Search

The purest and unrestricted source of stem cells is the enamel of the teeth. Dental stem cells (DSCs), which are simple to get, quick to use, and reasonably priced, have the potential to be used in a variety of promising therapeutic applications. Due to their capacity for self-renewal, they are employed to treat significant flaws brought about by diseases, injuries, or surgical procedures. However, they are constrained by moral and ethical issues, as well as challenges with isolation, culturing, and implantation. DSCs are used in the rebuilding of orofacial structures because they retain the ability to differentiate into neurogenic, adipogenic, and odontogenic components. Before stem cell implantation, scaffolding that has been treated with growth hormones and bone morphogenic proteins is crucial. A self-administered questionnaire was used for a cross-sectional study (n = 200) that collected data on demographics, knowledge of stem cells, and attitude statements. Statistical Package for Social Software version 20.0 was used to analyze the data. This study seeks to learn more about professional groups’ perceptions of stem cell research in Tamil Nadu and their knowledge and awareness of DSCs.

Abstract Traumatic events result in vivid and enduring fear memories. Suppressing the retrieval of these memories is central to behavioral therapies for pathological fear. The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and hippocampus (HPC) have been implicated in retrieval suppression, but how mPFC-HPC activity is coordinated during extinction retrieval is unclear. Here we show that after extinction training, coherent theta oscillations (6–9 Hz) in the HPC and mPFC are correlated with the suppression of conditioned freezing in male and female rats. Inactivation of the nucleus reuniens (RE), a thalamic hub interconnecting the mPFC and HPC, reduces extinction-related Fos expression in both the mPFC and HPC, dampens mPFC-HPC theta coherence, and impairs extinction retrieval. Conversely, theta-paced optogenetic stimulation of RE augments fear suppression and reduces relapse of extinguished fear. Collectively, these results demonstrate a role for RE in coordinating mPFC-HPC interactions to suppress fear memories after extinction.

Background: Neonatal Mortality Rate (NMR) is a value which plays a vital role in gauging the effectiveness and advancement in healthcare pertaining to newborns. The alarmingly high rate promotes the need of further development of better medical facilities. One such facility is the Special Newborn Care Unit (SNCU). Objective: This study targets the analysis of factors contributing to the mortality of neonates and aims at coming up with solution to tackle the issue Methodology: A facility based retrospective study was carried out based on information from medical records of neonates admitted to the SNCU from a tertiary care hospital. Results: The 1038 neonates admitted it was found that nearly half of the neonates admitted had low birth weight (48.2%) contrary to maturity where 37.9 % were preterm. Most of the admissions were due to neonatal jaundice (46.6%) followed by low birth weight (15.2%) and respiratory distress syndrome (10.3%). Of the 85 neonates who expired, the leading causes were respiratory distress syndrome (21.2%), sepsis (14.9%), Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy (12.9%), major congenital malformations (12.9%) and extreme low birth weight 11 (12.9%). Conclusion: The expansion of services and technology provided by SNCUs is of great importance in the development of healthcare for the nation. The growth of better antenatal health care, seamless referral systems along with identification of alarming conditions requiring admission to SNCUs immediately after birth form the pillars of confronting the goal of decreasing the NMR.

The authors present an approach to connect polymer dynamics to force response by integrating optical tweezers with differential dynamic microscopy. They measure blends of ring and linear DNA and observe a resonant response, which is suppressed by the presence of microtubules.

Staphylococcus lugdunensis is a coagulase-negative staphylococcus (CoNS) that constitutes normal skin flora and is often read as a contaminant when isolated in blood cultures. In recent years S. lugdunensis has been increasingly recognized as a true pathogen causing a spectrum of infections from benign skin and soft tissue infections to bacteremia, bone and joint infections, and endocarditis. A significant role in the pathogenesis of infections is played by the ability of the organism to form biofilms that allow it to attach itself to foreign objects such as pacemakers, prosthetic valves, and orthopedic implants. The mortality rate in infective endocarditis caused by S. lugdunensis has been as high as 38.8 % making it as virulent as Staphylococcus aureus reported in the literature. It requires aggressive antibiotics and optimal source control, including surgical debridement and valve replacement if indicated. We present a case of S.lugdunensis infective endocarditis in a patient with an automatic implantable cardioverter defibrillator (AICD). The patient presented with lower back pain for three weeks and was found to have a right psoas abscess and S.lugdunensis bacteremia, with a vegetation on the right ventricular defibrillator wire requiring device explantation and prolonged antibiotic treatment.

