julilili42/papers huggingface dataset:
Treatment of advanced neuroendocrine tumors (NET) with Iodine-131-mIBG or Yttrium-90-DOTATOC - Results and side effects
2007-05-01

1666 Objectives: To compare the response and side effects of palliative treatment with Iodine-131-mIBG or Yttrium-90-DOTATOC in patients with advanced NET. Methods: 26 patients suffering from inoperable NET were selected for treatment because of symptomatic tumor progression. Tumor targeting was tested by Iodine-123-mIBG or In-111-Octreotide scanning. 12 patients were treated with Iodine-131-mIBG (3,7 to 11 GBq per cycle; 14 cycles in total), 14 patients with Yttrium-90-DOTATOC (3,7 to 7,4 GBq; 17cycles). Median follow up was 20 month in both patient cohorts. Clinical and morphological response, survival, acute toxicity (nausea, emesis, diarrhea, pain progression, electrolyte disorder) hemato- and nephrotoxicity (WHO criteria) until 12 month after treatment were registered. Results: All patients treated with DOTATOC received clinical a/o. morphological response with a mean duration of 6 and 5.2 month, respectively; compared to 1.9 and 2.4 month after mIBG treatment. 3/12 patients did not respond to mIBG. After 12 month 7/12 patients treated with mIBG and 13/14 treated with DOTATOC were alive. The projected overall survival after DOTATOC was significantly longer than after mIBG (mean: 7.7 vs. 1.6 years; p=0.0065). Overall, outcome and toxicity were not dependent on the administered radioactivity/kg body weight. Acute toxicity occurred in 7/14 (mIBG) or 12/17 (DOTATOC) treatment cycles. In 8/14 (mIBG) or 5/17 (DOTATOC) cycles mild hematotoxicity was apparent one week after treatment. Within one year from treatment significant decrease of blood cell counts evolved in 8/14 and in 11/17 cases. Most of these patients had bone marrow involvement and/or history of chemo-/radiotherapy. Impeded renal function or further reduction in case of preexistent renal damage occurred in 5/26 cases (2 mIBG, 3 DOTATOC) after the first treatment cycle. Terminal renal failure occurred in one patient who had received three cycles of DOTATOC. Conclusions: Our data indicate better response and survival after DOTATOC therapy. There is considerable risk of impeded renal function with either DOTATOC or mIBG in these often heavily pretreated patients.
Gender Dimorphism of the HSP70 Response to Exercise in Human Blood
2007-05-01

PURPOSE: The majority of exercise studies has been done in males. However, different hormonal responses to exercise and different concentrations of sex steroids in females compared with males may modulate inflammatory reactions and protective systems to exercise stress differently. Gender-specific differences have been observed in cardiovascular or inflammatory diseases which may be influenced by exercise. The exercise-modulated protective and immune regulatory heat shock proteins (HSP) may be a key factor. Therefore, we asked if the HSP response to exercise is gender-specific and if the female cycle has an influence. METHODS: 14 young male and 13 female (no contraceptives) endurance athletes performed a treadmill run of 1 h at 93% of their individual anaerobic threshold. Females ran in both the follicular (F) and luteal (L) phase of their cycle. Blood samples were drawn before, immediately, 3 h and 24 h after exercise. The following main parameters were analyzed: temperature, sex hormones, adrenalin, noradrenalin (NA), cortisol, HSP70 intracellular (flow cytometry, PCR) and extracellular (ELISA), growth hormone (hGH). An exercise-, gender- or cycle-specific effect was considered significant if the 95 % confidence intervals of the mean differences between samples did not overlap. RESULTS: Concentrations of NA and hGH immediately after exercise revealed sexual dimorphism with minor increases in females than males. Intracellular HSP70 in lymphocytes and monocytes showed a gender- and menstrual cycle-dependent reaction 24 h but not shortly after exercise. The changes in F were comparable with the male reaction but lower than both in L. HSP70 alterations in L were negatively related with estrogen levels. Extracellular HSP70 in plasma revealed a gender-specific response immediately after exercise but showed no menstrual cycle difference. CONCLUSIONS: The attenuated HSP70 expression in leukocytes in the regeneration phase after exercise seems to be at least partly dependent on higher estrogen concentrations. The anti-oxidant and membrane stabilizing functions of estrogens may play a role. Cycle-dependent influences of basal temperature cannot be excluded. For future training regimes it may be necessary to consider the sexual dimorphism. However, additional studies have to be performed in the future.
Early stages of audiovisual speech processing—a magnetoencephalography study
2007-05-01

