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Brain corpora amylacea, recently renamed as wasteosomes, are polyglucosan bodies that appear during aging and some neurodegenerative conditions. They collect waste substances and are part of a brain cleaning mechanism. For decades, studies on their composition have produced inconsistent results and the presence of tau protein in them has been controversial. In this work, we reanalyzed the presence of this protein in wasteosomes and we pointed out a methodological problem when immunolabeling. It is well known that to detect tau it is necessary to perform an antigen retrieval. However, in the case of wasteosomes, an excessive antigen retrieval with boiling dissolves their polyglucosan structure, releases the entrapped proteins and, thus, prevents their detection. After performing an adequate pre-treatment, with an intermediate time of boiling, we observed that some brain wasteosomes from patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) contained tau, while we did not detect tau protein in those from non-AD patients. These observations pointed the different composition of wasteosomes depending on the neuropathological condition and reinforce the role of wasteosomes as waste containers.

Codi del projecte: 2020PID-UB/034, A l’assignatura Fisiologia i Fisiopatologia III de 3r curs del Grau de Farmàcia de la Universitat de Barcelona s’imparteixen els continguts referents a l’anatomia, fisiologia i fisiopatologia humanes dels sistemes respiratori, renal, endocrí i reproductor. Una sessió pràctica d’aquesta assignatura es centra en l'observació al microscopi òptic de preparacions histològiques que contenen òrgans o teixit d’aquests sistemes, i està orientada a la identificació de les diferents estructures que contenen. El temps dedicat a l'observació al microscopi depèn, en bona mesura, de les habilitats de l'alumne i de la presència del professor, que ha de confirmar o corregir la identificació feta per l'alumne i donar les pautes per a una correcta interpretació de la secció de teixit. Per aquest motiu, amb el present projecte s’ha dissenyat i implementat una nova aplicació interactiva anomenada Histozoomer la qual, funcionant com un microscopi virtual, permet que l’alumne, de forma autònoma, millori l'aprenentatge en el reconeixement i interpretació de les diferents preparacions. L’aplicatiu Histozomer s’ha dissenyat de forma modular, de manera que per cada preparació histològica s’ha generat un mòdul específic de l’Histozoomer. Cada mòdul inclou la imatge virtual de la preparació, una sèrie d’activitats per facilitar el reconeixement de les estructures contingudes a la imatge, un vídeo explicatiu de la preparació, i instruccions del funcionament de l’aplicatiu. Cada mòdul ha estat dipositat al repositori INNOVADOC de la Universitat de Barcelona, i els estudiant hi poden accedir directament des del Campus Virtual amb un enllaç directe. L’aplicatiu es va implementar al campus virtual el curs 2020-21, i per tal de valorar-ne l’acceptació i adequació els estudiants van respondre una enquesta dissenyada per captar-ne el grau de satisfacció. Els estudiant van valorar positivament l’aplicació interactiva, i un 80,2% dels estudiants indicava que aquesta eina els ajudava a millorar el seu aprenentatge. A més, es va constatar que els estudiant que havien realitzat la pràctica d’histologia i a més a més havien usat el programa Histozoomer obtenien notes significativament superiors als que només havien realitzat la sessió de pràctiques. Per tot això, es conclou doncs que l’Histozoomer és una bona eina per a l’aprenentatge de la histologia, i que és un bon complement de la sessió presencial realitzada al laboratori.

A multiple linear regression model has been used to investigate the factors that may have contributed to the wide year-to-year fluctuations in the catches of penaeid shrimp species in the coastal and estuarine waters of Sinaloa, NW Mexico. Temperature during the main reproductive period is shown to be the factor explaining the highest proportion of the interannual variability in the catch, 57% and 63% in the coastal and estuarine fisheries, respectively. Other significant factors are the duration of the closed season, plus, in coastal waters, sunspot number, and in estuarine waters, river discharge, which has a negative effect. In the estuarine fishery, the estimated total number of shrimp in the catch is positively correlated with accumulated temperature during the main reproductive period, but inversely correlated with the overall mean length of the domestic and trade size categories. The results suggest that environmental variables can be used to make catch predictions. Article from Marine Science Symposia Vol. 199 - "Shellfish life histories and shellfishery models". Symposium held in Moncton, New Brunswick, 25-29 June 1990. To access the remaining articles please click on the keyword "MSS Vol. 199".

