schizophrenia (n = 14), and (3) cocaine-related disorder and antisocial personality disorder (n = 16). Results: The prepulse inhibition in the two groups with dual diagnosis was lower than that in the cocaine-related disorder group, F(2, 35) = 6.52, p = . 004, while there was no significant differences between the two dual-diagnosis groups. Psychopathy was evaluated with the revised Hare Psychopathy Checklist and showed no correlation with the prepulse inhibition. Secondary psychopathy (impulsivity and poor behavior control), as evaluated with Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale, was related to the prepulse inhibition. Two discriminating functions were obtained that allowed prediction of patient inclusion in the groups using the prepulse inhibition and the revised Hare Psychopathy Checklist with a success rate of 81.6% (cocaine-related disorder = 62.5%; cocaine-related disorder and schizophrenia = 78.6%; cocaine-related disorder and antisocial personality disorder = 93.8%). These results are discussed in regard to the neurobiological implications of prepulse inhibition in dual diagnosis. Conclusions: The results suggest that the prepulse inhibition is a promising dual-diagnosis vulnerability marker in individuals with cocaine addiction, because prepulse inhibition deficits are related both to schizophrenia and antisocial personality disorder. In addition, prepulse inhibition, which is considered a good endophenotype for studies on the genetic and neurobiological basis of cocaine-related disorder and schizophrenia, could be used in the same way in studies on antisocial personality disorder.
Telomere shortening rate predicts species life span

Significance The exact causes of aging are still not understood, and it is unclear why some species live less than 1 d, while others can live more than 400 y. Research suggests that telomeres are related to the aging process, but a clear relationship between the life span of a species and initial telomere length has not been observed. Here, we measure the telomere lengths of a variety of different species. We find that, in fact, there is no strong correlation between the life span of a species and initial telomere length. However, we find a strong correlation between the telomere shortening rate and the life span of a species. Telomere shortening to a critical length can trigger aging and shorter life spans in mice and humans by a mechanism that involves induction of a persistent DNA damage response at chromosome ends and loss of cellular viability. However, whether telomere length is a universal determinant of species longevity is not known. To determine whether telomere shortening can be a single parameter to predict species longevities, here we measured in parallel the telomere length of a wide variety of species (birds and mammals) with very different life spans and body sizes, including mouse (Mus musculus), goat (Capra hircus), Audouin’s gull (Larus audouinii), reindeer (Rangifer tarandus), griffon vulture (Gyps fulvus), bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus), American flamingo (Phoenicopterus ruber), and Sumatran elephant (Elephas maximus sumatranus). We found that the telomere shortening rate, but not the initial telomere length alone, is a powerful predictor of species life span. These results support the notion that critical telomere shortening and the consequent onset of telomeric DNA damage and cellular senescence are a general determinant of species life span.
Upadacitinib Versus Placebo or Adalimumab in Patients With Rheumatoid Arthritis and an Inadequate Response to Methotrexate: Results of a Phase III, Double‐Blind, Randomized Controlled Trial

To evaluate the efficacy, including capacity for inhibition of radiographic progression, and safety of upadacitinib, a JAK1‐selective inhibitor, as compared to placebo or adalimumab in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) who have experienced an inadequate response to methotrexate (MTX).
Long-Chain ω-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids: Do Genetic Steps Match Metabolic Needs?

The > 30-y connection between long-chain PUFAs (LC-PUFAs), brain development and disease modulation, particularly in the pediatric age, has been characterized by exciting hypotheses and preliminary observations, followed by contrasting (often frus-trating) observations, and, even more, inconclusive systematic reviews and meta-analyses (1). LC-PUFAs are synthesized by elongation of the fatty acid carbon chain and insertion of double bonds (i.e., desaturation) from the parent essential linoleic acid (LA) for the ω -6 series and α -linolenic acid for the ω -3 series (2). The most important byproducts are the ω -6 arachidonic acid (AA) and the ω -3 DHA, whose balance has been associated with major functional developmental outcomes and inflammatory reactions. The major rate-limiting enzymes are represented by (cid:4) 5- and (cid:4) 6-desaturases, which are encoded by the genes FADS1 and FADS2 , respectively (3, 4). Accordingly, polymorphisms in fatty acid desaturase genes might modulate the functional effects of LC-PUFAs, and could help to identify those subjects taking advantage from an exogenous dietary supply due to poorer endogenous synthesis rates. Yet, contrasting data have been published, starting from the different effects of LC-PUFA supply through the first dietary source, that is human milk, in infancy and functional outcomes such as intelligence quotient scores (5, 6) or the risk for allergy-related disorders such as asthma (7). The analysis of genetic variability at the elongase steps has been considered too, adding more precision but also difficulties in the interpretation of functional associations, where gender
A Novel Drug Repositioning Approach Based on Collaborative Metric Learning