Speech is a multimodal process integrating auditory and visual information. It is still unsettled at which stage of processing visual and auditory data structures merge into a common percept. This study investigates the time domain of auditory M50 and M100 fields in response to audiovisual speech (whole-head MEG, 25 subjects). As in the original video recordings (/pa/ and /ta/), the visual articulatory cues preceded the acoustic signal (synthetic syllable) by ca. 150 ms. Visual nonspeech, acoustic nonspeech, visual-only, and acoustic-only stimuli served as control conditions. In accordance with previous studies, the M50 was consistently attenuated by visual motion cues, and a similar visual ‘‘negativation’’ effect could be observed even when no acoustic signal was played. As concerns the M100 field, visual nonspeech stimuli had an attenuating effect (only in the presence of an acoustic signal) whereas visual speech gave rise to hypoadditive M100 enhancement. Application of a six-dipole model showed a categorical-like visual /p/ versus /t/ effect. Since the source of this effect was located within insular cortex rather than the auditory system, we may assume that at the time of M100 the visual phonetic information has not yet been integrated into a common auditory/phonetic representation.
Pathophysiology and Treatment of Fibromyalgia Syndrome
2007-05-01

Fibromyalgia syndrome is not a diagnosis in itself, but merely represents a set of classification criteria. It is possible to distinguish between different subgroups. Such a distinction can be made on the basis of psychopathological, clinical and laboratory tests. One subgroup reveals elevated level of different cytokines. The treatment of primary fibromyalgia can be optimized by taking these subgroups into consideration since one group responds better to 5-HT3 receptor antagonists, whereas another benefits more from antidepressants and a third group from psychotherapy. In socalled secondary fibromyalgia, 5-HT3 receptor antagonists may be used in the attempt to manage pain that might still persist after treatment of the primary disease. Keywords: Fibromyalgia, subgroups, antidepressants, treatment, tropisetron, 5-HT3-receptor antagonists, psychotherapy
Predictors for Successful BMI Reduction by Lifestyle Intervention in Subjects with Increased Risk of Type 2 Diabetes
2007-05-01

Lifestyle intervention (LSI) with increased physical activity and dietary modifications has been proven to be effective for the prevention of type 2 diabetes. Nevertheless, there is a high variability among individuals in their response to such preventive strategies. PURPOSE: To reveal predictors for a favourable outcome with regard to body mass index (BMI) during LSI in subjects with an increased risk for type 2 diabetes. METHODS: In the TUebingen Lifestyle Intervention Program (TULIP), 217 persons of increased risk for type 2 diabetes were subjected to LSI with an increase in physical activity. The physical examination before and after a nine month period of LSI included an incremental walking test on a treadmill with spiroergometry. Multivariate statistical analysis was applied to calculate risk odds ratios for predictors of favourable influence on BMI. RESULTS: Within 261 days (CI: 252-270), the average habitual physical activity (HPA) increased by 6.21 % (CI: 4.50 - 7.92, p = 2.01e-11). LSI was accompanied by reductions in BMI (mean = 3.18 %, CI: 2.45 - 3.91 %, p = 1.55e-15), whole body fat (mean = 5.60 %, CI: 3.40 −7.79 %, p = 1.09e-6) and waist to hip ratio (mean = 1.42 %, CI: 0.53 -2.31 %, p = 1.90e-3). Concomitantly, a highly significant increase in VO2peak, as well as in the work rates at the Lactate Threshold (LT), the Individual Aerobic Threshold (IAT) and the Ventilatory Threshold (AT) were achieved. Despite this, 31 % of study subjects did not achieve BMI-reduction. Taking anthropometric and metabolic data into account, multivariate analysis revealed only two main predictors that had a favourable influence on the BMI independent of an increase in HPA. Males had a 2.38-fold higher chance to reduce BMI (CI: 1.18 -5.01, p = 1.8e-2) and persons with a high proportion of fat oxidation at the LT had a 13.2-fold higher chance to reduce BMI (CI: 1.67 - 119, p = 1.7e-2). CONCLUSIONS: On average, LSI was successful in influencing factors of mortality and morbidity and also increased physical fitness of the study subjects. Nevertheless not all individuals responded to the same extent. Our results identify fat utilisation during exercise and gender as potential predictors of a successful outcome with regard to BMI after LSI. Further investigations should clarify the role of fat utilisation in affecting other risk factors during LSI.
Gene Expression Profiles In Leukocyte Subpopulations After A Marathon Run
2007-05-01