Purpose: Cataract development is a common sequelae associated with uveitis. Despite phacoemulsification being the popular method of cataract surgery today, manual small-incision cataract surgery (MSICS) may still be a safe and effective alternative because of several inherent benefits. There is not much literature and studies on the efficacy and safety of MSICS under topical anesthesia in complicated cataract in patients with uveitis. We aimed to study the safety and visual outcome of MSICS under topical anesthesia for post uveitis complicated cataract. Methods: This was a retrospective observational study. The electronic medical records of adult patients who underwent MSICS under topical anesthesia for post uveitis cataract were reviewed. The records were reviewed and analyzed for preoperative clinical characteristics and visual acuity, intraoperative complications and postoperative visual acuity, and complications. Results: A total of 71 eyes of 59 patients were taken for final analysis. The average age of patients was 59.9 years. There was improvement in the best corrected visual acuity by 0.7 logMAR (P value

Transforming growth factor–β1 (TGF-β1) plays a central role in normal and aberrant wound healing, but the precise mechanism in the local environment remains elusive. Here, using a mouse model of aberrant wound healing resulting in heterotopic ossification (HO) after traumatic injury, we find autocrine TGF-β1 signaling in macrophages, and not mesenchymal stem/progenitor cells, is critical in HO formation. In-depth single-cell transcriptomic and epigenomic analyses in combination with immunostaining of cells from the injury site demonstrated increased TGF-β1 signaling in early infiltrating macrophages, with open chromatin regions in TGF-β1–stimulated genes at binding sites specific for transcription factors of activated TGF-β1 (SMAD2/3). Genetic deletion of TGF-β1 receptor type 1 (Tgfbr1; Alk5), in macrophages, resulted in increased HO, with a trend toward decreased tendinous HO. To bypass the effect seen by altering the receptor, we administered a systemic treatment with TGF-β1/3 ligand trap TGF-βRII-Fc, which resulted in decreased HO formation and a delay in macrophage infiltration to the injury site. Overall, our data support the role of the TGF-β1/ALK5 signaling pathway in HO.

Early social experience can alter epigenetic patterns and stress responses later in life. A study on wild spotted hyenas finds that maternal care and social connections after leaving the den influence DNA methylation and contribute to a developmentally plastic stress response.

Abstract Environmental contexts can inform animals of potential threats, though it is currently unknown how context biases the selection of defensive behavior. Here we investigated context-dependent flight responses with a Pavlovian serial-compound stimulus (SCS) paradigm that evokes freeze-to-flight transitions. Similar to previous work in mice, we show that male and female rats display context-dependent flight-like behavior in the SCS paradigm. Flight behavior was dependent on contextual fear insofar as it was only evoked in a shock-associated context and was reduced in the conditioning context after context extinction. Flight behavior was only expressed to white noise regardless of temporal order within the compound. Nonetheless, rats that received unpaired SCS trials did not show flight-like behavior to the SCS, indicating it is associative. Finally, we show that pharmacological inactivation of two brain regions critical to the expression of contextual fear, the central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA) and bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST), attenuates both contextual fear and flight responses. All of these effects were similar in male and female rats. This work demonstrates that contextual fear can summate with cued and innate fear to drive a high fear state and transition from post-encounter to circa-strike defensive modes.

Leviviruses are phages with ssRNA genomes that encode a protein (Sgl) that induces host autolysis by interfering with bacterial cell wall synthesis. Identification of sgl genes is complicated by their small size and lack of sequence similarity. Here, Chamakura et al. use bioinformatic and experimental approaches to identify sgl genes in 244 leviviral genomes.

