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A four-year-old Labrador Retriever was presented for intermittent tachycardia. The electrocardiogram showed sinus rhythm conducted with ventricular pre-excitation and short runs of orthodromic atrioventricular reciprocating tachycardia. Four months later, the rhythm degenerated into a symptomatic sustained tachycardia, suspected to be pre-excited atrial fibrillation, a potentially life-threatening rhythm in the presence of an accessory pathway with a short refractory period. Two days after initiating oral diltiazem, the dog deteriorated and represented with sustained orthodromic atrioventricular reciprocating tachycardia, which was terminated by a precordial chest thump. It proceeded to sinus rhythm with ventricular pre-excitation followed by an episode of pre-excited focal atrial tachycardia. A bolus of lidocaine IV successfully restored sinus rhythm and sotalol treatment was started. The dog clinically recovered but died spontaneously 24 h later. This is the first case report that describes spontaneous pre-excited focal atrial tachycardia., Competing Interests: Conflict of Interest Statement The authors do not have any conflict of interest to disclose., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

Background: Recently in the field neurodegenerative diseases increasing attention has been pointed to CSF biomarkers and their integration with neuroimaging (1). Frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) refers to a heterogeneous group of clinical syndromes with different underlying proteinopathies including tau pathology. CSF biomarkers have been proposed as diagnostic and prognostic factors. Aim of our study was to evaluate the relationship between CSF tau biomarkers and structural MRI brain measures in FTLD., Methods: We included early FTLD patient. All included patients underwent lumbar puncture to evaluate amyloid, total-tau (t-tau), phospho-tau 181 (p-tau); p-tau/t-tau ratio was also calculated; brain MRI was performed to estimate whole brain volume, volume of principal deep grey matter structures and regional cortical thickness., Results: Demographic characteristics of the 28 included patients were as follows: female/male: 9/19; mean ± SD age: 68.1 ± 7.8 years. The p-tau/t-tau ratio was significantly correlated with whole brain volume (r = 0.69; p: 0.001), left putamen volume (r = 0.55 p: 0.009), left pallidum volume (r = 0.41; p: 0.01), right accumbens area (r = 0.47; p: 0.02). P-tau/t tau ratio showed also a significant correlation with cortical thickness of left temporal lobe (r = 0.74; p: 0.001) and right lateral orbital frontal cortex (r = 0.45; p: 0.03). Linear regression showed a significant relationship between p-tau/t-tau ratio and left temporal pole (p = 0.01; r 2 : 0.60) and brain volume (p:0.002; r 2 : 0.56) after controlling for age and gender., Conclusions: Our data suggest that CSF biomarkers, especially p-tau/t-tau ratio, could play a role as prognostic factor in FTLD. Further longitudinal investigations are needed to confirm these findings., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest regarding this research., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Bipolar disorder (BD) has been suggested to be associated with accelerated aging and premature cell senescence. While findings on shorter telomeres in BD are controversial, a recent study showed that long-term lithium treatment correlates with longer telomeres in BD. In our study, we sought to investigate the correlation between leukocyte telomere length (LTL) and long-term lithium treatment in a sample of 200 BD patients characterized for lithium response. We also compared data from two different methods commonly used to measure telomere length, quantitative PCR (qPCR) and quantitative fluorescence in situ hybridization (Q-FISH). We also measured, for the first time, the effect of lithium in vitro on the expression of the telomerase gene in human-derived neural progenitor cells (NPCs). Our findings showed that LTL correlated negatively with age (p=0.0002) and was independent of sex, diagnosis, age at onset, suicidal behavior, number of mood episodes, response to lithium and use of other psychotropic medications. After correcting for age, LTL was positively correlated with lithium treatment duration in patients treated for more than two years (n=150, R=0.17, p=0.037). There was a significant correlation between data measured with qPCR and Q-FISH (p=0.012, R=0.826). Lithium treatment increased telomerase expression in NPCs, though this effect was not statistically significant. Our data support previous findings showing that long-term lithium treatment associates with longer telomeres in BD, though this effect appeared to be independent from clinical response to the treatment. Moreover, we suggested for the first time that lithium increases the expression of telomerase gene in human neural progenitor cells., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. and ECNP. All rights reserved.)

Sorbic acid (SA) is widely used as a preservative, but the effect of SA on spore germination and outgrowth has gained limited attention up to now. Therefore, the effect of sorbic acid on germination of spores of Bacillus cereus strain ATCC 14579 was analyzed both at phenotype and transcriptome level. Spore germination and outgrowth were assessed at pH 5.5 without and with 0.75, 1.5 and 3.0 mM (final concentrations) undissociated sorbic acid (HSA). This resulted in distinct HSA concentration-dependent phenotypes, varying from reduced germination and outgrowth rates to complete blockage of germination at 3.0 mM HSA. The phenotypes reflecting different stages in the germination process could be confirmed using flow cytometry and could be recognized at transcriptome level by distinct expression profiles. In the absence and presence of 0.75 and 1.5 mM HSA, similar cellular ATP levels were found up to the initial stage of outgrowth, suggesting that HSA-induced inhibition of outgrowth is not caused by depletion of ATP. Transcriptome analysis revealed the presence of a limited number of transcripts in dormant spores, outgrowth related expression, and genes specifically associated with sorbic acid stress, including alterations in cell envelope and multidrug resistance. The potential role of these HSA-stress associated genes in spore outgrowth is discussed., (Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)