Exercise is a potent modulator of gene expression. Recently we demonstrated that in leukocytes exercise is able to evoke intensity dependent gene expression profiles and to induce a rather limited number of specific marker genes in leukocytes. PURPOSE: Here we tested, how prolonged exercise affects the gene expression of leukocyte subpopulations, namely the T-lymphocyte and monocyte fraction. Furthermore we wanted to know more about the kinetics of these alterations. METHODS: 15 subjects participated in the Muenster 2005 marathon run. Blood samples were taken before, 0.5h, 3h, 24h, 48h, and 72h after the run. T-lymphocyte and monocyte fraction were isolated using the RosetteSep method. Gene expression profiles were measured using the Affymetrix GeneChip® technology. After scaling, normalisation, and filtering, groupwise comparisons of gene expression intensities were performed. RESULTS: We found that the effects on gene expression were most pronounced in the early post-exercise period (0.5h and 3h after). Moreover, during this time period the gene expression in monocytes was substantially more affected than in T-cells (1308 genes vs. 191 genes). Especially genes related to the gene ontologies tyrosin kinases, cytokine binding, TNF- and TOLL-receptors, heat-shock, and substrate transporter were found to be altered. 24h after the run gene expression profiles returned to pre-exercise levels and only a limited number of genes were altered significantly, most of them in T-lymphocytes (30 genes vs. 8 genes). CONCLUSIONS: The analysis of exercise induced gene expression profiles in leukocyte subpopulations revealed that in the early post-exercise period the monocyte fraction seems to be more sensitive to the exercise stress than T-cells. In contrast, gene expression profiles of T-cells reflect the exercise stress over a longer period.
Proteomic exploitation on prothymosin α‐induced mononuclear cell activation
2007-05-02

Abstract Prothymosin alpha (ProTα) is an acidic polypeptide associated both with cell proliferation and immune regulation. Although ProTα's immunomodulating activity is well established at cellular level, limited information is available regarding the signaling pathways triggered by ProTα. Using 2‐DE proteomic technology, we investigated changes in protein expression of ProTα‐stimulated peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) in the course of a 3‐day incubation. Using healthy donor‐ and cancer patient‐derived PBMC, 12 gels were studied, identifying 53 differing protein spots via PMF comparison analysis. Among others, we identified interleukin‐1 receptor‐associated kinase 4, heat‐shock protein 90, lipocalin 2, ribophorin 1, eukaryotic elongation factor 2, 14‐3‐3 protein, L‐plastin, and MX2 protein, all of which were found to be overexpressed upon ProTα activation. Based on the physiological role of upregulated proteins, we propose the following model for ProTα's immunological mode of action: on day 1, ProTα triggers monocyte activation, possibly via toll‐like receptor signaling, and enhances antigen presentation, consequently promoting and stabilizing monocyte‐T‐cell immune synapse; on day 2, activated monocytes produce interleukin (IL)‐1, while T‐cell receptor triggering promotes T‐cell proliferation and IL‐2 production; finally, on day 3, ProTα‐activated PBMC express proteins related to adhesion and cytotoxic effector functions, both contributing to the increase of their lytic activity.
Cover Picture: Optical Fourier Transform Spectroscopy of Single‐Walled Carbon Nanotubes and Single Molecules (ChemPhysChem 7/2007)
2007-05-02