IntroductionThe physical modification of cartilage grafts during rhinoplasty risks chondrocyte death at the margins where the tissue is cut. This study compares chondrocyte viability between diced, scaled, and pate samples in human models, and further computes percent chondrocyte viability as a function of sequential dicing size in a computational model.MethodsSeptal cartilage from 11 individuals was prepared as follows: diced (1 mm cubic), scaled (shaved to  0.05). Conversely, pate samples had significantly less viability compared to positive controls, diced samples, and scaled samples (all p

Traditionally, functional networks in resting-state data were investigated with linear Fourier and wavelet-related methods to characterize their frequency content by relying on pre-specified frequency bands. In this study, Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD), an adaptive time-frequency method, is used to investigate the naturally occurring frequency bands of resting-state data obtained by Group Independent Component Analysis. Specifically, energy-period profiles of Intrinsic Mode Functions (IMFs) obtained by EMD are created and compared for different resting-state networks. These profiles have a characteristic distribution for many resting-state networks and are related to the frequency content of each network. A comparison with the linear Short-Time Fourier Transform (STFT) and the Maximal Overlap Discrete Wavelet Transform (MODWT) shows that EMD provides a more frequency-adaptive representation of different types of resting-state networks. Clustering of resting-state networks based on the energy-period profiles leads to clusters of resting-state networks that have a monotone relationship with frequency and energy. This relationship is strongest with EMD, intermediate with MODWT, and weakest with STFT. The identification of these relationships suggests that EMD has significant advantages in characterizing brain networks compared to STFT and MODWT. In a clinical application to early Parkinson’s disease (PD) vs. normal controls (NC), energy and period content were studied for several common resting-state networks. Compared to STFT and MODWT, EMD showed the largest differences in energy and period between PD and NC subjects. Using a support vector machine, EMD achieved the highest prediction accuracy in classifying NC and PD subjects among STFT, MODWT, and EMD.

Previous work has shown that the thalamic nucleus reuniens (RE) is involved in memory and emotion. Here the authors report that the RE and its inputs from the medial prefrontal cortex are indispensable for the top-down inhibition of fear memories after extinction.

Refractive errors remain a global health concern, as a large proportion of the world's population is myopic. Current ablative approaches are costly, not without risks, and not all patients are candidates for these procedures. Electromechanical reshaping (EMR) has been explored as a viable cost-effective modality to directly shape tissues, including cartilage. In this study, stromal collagen structure and fibril orientation was examined before and after EMR with second-harmonic generation microscopy (SHG), a nonlinear multiphoton imaging method that has previously been used to study native corneal collagen with high spatial resolution. EMR, using a milled metal contact lens and potentiostat, was performed on the corneas of five extracted rabbit globes. SHG was performed using a confocal microscopy system and all images underwent collagen fibril orientation analysis. The collagen SHG signal in controls is uniform and is similarly seen in samples treated with pulsed potential, while continuous EMR specimens have reduced, nonhomogeneous signal. Collagen fibril orientation in native tissue demonstrates a broad distribution with suggestion of another peak evolving, while with EMR treated eyes a bimodal characteristic becomes readily evident. Pulsed EMR may be a means to correct refractive errors, as when comparing its SHG signal to negative control, preservation of collagen structures with little to no damage is observed. From collagen fiber orientation analysis, it can be inferred that simple DC application alters the structure of collagen. Future studies will involve histological assessment of these layers and multi-modal imaging analysis of dosimetry.

Introduction. Myasthenia gravis (MG) is a chronic illness most commonly found in women under 40 years. The most common psychiatric comorbidities found in MG include depressive and anxiety disorders. Clinical Presentation. We describe a case of a 43-year-old African American female with MG who was brought in for shortness of breath. History included MG diagnosed twelve years prior to the current presentation and a history of seven intubations. The patient was admitted to the ICU and intubated. She endorsed poor sleep, easy fatigability, and feeling hopeless in the context of psychosocial stressors—being single, homeless, and unemployed. The patient was started on Zoloft 50 mg per oral daily for depression and Atarax 50 mg per oral three times a day for anxiety. The patient responded well to the treatment and was discharged on day 10 after the resolution of her symptoms with appropriate aftercare in place. Discussion. Depressive and anxiety symptoms usually develop as comorbidity during MG disease. Depressive and anxiety symptoms, besides motor symptoms, have a negative impact on the quality of life. Mental health must be a clinical focus during the treatment of somatic symptoms during MG.