The foreign body reaction is a complex biological process leading to the insulation of implanted artificial materials through a capsule of scar tissue. In particular, in chronic implantations of neural electrodes, the prediction of the scar tissue evolution is crucial to assess the implant reliability over time. Indeed, the capsule behaves like an increasing insulating barrier between electrodes and nerve fibers. However, no explicit and physically based rules are available to computationally reproduce the capsule evolution. In addition, standard approaches to this problem (i.e., Vandermonde-based and Lagrange interpolation) fail for the onset of the Runge phenomenon. More specifically, numerical oscillations arise, thus standard procedures are only able to reproduce experimental detections while they result in non physical values for inter-interval times (i.e., times before and after experimental detections). As a consequence, in this work, a novel framework is described to model the evolution of the scar tissue thickness, avoiding the onset of the Runge phenomenon. This approach is able to provide novel approximating functions correctly reproducing experimental data (R2≃0.92) and effectively predicting inter-interval detections. In this way, the overall performances of previous approaches, based on phenomenological fitting polynomials of low degree, are improved.

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Leptin, as a nutritional inhibitor by repressing food intake, is critical compromised in the major common forms of obesity. Skeletal muscle is the main effector tissue for energy expenditure modifications by the effect of endocrine axes, such as leptin signaling. Our study has been carried out using skeletal muscle from leptin-deficient animal model, in order to ascertain the importance of this hormone in eating disorders. Here we report that leptin-deficiency stimulates an uncontrolled oxidative phosphorylation metabolism, resulting in an excess of energy production that culminates in mitochondrial dysfunction. Thus, different nutrient sensing pathways are perturbed, loosing proteostasis and promoting lipid anabolism, that induces myofiber degeneration and drives oxidative type I fiber conversion. Melatonin treatment plays a significant role in regulating energy homeostasis and fuel utilization. This study reveals melatonin to be a decisive mitochondrial function-fate regulator, with implications for resembling physiological energy requirements and targeting glycolytic type II fibers recovery.

Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-01T21:35:04Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 tese_12099_Dissertação_Isabella Bittencourt da Valle.pdf: 8090609 bytes, checksum: 6e09574c3fb07de58cf9e66e8e26d822 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-04-23 O prognóstico de pacientes com Carcinoma Epidermóide Oral (CEO) é majoritariamente desfavorável, principalmente devido à elevada taxa de recidiva e mortalidade. Até o momento, não existem marcadores biológicos clinicamente disponíveis que indiquem eventos de transformação tumoral ou prognóstico em CEO. Portanto, grande interesse tem sido direcionado aos genes reguladores do ciclo celular, como a participação da expressão gênica de P63 na oncogênese através da sua atividade na regulação da proliferação e diferenciação celular em CEO. Este trabalho teve como objetivo analisar a aplicabilidade de p63 como biomarcador de prognóstico e progressão tumoral. Realizou-se estudo multicêntrico internacional, no qual foram obtidas amostras biológicas, dados clínicos e seguimento clínico de 109 indivíduos com CEO provenientes do Brasil e Reino Unido. As lâminas histológicas obtidas foram avaliadas quanto à gradação tumoral, infiltrado linfocitário tumoral (TIL), padrão de invasão tumoral e invasão perineural, vascular e linfática. Tissue Microarray (TMA) foi construído considerando 3 áreas: epitélio adjacente ao tumor, displasia e tumor. Os TMAs foram submedidos à imunohistoquímica para análise de expressão de p63 e p40 (ΔNp63) e hibridização in situ de RNA para investigar p63 mRNA. Para avaliar a expressão de p63 e p40 foi considerada a marcação nuclear em queratinócitos através de H-Score. A avaliação de p63 mRNA se deu por um guia de pontuação (score 0-4) conforme a quantidade de pontos em cada célula. O nível de significância considerado para todos os testes estatísticos foi de 95%. Teste Qui-Quadrado foi empregado para instituir associações entre as variáveis clinico-patológicas estudadas. A comparação entre a expressão da proteína p63, p40 e de p63 mRNA nas diferentes regiões foi realizada através do teste de Wilcoxon. Curvas de sobrevida global e sobrevida livre de doença foram obtidas pelo modelo de Kaplan-Meier e regressão de Cox. Nossos resultados mostraram associação entre a elevada presença de TIL no tumor com estadiamentos iniciais (p=0,001) enquanto tabagismo mostrou relação com menor TIL (p=0,044) e padrões de invasão tumoral dos tipos III e IV (p=0,032). Indivíduos etilistas/ex-etilistas apresentaram mais invasão vascular que os não etilistas (p=0,015). A expressão de p63 nos tumores foi maior que nas displasias (p=0,001) e foi associada a tumores maiores (T3 e T4) (p=0,001). Foi observada diferença quanto à expressão de p40 entre displasia e tumor (p

The additional file contains: a section where we show our fitting method performance on different synthetic data sets; a section where we show the plot of gamma and stretched exponential fit results for CG interdistance distribution of Homo sapiens; a section where we show how we calculated errors on r-squared, based on Olkin and Finnâ s approximation; a final section where we collected into two tables all the informations about the analysis perfomed on the 4425 organisms. The first table contains informations about organism type and identification on NCBI website; the second contains gamma fit parameters, ratio of unkown nucleotides (%N), ratio of CG dinucleotides (%CG) and r-squared values. (PDF 1960 kb)