The cover picture shows a single terrylene molecule emitting single fluorescence photons one by one that are guided into a Michelson interferometer. The signal I ( z ) recorded from the fluorescence emission shows the typical intensity modulations of an interferogram depending on the path length difference z of the two interferometer arms. Although the molecule suddenly stopped to emit fluorescence photons during data acquisition, a reliable spectrum J ( ) can be obtained by Fourier transformation. Find out more in the Article by Korlacki et al. on page 1049.
Communication Modality and Biased Processing: A Study on the Occasion of the German 2002 Election TV Debate
2007-05-03

Participants were presented with a segment of the 2002 Schroeder-Stoiber TV debate, in which the two candidates running for the post of German Chancellor argued for clearly different positions. Prior to presentation of the segment in either audiovisual, audio, or written modality, participants' politician preference was measured. Position agreement and valence of thoughts about the candidates' specific statements were found to be affected by politician preference in all three modalities. However, as shown by a modality by preference interaction, the effect of politician preference on position agreement was stronger in audio and audiovisual modalities than in the written modality. Similar interactions were found regarding the valence of thoughts broadly related to the issue discussed as well as regarding the valence of thoughts related to the two candidates themselves. Taken together with further path analyses, these findings are interpreted as showing biased processing across modalities, with the broadcast modalities intensifying this bias due to the heightened salience of nonverbal politician-related cues.
Determinate Values for Quantum Observables
2007-05-04

This is a comment on J. A. Barrett's article ‘The Preferred-Basis Problem and the Quantum Mechanics of Everything’ ([2005]), which concerns theories postulating that certain quantum observables have determinate values, corresponding to additional (often called ‘hidden’) variables. I point out that it is far from clear, for most observables, what such a postulate is supposed to mean, unless the postulated additional variable is related to a clear ontology in space-time, such as particle world lines, string world sheets, or fields.
<title>Shape analysis of coherent bremsstrahlung for photon polarimetry</title>
2007-05-04

Linearly polarized photons are needed in modern nuclear and particle physics experiments in order to achieve decisive progress as cross section measurements alone can not unravel the details of small amplitudes in the presence of larger ones. The most common productions method is the coherent bremsstrahlung process which is well understood theoretically. However, in practice there are additional effects due to beam divergence and the radiator thickness as well as due to collimation which are more difficult to assess. These influence the shape and the degree of polarization of the photons. The method of shape analysis which is widely used to determine the degree of linear polarization is scrutinized with respect to the above effects and traditional methods of their simulation. Results from recent Monte Carlo simulations and from some test experiments are presented together with a new normalization procedure.
Adherence to thiopurine treatment in out‐patients with Crohn’s disease
2007-05-05

Summary Background High frequency of incomplete or non‐response to azathioprine (AZA) and/or mercaptopurine (MP) limit their use in Crohn’s disease (CD). Non‐adherence is considered to be of relevance for ineffectiveness. Aim To assess adherence to thiopurines in CD out‐patients treated in a single gastroenterology practice. Methods Patients were eligible for inclusion if they received AZA/MP for at least 3 months. After follow‐up of 3 months, adherence to AZA/MP was assessed by quantitation of relevant thiopurine metabolite levels in red blood cells as well as by patients’ self‐report using standardized questionnaire. Results Sixty‐five patients were prospectively included. Six patients (9.2%) had metabolite profiles indicative of non‐adherence. Self‐assessed questionnaire revealed non‐adherence in four of 56 patients (7.1%). Therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) and self‐assessment as two independent methods had a concordance rate of 75%. Metabolite levels and self‐assessed adherence were not significantly different between patients in remission compared with those with active disease. Conclusions Out‐patients with CD treated in a single gastroenterology practice had a satisfactory adherence (&gt;90%) to thiopurine therapy. Different measures of adherence (TDM and self‐report) applied to the same patient suggest comparable levels. TDM appears to be a reliable tool to assess adherence to thiopurines in clinical practice.
Identification of Commensal Bacterial Strains That Modulate Yersinia enterocolitica and Dextran Sodium Sulfate-Induced Inflammatory Responses: Implications for the Development of Probiotics
2007-05-08