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies in early Parkinson's disease (PD) to understand pathologic changes in white matter (WM) organization are variable in their findings. Evaluation of different analytic techniques frequently employed to understand the DTI-derived change in WM organization in a multisite, well-characterized, early stage PD cohort should aid the identification of the most robust analytic techniques to be used to investigate WM pathology in this disease, an important unmet need in the field. Thus, region of interest (ROI)-based analysis, voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis with varying spatial smoothing, and the two most widely used skeletonwise approaches (tract-based spatial statistics, TBSS, and tensor-based registration, DTI-TK) were evaluated in a DTI dataset of early PD and Healthy Controls (HC) from the Parkinson's Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) cohort. Statistical tests on the DTI-derived metrics were conducted using a nonparametric approach from this cohort of early PD, after rigorously controlling for motion and signal artifacts during DTI scan which are frequent confounds in this disease population. Both TBSS and DTI-TK revealed a significantly negative correlation of fractional anisotropy (FA) with disease duration. However, only DTI-TK revealed radial diffusivity (RD) to be driving this FA correlation with disease duration. HC had a significantly positive correlation of MD with cumulative DaT score in the right middle-frontal cortex after a minimum smoothing level (at least 13mm) was attained. The present study found that scalar DTI-derived measures such as FA, MD, and RD should be used as imaging biomarkers with caution in early PD as the conclusions derived from them are heavily dependent on the choice of the analysis used. This study further demonstrated DTI-TK may be used to understand changes in DTI-derived measures with disease progression as it was found to be more accurate than TBSS. In addition, no singular region was identified that could explain both disease duration and severity in early PD. The results of this study should help standardize the utilization of DTI-derived measures in PD in an effort to improve comparability across studies and time, and to minimize variability in reported results due to variation in techniques.

ABSTRACT In filamentous fungi, an important kinase responsible for adaptation to changes in available nutrients is cyclic AMP (cAMP)-dependent protein kinase (protein kinase A [PKA]). This kinase has been well characterized at a molecular level, but its systemic action and direct/indirect targets are generally not well understood in filamentous fungi. In this work, we used a pkaA deletion strain (ΔpkaA) to identify Aspergillus nidulans proteins for which phosphorylation is dependent (either directly or indirectly) on PKA. A combination of phosphoproteomic and transcriptomic analyses revealed both direct and indirect targets of PKA and provided a global perspective on its function. One of these targets was the transcription factor CreA, the main repressor responsible for carbon catabolite repression (CCR). In the ΔpkaA strain, we identified a previously unreported phosphosite in CreA, S319, which (based on motif analysis) appears to be a direct target of Stk22 kinase (AN5728). Upon replacement of CreA S319 with an alanine (i.e., phosphonull mutant), the dynamics of CreA import to the nucleus are affected. Collectively, this work provides a global overview of PKA function while also providing novel insight regarding significance of a specific PKA-mediated phosphorylation event. IMPORTANCE The cyclic AMP (cAMP)-dependent protein kinase A (PKA) signaling pathway is well conserved across eukaryotes, and previous work has shown that it plays an important role in regulating development, growth, and virulence in a number of fungi. PKA is activated in response to extracellular nutrients and acts to regulate metabolism and growth. While a number of components in the PKA pathway have been defined in filamentous fungi, current understanding does not provide a global perspective on PKA function. Thus, this work is significant in that it comprehensively identifies proteins and functional pathways regulated by PKA in a model filamentous fungus. This information enhances our understanding of PKA action and may provide information on how to manipulate it for specific purposes.

Handheld ultrasound devices can be used in revision rhinoplasty to evaluate the calcification of costal rib cartilage that is to be harvested for grafting. This article provides instructions on how to perform this technique. Laryngoscope, 134:651-653, 2024.

It has been shown that the thermodynamics of bicontinuous microemulsions can be tailored via the addition of various different amphiphilic polymers. In this manuscript, we now focus on comb-type polymers consisting of hydrophobic backbones and hydrophilic side chains. The distinct philicity of the backbone and side chains leads to a well-defined segregation into the oil and water domains respectively, as confirmed by contrast variation small-angle neutron scattering experiments. This polymer–microemulsion structure leads to well-described conformational entropies of the polymer fragments (backbone and side chains) that exert pressure on the membrane, which influences the thermodynamics of the overall microemulsion. In the context of the different polymer architectures that have been studied by our group with regards to their phase diagrams and small-angle neutron scattering, the microemulsion thermodynamics of comb polymers can be described in terms of a superposition of the backbone and side chain fragments. The denser or longer the side chain, the stronger the grafting and the more visible the brush effect of the side chains becomes. Possible applications of the comb polymers as switchable additives are discussed. Finally, a balanced philicity of polymers also motivates transmembrane migration in biological systems of the polymers themselves or of polymer–DNA complexes.