Computational drug repositioning, which is an efficient approach to find potential indications for drugs, has been used to increase the efficiency of drug development. The drug repositioning problem essentially is a top-K recommendation task that recommends most likely diseases to drugs based on drug and disease related information. Therefore, many recommendation methods can be adopted to drug repositioning. Collaborative metric learning (CML) algorithm can produce distance metrics that capture the important relationships among objects, and has been widely used in recommendation domains. By applying CML in drug repositioning, a joint metric space is learned to encode drug's relationships with different diseases. In this study, we propose a novel drug repositioning computational method using Collaborative Metric Learning to predict novel drug-disease associations based on known drug and disease related information. Specifically, the proposed method learns latent vectors of drugs and diseases by applying metric learning, and then predicts the association probability of one drug-disease pair based on the learned vectors. The comprehensive experimental results show that CMLDR outperforms the other state-of-the-art drug repositioning algorithms in terms of precision, recall, and AUPR.
Mesothelioma: Scientific clues for prevention, diagnosis, and therapy

Mesothelioma affects mostly older individuals who have been occupationally exposed to asbestos. The global mesothelioma incidence and mortality rates are unknown, because data are not available from developing countries that continue to use large amounts of asbestos. The incidence rate of mesothelioma has decreased in Australia, the United States, and Western Europe, where the use of asbestos was banned or strictly regulated in the 1970s and 1980s, demonstrating the value of these preventive measures. However, in these same countries, the overall number of deaths from mesothelioma has not decreased as the size of the population and the percentage of old people have increased. Moreover, hotspots of mesothelioma may occur when carcinogenic fibers that are present in the environment are disturbed as rural areas are being developed. Novel immunohistochemical and molecular markers have improved the accuracy of diagnosis; however, about 14% (high‐resource countries) to 50% (developing countries) of mesothelioma diagnoses are incorrect, resulting in inadequate treatment and complicating epidemiological studies. The discovery that germline BRCA1‐asssociated protein 1 (BAP1) mutations cause mesothelioma and other cancers (BAP1 cancer syndrome) elucidated some of the key pathogenic mechanisms, and treatments targeting these molecular mechanisms and/or modulating the immune response are being tested. The role of surgery in pleural mesothelioma is controversial as it is difficult to predict who will benefit from aggressive management, even when local therapies are added to existing or novel systemic treatments. Treatment outcomes are improving, however, for peritoneal mesothelioma. Multidisciplinary international collaboration will be necessary to improve prevention, early detection, and treatment.
Gastrointestinal Tolerance, Growth and Safety of a Partly Fermented Formula with Specific Prebiotics in Healthy Infants: A Double-Blind, Randomized, Controlled Trial

This study evaluated the effect of a partly fermented infant formula (using the bacterial strains Bifidobacterium breve C50 and Streptococcus thermophilus 065) with a specific prebiotic mixture (short-chain galacto-oligosaccharides (scGOS) and long-chain fructo-oligosaccharides (lcFOS; 9:1)) on the incidence of gastrointestinal symptoms, stool characteristics, sleeping and crying behaviour, growth adequacy and safety. Two-hundred infants ≤28 days of age were assigned either to experimental infant formula containing 30% fermented formula and 0.8 g/100 mL scGOS/lcFOS or to non-fermented control infant formula without scGOS/lcFOS. A group of breastfed infants served as a reference. No relevant differences in parent-reported gastrointestinal symptoms were observed. Stool consistency was softer in the experimental versus control group with values closer to the breastfed reference group. Daily weight gain was equivalent for both formula groups (0.5 SD margins) with growth outcomes close to breastfed infants. No clinically relevant differences in adverse events were observed, apart from a lower investigator-reported prevalence of infantile colic in the experimental versus control group (1.1% vs. 8.7%; p < 0.02). Both study formulae are well-tolerated, support an adequate infant growth and are safe for use in healthy term infants. Compared to the control formula, the partly fermented formula with prebiotics induces stool consistencies closer to breastfed infants.
The Interaction between Morbidity and Nutritional Status among Children under Five Years Old in Cambodia: A Longitudinal Study