ABSTRACT An increasing body of evidence suggests that probiotic bacteria are effective in the treatment of enteric infections, although the molecular basis of this activity remains elusive. To identify putative probiotics, we tested commensal bacteria in terms of their toxicity, invasiveness, inhibition of Yersinia -induced inflammation in vitro and in vivo, and modulation of dextran sodium sulfate (DSS)-induced colitis in mice. The commensal bacteria Escherichia coli , Bifidobacterium adolescentis , Bacteroides vulgatus , Bacteroides distasonis , and Streptococcus salivarius were screened for adhesion to, invasion of, and toxicity for host epithelial cells (EC), and the strains were tested for their ability to inhibit Y. enterocolitica -induced NF-κB activation. Additionally, B. adolescentis was administered to mice orally infected with Y. enterocolitica and to mice with mucosae impaired by DSS treatment. None of the commensal bacteria tested was toxic for or invaded the EC. B. adolescentis , B. distasonis , B. vulgatus , and S. salivarius inhibited the Y. enterocolitica -induced NF-κB activation and interleukin-8 production in EC. In line with these findings, B. adolescentis -fed mice had significantly lower results for mean pathogen burden in the visceral organs, intestinal tumor necrosis factor alpha mRNA expression, and loss of body weight upon oral infection with Y. enterocolitica . In addition, the administration of B. adolescentis decelerated inflammation upon DSS treatment in mice. We suggest that our approach might help to identify new probiotics to be used for the treatment of inflammatory and infectious gastrointestinal disorders.
Exploring Fluorescence Antibunching in Solution To Determine the Stoichiometry of Molecular Complexes
2007-05-08

Fluorescence antibunching is a well-known technique for determining the number of independent emitters per molecule or molecular complex. It was rarely applied to autofluorescent proteins due to the necessity of collecting large numbers of fluorescence photons from a single molecule, which is usually impossible to achieve with rather photolabile autofluorescent proteins. Here, we measure fluorescence antibunching on molecules in solution, allowing us to accumulate data over a large number of molecules. We use that method for determining an average stoichiometry of molecular complexes. The proposed method is absolute in the sense that it does not need any calibration or referencing. We develop the necessary theoretical background and check the method on pure dye solutions and on molecular complexes with known stoichiometry.
Quantitative Analysis of Mouse Urine Volatiles: In Search of MHC-Dependent Differences
2007-05-08

Genes of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), which play a critical role in immune recognition, influence mating preference and other social behaviors in mice. Training experiments using urine scent from mice differing only in the MHC complex, from MHC class I mutants or from knock-out mice lacking functional MHC class I molecules (beta2m-deficient), suggest that these behavioral effects are mediated by differences in MHC-dependent volatile components. In search for the physical basis of these behavioral studies, we have conducted a comparison of urinary volatiles in three sub-strains of C57BL/6 mice, a beta2m-deficient mutant lacking functional MHC class I expression and two unrelated inbred strains, using the technique of sorptive extraction with polydimethylsiloxan and subsequent analysis by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. We show (i) that qualitative differences occur between different inbred strains but not in mice with the C57BL/6 background, (ii) that the individual variability in abundance in the same mouse strain is strongly component-dependent, (iii) that C57BL/6 sub-strains obtained from different provenance show a higher fraction of quantitative differences than a sub-strain and its beta2m-mutant obtained from the same source and (iv) that comparison of the spectra of beta2m mice and the corresponding wild type reveals no qualitative differences in close to 200 major and minor components and only minimal differences in a few substances from an ensemble of 69 selected for quantitative analysis. Our data suggest that odor is shaped by ontogenetic, environmental and genetic factors, and the gestalt of this scent may identify a mouse on the individual and population level; but, within the limits of the ensemble of components analysed, the results do not support the notion that functional MHC class I molecules influence the urinary volatile composition.