Entangled ring polymers, along with blends of ring and linear polymers, continue to be a topic of great interest and debate due to the conflicting experimental results in the literature as well as the difficulty of producing entangled synthetic rings devoid of linear contaminants. Here, we create blended solutions of entangled ring and linear DNA with varying mass fractions of linear DNA ϕ_{L}. We use optical tweezers microrheology to measure the linear and nonlinear viscoelastic response of these blends. Our measurements reveal a strong nonmonotonic dependence of linear viscoelastic properties on ϕ_{L}, with a pronounced maximum when the mass fraction of rings and linear chains are comparable, suggestive of pervasive threading of rings by linear chains. We observe a similar nonmonotonicity in the nonlinear regime. However, a comparatively higher fraction of linear chains (ϕ_{L}≈0.5–0.7) is required for a substantial increase in resisitive force and slowing of relaxation dynamics to emerge. This nonlinear response also appears to be rate dependent, which we argue arises from force-induced dethreading of rings at high strain rates. Our results fill a long-standing gap in knowledge regarding the microrheology and nonlinear response of ring-linear polymer blends. Moreover, the uniquely strong mechanical response that ring-linear blends exhibit, along with the ability to finely tune these blends by varying the blend composition, provides intriguing materials design principles.

Ischemic stroke is a severe neuro disorder typically characterized by a block inside a blood vessel supplying blood to the brain. It remains the third leading cause for death, after heart attack and cancer. Computed Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) were the vital major imaging techniques used for diagnosing this disorder. While the CT imaging can be used at the primary stage, MRI proves to be a standard aid for progressive diagnostic planning in the treatment of stroke injuries. Developing a fully automatic approach for lesion segmentation is a challenging issue due to the complex nature of the lesions structures. This research basically aims at examining the properties of such complex structures. It analyses the characteristics of the normal brain tissues and abnormal lesion structures using a three-level wavelet decomposition procedure. Four different wavelet functions namely daubechies, symlet, coiflet and de-meyer were applied to the different datasets and the resulting observations were examined based on their feature statistics obtained. Experiments indicate the feature statistics obtained from daubechies and de-meyer wavelets were able to clearly distinguish between the typical brain tissues and abnormal lesion structures.

The corneal stroma consists of orthogonally stacked collagen-fibril lamellae that determine the shape of the cornea and provide most of the refractive power of the eye. We have applied electromechanical reshaping (EMR), an electrochemical platform for remodeling cartilage and other semirigid tissues, to change the curvature of the cornea as a potential procedure for nonsurgical vision correction. EMR relies on short electrochemical pulses to electrolyze water, with subsequent diffusion of protons into the extracellular matrix of collagenous tissues; protonation of immobilized anions within this matrix disrupts the ionic-bonding network, leaving the tissue transiently responsive to mechanical remodeling. Re-equilibration to physiological pH restores the ionic matrix, resulting in persistent shape change of the tissue. Using ex vivo rabbit eyes, we demonstrate here the controlled change of corneal curvature over a wide range of refractive powers with no loss of optical transparency. Optical coherence tomography (OCT), combined with second-harmonic generation (SHG) and confocal microscopy, establish that EMR enables extremely fine control of corneal contouring while maintaining the underlying macromolecular collagen structure and stromal cellular viability, positioning electrochemical vision therapy as a potentially simple and ultralow-cost modality for correcting routine refractive errors.

Neonatal bacterial sepsis is one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality in neonates. 10% cases of neonatal bacteraemia and septicaemia are caused by Enterococci. The increasing incidence of Vancomycin resistant enterococci (VRE) is of particular concern because of limited treatment options and increased mortality. We report here a case of neonatal sepsis in a premature baby caused by vancomycin resistant Enterococcus faecium Van A phenotype from a tertiary care Hospital in South India. A preterm baby boy with low birth weight was admitted to the NICU with Respiratory distress and meconium aspiration. On 5th day the baby succumbed to death and a final diagnosis of respiratory distress and meconium aspiration with sepsis was made. Blood cultures sent yielded vancomycin resistant Enterococcus faecium (minimum inhibitory concentration ≥ 256 µg/ml). It was confirmed as Enterococcus feacium Van A phenotype by Automated Vitek system.