We propose an index to measure the degree of ability or desire of the population in a given country to have children, via an analysis of certain factors that may have a positive or negative influence on the fertility rate of that country. Using data for the twenty-eight countries of the European Union, and Principal Components Analysis, we construct the International Multidimensional Fertility Index as a combination of four dimensions: (1) Economy and family, (2) Attitudes and habits, (3) Work–Life Balance, and (4) Policy, along with nineteen distinct variables. We find that Denmark, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg are among the countries with the highest value of the index, and they also have high fertility rates within the EU. At the other end of the spectrum, Latvia, Cyprus, and Greece, are ranked in the last positions according to our index, countries that also present low values in their fertility rates. We also find a positive correlation between the value of our index and country fertility rates, an indication that our index may be capturing country differences in the conditions for bearing children, with higher values of the index indicating better conditions for childbirth and childrearing. To the extent that international data becomes available, our methodology will allow for the construction of international rankings, helpful in identifying cross-country differences in the conditions for fertility.

Introduction: ADHD is characterized by inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity, or a combination of these symptoms. Sleep disorders may be considered as a not secondary underlying cause of ADHD and growing evidence evidenced that obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSA) symptoms may overlap ADHD's ones. Aim of the present study is verifying the presence of ADHD-like symptoms in other frequent condition such as sleep-related breathing disorders in pediatric age. Materials and methods: 34 children (19 males and 15 females) aged 6-10 years (mean age 9.706 ± 3.434) with polysomnographic diagnosis of OSA, according to ICSD-3 criteria, were recruited. Control group was composed by 89 typical developing children (47 males, 42 females) (mean age 9,528 ± 3,351). The Conners' Rating Scale- Revised (CRS-R) test was administered to mothers to assess their children's behavior. Results: The two groups are comparable for age (p = 0.794) and sex distribution (p = 0.918). Subjects affected by OSA present higher scores in pathological range in all scales of CRS-R than controls (Table 1). Conclusions: Scientific and clinical evidences tend to stress the similarities between ADHD and OSA effects/comorbidities in pediatric age, suggesting sleep screening as mandatory before starting stimulant drugs treatment.

Introduction: Childhood absence epilepsy (CAE) is a common type of pediatric idiopathic generalized epilepsy, characterized by multiple seizures of typical absence, with typical EEG pattern consisting in bilateral synchronous and symmetrical discharges of generalized 3 Hz spike-wave (SWDs). Recently, some researchers have suggested that the underlying epileptogenic mechanism of absence seizures selectively involves the frontal cortical circuits, also supported by video-electroencephalography data(3). These data may be considered as a new window in CAE comprehension and management, particularly about symptoms different from seizure that children affected may present. In this light, aim of the present study is evaluating the presence of internalizing problems in prepubertal children affected by CAE. Material and methods: 18 patients (10 females, 8 males) ranging age from 8-11 years (mean age 9.36 ± 1.32) affected by typical CAE were recruited. Control group was composed by 43 subjects (32 females, 11 males) (mean age 8.54 ± 2.01). All subjects were screened for internalizing symptoms with SAFA-A scale and CDI test. Results: The two groups were comparable for age (p=0.117) and sex distribution (p=0.251). CAE children showed significantly higher score than controls for anxiety (p

Premessa: l'enuresi notturna primaria monosintomatica (PMNE) è un problema comune in età evolutiva, che consiste nella perdita involontaria di urina durante la notte nei bambini oltre i 5 anni di età.[1] Diverse osservazioni cliniche hanno suggerito la presenza di anomalie aspecifiche in motricità, sviluppo del linguaggio, capacità di apprendimento, accrescimento fisico e maturazione scheletrica dei bambini affetti da PMNE.[2] Lo scopo del presente studio è valutare la prevalenza della anomalie nella coordinazione motoria fine e nella integrazione visuo-motoria nei bambini prepuberi con PMNE. Metodi: La popolazione in studio è composta da 31 bambini (16 maschi, 15 femmine) (età media 8,14 ± 1,36 anni) e il gruppo di controllo da 61 bambini sani (32 maschi, 29 femmine, età media ± 8,03 1,44 anni). L'intera popolazione è stata sottoposta a valutazione clinica per valutare il quoziente intellettivo totale (IQ), le capacità di integrazione visuo-motoria, e la coordinazione motoria. Risultati: I due gruppi risultano confrontabili per età (p = 0,725), genere (p = 0,886), z-BMI (p = 0,149) e QI (p = 0,163). Il gruppo PMNE mostra una più alta prevalenza di prestazioni borderline nella coordinazione motoria (p