Even though limited evidence is available, the relationship between morbidity and under-nutrition among children under-five is likely to be a strong two-way association. This study aims to explore this vicious cycle by employing longitudinal data of four periods within a 24 month follow-up, whereby morbidity was captured between two subsequent anthropometric measures. Malnutrition was classified according to z-scores of anthropometric measures and morbidity by number of sick days experienced in between. Mixed-effects models were used to assess this relation, where dependency of morbidity and nutritional status were interchanged; models were adjusted for province, age, gender, wealth index score, maternal education level, diet, and Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene indicators. Stunting and wasting prevalence were 29.9% and 8.9%, respectively, where 21.3% of the children had multiple anthropometric failures. Children identified as wasted were 35% more likely to experience prolonged illness periods (OR: 1.35, 95% CI: 1.02–1.56). Those experiencing high proportion of sick days were found to be 64% more likely to become stunted (OR: 1.64, 95% CI: 1.18–2.29). This study suggests that the link between wasting and stunting could be partly explained by acute illness, where wasting increases the likelihood of prolonged episodes of illness, which increases the risk of stunting.
Regulatory system of mGluR group II in the nucleus accumbens for methamphetamine‐induced dopamine increase by the medial prefrontal cortex

We previously reported that methamphetamine (METH)‐induced conditioned place preference was attenuated by Shati/Nat8l overexpression in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). Shati/Nat8l overexpression in the mPFC expressed lower levels of both glutamate and dopamine (DA) in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) and attenuated METH‐induced DA elevation. We suggested a mechanism in which a decline of glutamate levels in the NAc decreases extracellular DA levels. However, the hypothesis has not confirmed.
A Cancelable Iris- and Steganography-Based User Authentication System for the Internet of Things

Remote user authentication for Internet of Things (IoT) devices is critical to IoT security, as it helps prevent unauthorized access to IoT networks. Biometrics is an appealing authentication technique due to its advantages over traditional password-based authentication. However, the protection of biometric data itself is also important, as original biometric data cannot be replaced or reissued if compromised. In this paper, we propose a cancelable iris- and steganography-based user authentication system to provide user authentication and secure the original iris data. Most of the existing cancelable iris biometric systems need a user-specific key to guide feature transformation, e.g., permutation or random projection, which is also known as key-dependent transformation. One issue associated with key-dependent transformations is that if the user-specific key is compromised, some useful information can be leaked and exploited by adversaries to restore the original iris feature data. To mitigate this risk, the proposed scheme enhances system security by integrating an effective information-hiding technique—steganography. By concealing the user-specific key, the threat of key exposure-related attacks, e.g., attacks via record multiplicity, can be defused, thus heightening the overall system security and complementing the protection offered by cancelable biometric techniques.
Cachexia/Protein energy wasting syndrome in CKD: Causation and treatment

Cachexia is a multifactorial syndrome defined by significant body weight loss, fat and muscle mass reduction, and increased protein catabolism. Protein energy wasting (PEW) is characterized as a syndrome of adverse changes in nutrition and body composition being highly prevalent in patients with CKD, especially in those undergoing dialysis, and it is associated with high morbidity and mortality in this population. Multiple mechanisms are involved in the genesis of these adverse nutritional changes in CKD patients. There is no obvious distinction between PEW and cachexia from a pathophysiologic standpoint and should be considered as part of the spectrum of the same nutritional disorder in CKD with similar management approaches for prevention and treatment based on current understanding. A plethora of factors can affect the nutritional status of CKD patients requiring a combination of therapeutic approaches to prevent or reverse protein and energy depletion. At present, there is no effective pharmacologic intervention that prevents or attenuates muscle atrophy in catabolic conditions like CKD. Prevention and treatment of uremic muscle wasting involve optimal nutritional support, correction of acidosis, and physical exercise. There has been emerging consistent evidence that active treatment, perhaps by combining nutritional interventions and resistance exercise, may be able to improve but not totally reverse or prevent the supervening muscle wasting and weakness. Active research into more direct pharmacological treatment based on basic mechanistic research is much needed for this unmet medical need in patients with CKD.
Mechanism of the Formation of Electronically Excited Species by Oxidative Metabolic Processes: Role of Reactive Oxygen Species

It is well known that biological systems, such as microorganisms, plants, and animals, including human beings, form spontaneous electronically excited species through oxidative metabolic processes. Though the mechanism responsible for the formation of electronically excited species is still not clearly understood, several lines of evidence suggest that reactive oxygen species (ROS) are involved in the formation of electronically excited species. This review attempts to describe the role of ROS in the formation of electronically excited species during oxidative metabolic processes. Briefly, the oxidation of biomolecules, such as lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids by ROS initiates a cascade of reactions that leads to the formation of triplet excited carbonyls formed by the decomposition of cyclic (1,2-dioxetane) and linear (tetroxide) high-energy intermediates. When chromophores are in proximity to triplet excited carbonyls, the triplet-singlet and triplet-triplet energy transfers from triplet excited carbonyls to chromophores result in the formation of singlet and triplet excited chromophores, respectively. Alternatively, when molecular oxygen is present, the triplet-singlet energy transfer from triplet excited carbonyls to molecular oxygen initiates the formation of singlet oxygen. Understanding the mechanism of the formation of electronically excited species allows us to use electronically excited species as a marker for oxidative metabolic processes in cells.
Application of Butylamine as a Conjugative Reagent to On-Column Derivatization for the Determination of Antioxidant Amino Acids in Brain Tissue, Plasma, and Urine Samples

(1) Antioxidants are involved in body protection mechanisms against reactive oxygen species. Amino acids such as glutathione (GSH) and N-acetylcysteine (NAC) are known to be involved in providing protection against oxidative lethality. A quick and simple method for the determination of NAC and GSH in various biological matrices such as urine, plasma, and homogenates of brain tissues has been developed and described in this work. (2) The assay is based on reversed phase high performance liquid chromatography with spectrofluorimetric detection and on-column derivatization. Butylamine and o-phthaldialdehyde have been used as derivatization reagents. Since o-phthaldialdehyde constitutes a part of the mobile phase, the derivatization reaction and chromatographic separation occur simultaneously. (3) Linearity in the detector response for NAC in human urine was observed in the range of 5–200 nmol mL−1, and NAC and GSH in the brain tissue homogenates were observed in the range of 0.5–5 nmol mL−1 and 0.5–15 nmol mL−1, respectively. Human plasma linearity ranges covered 0.25–5.00 nmol mL−1 and 0.5–15 nmol mL−1 for NAC and GSH, respectively. The LODs for NAC and GSH were 0.01 and 0.02 nmol mL−1 while the LOQs were 0.02 and 0.05 nmol mL−1, respectively. The usefulness of the proposed method was proven through its application to real samples.
Comparison of Physiological and Biochemical Autonomic Indices in Children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorders

Background and objectives: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a complex neuro-developmental disorder and it has been suggested that symptoms of ASD are associated with neural networks that regulate the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). However, the nature of autonomic atypicalities in ASDs remain largely unknown. Measures like Heart Rate Variability (HRV) and urinary Vanillylmandelic Acid (VMA) estimation are sensitive and non-invasive physiological and biochemical indicators of autonomic nervous activity. This study aimed to compare the physiological and biochemical autonomic indices in children with and without ASD. Materials and Methods: In this case-control study, 40 children with autism and 40 Typically Developing (TD) children were recruited. Measures of physiological autonomic index were assessed by the analysis of short term HRV, and the urinary levels of VMA estimation was used as a biochemical autonomic index. Results: Cardiac sympathetic activity assessed by Low Frequency (nu) of HRV was significantly higher in the ASD group in comparison with the TD group (p = 0.006). On the contrary, both the High Frequency (abs) and (nu) of HRV were found to be significantly lower in autistic children (p = 0.034 and p = 0.000) than controls. Autistic children also exhibited a significantly higher level (p = 0.049) of VMA concentration compared to TD children. Conclusion: The study concludes that children with ASD exhibit lower cardio-vagal activity as measured by HRV and increased sympathetic activity as assessed by urinary VMA compared to that of TD children. The core autistic symptoms exhibited by children with ASD could be due to the differences in baseline arousal or stress which might be associated with autonomic dysfunction. Further studies are needed to examine the association of this autonomic dysregulation with ASD symptoms and comorbidities.
Novel Evidence of the Increase in Angiogenic Factor Plasma Levels after Lineage-Negative Stem/Progenitor Cell Intracoronary Infusion in Patients with Acute Myocardial Infarction

Cell therapy raises hope to reduce the harmful effects of acute myocardial ischemia. Stem and progenitor cells (SPCs) may be a valuable source of trophic factors. In this study, we assessed the plasma levels of selected trophic factors in patients undergoing application of autologous bone marrow (BM)-derived, lineage-negative (Lin−) stem/progenitor cells into the coronary artery in the acute phase of myocardial infarction. The study group consisted of 15 patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) who underwent percutaneous revascularization and, afterwards, Lin− stem/progenitor cell administration into the infarct-related artery. The control group consisted of 19 patients. BM Lin− cells were isolated using immunomagnetic methods. Peripheral blood was collected on day 0, 2, 4, and 7 and after the first and third month to assess the concentration of selected trophic factors using multiplex fluorescent bead-based immunoassays. We found in the Lin− group that several angiogenic trophic factors (vascular endothelial growth factor, Angiopoietin-1, basic fibroblast growth factor, platelet-derived growth factor-aa) plasma level significantly increased to the 4th day after myocardial infarction. In parallel, we noticed a tendency where the plasma levels of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor were increased in the Lin– group. The obtained results suggest that the administered SPCs may be a valuable source of angiogenic trophic factors for damaged myocardium, although this observation requires further in-depth studies.