Seasonal weight loss (SWL) is the most important limitation to animal production in the Tropical and Mediterranean regions, conditioning producer's incomes and the nutritional status of rural ...communities. It is of importance to produce strategies to oppose adverse effects of SWL. Breeds that have evolved in harsh climates have acquired tolerance to SWL through selection. Most of the factors determining such ability are related to changes in biochemical pathways as affected by SWL. In this study, a gel based proteomics strategy (BN: Blue-Native Page and 2DE: Two-dimensional gel electrophoresis) was used to characterize the mitochondrial proteome of the secretory tissue of the goat mammary gland. In addition, we have conducted an investigation of the effects of weight loss in two goat breeds with different levels of adaptation to nutritional stress: Majorera (tolerant) and Palmera (susceptible). The study used Majorera and Palmera dairy goats, divided in 4 sets, 2 for each breed: underfed group fed on wheat straw (restricted diet, so their body weight would be 15-20% reduced by the end of experiment), and a control group fed with an energy-balanced diet. At the end of the experimental period (22 days), mammary gland biopsies were obtained for all experimental groups. The proteomic analysis of the mitochondria enabled the resolution of a total of 277 proteins, and 148 (53%) were identified by MALDI-TOF/TOF mass spectrometry. Some of the proteins were identified as subunits of the glutamate dehydrogenase complex and the respiratory complexes I, II, IV, V from mitochondria, as well as numerous other proteins with functions in: metabolism, development, localization, cellular organization and biogenesis, biological regulation, response to stimulus, among others, that were mapped in both BN and 2DE gels. The comparative proteomics analysis enabled the identification of several proteins: NADH-ubiquinone oxidoreductase 75 kDa subunit and lamin B1 mitochondrial (up-regulated in the Palmera breed), Guanine nucleotide-binding protein G(I)/G(S)/G(T) subunit beta-2 (up-regulated in the Majorera breed) and cytochrome b-c1 complex subunit 1, mitochondrial and Chain D, Bovine F1-C8 Sub-Complex Of Atp Synthase (down-regulated in the Majorera breed) as a consequence of weight loss.
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Fatigue is an exceedingly common often treatable problem in cancer patients that profoundly affects all aspects of quality of life. Prevalence estimates have ranged from 50% to 90% of cancer patients ...overall. After addressing reversible or treatable contributing factors, such as hypothyroidism, anemia, sleep disturbance, pain, emotional distress, climacterium, medication adverse events, metabolic disturbances, or organ dysfunction such as heart failure, myopathy, and pulmonary fibrosis, patients may be screened with a brief fatigue self-assessment tool. All cancer patients should be screened regularly for fatigue. Those with moderate or severe fatigue may benefit from both pharmacologic and nonpharmacologic interventions, while mild fatigue that does not interfere with quality of life can be treated with nonpharmacologic measures alone. Physicians often have insufficient knowledge about fatigue and its treatments or underestimate the impact of fatigue on quality of life, while patients may consider it an unavoidable and untreatable side-effect and fear that reporting it may incite a change toward less aggressive cancer treatment. A practical review may therefore be useful to health care professionals in order to avoid the common barriers to its treatment that exist on the sides of both physicians and patients.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Introduction Body image distortion and/or dissatisfaction may occur primarily due to body fat accumulation and/or distribution. The aim of this study was to evaluate the frequency of body image ...perception and (dis)satisfaction categories in adult men and women according to the adiposity classification. Methods This is a cross-sectional study (n = 514; 33–79 years; 265 women) that is part of a prospective cohort (Pró-Saúde study). Adiposity measurements were determined by two methods: anthropometry, used to calculate the body mass index (BMI) and dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), to estimate body fat percentage. Participants were grouped as “no excess adiposity” and “excess adiposity”, considering BMI and body fat percentage (>30% for men, >40% for women). Perception and (dis)satisfaction with body image were evaluated using the Kakeshita scale, composed by 15 silhouettes, developed for the Brazilian population. Degree of distortion (perceived BMI ‐ real BMI) and dissatisfaction (perceived BMI ‐ desired BMI) were calculated. Results A high proportion of men (58.6%; 74.3%), and especially of women (82.6%; 86.8%), presented body size overestimation and dissatisfaction due to excess weight, respectively. A relevant fraction of the women (32.6%) and men (30.8%) who were dissatisfied due to excess weight did not present excess adiposity, especially if classified by DXA. Variability in degree of distortion was hardly explained by anthropometric and DXA variables in women (<5%) and men (∼22%). Both anthropometric and DXA measurements accounted for ∼30% and ∼50% of the variability in degree of dissatisfaction among women and men, respectively. Conclusion Our results suggest a high frequency of body image distortion in Brazilian adult individuals, as well as dissatisfaction with excess weight, especially among women with excess adiposity. The findings indicate that anthropometric measurements explain much of the variability in degree of body image dissatisfaction in men, with no apparent advantage of the use of more refined DXA measurements.
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The emergent Zika virus (ZIKV) infection has become a threat to global health due to its association with severe neurological abnormalities, namely Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) in adults and ...Congenital Zika virus Syndrome (CZS) in neonates. Many studies are nowadays being conducted to find an effective antiviral drug against ZIKV. In particular, NS2B-NS3 protease is an attractive drug target due to its essential function in viral replication, although a drug is not yet commercially available. In this context, we present here a comparative structural study, based on quantum chemistry calculations, to analyze the intermolecular binding energies between the crystallographic structure of NS2B-NS3 protease and dipeptide boronic acid (cn-716) and aldehyde (acyl-KR-aldehyde) peptidomimetic inhibitors, by using the molecular fractionation with conjugate caps (MFCC) scheme within the density functional theory (DFT) formalism. Most intermolecular interactions in cn-716/NS2B-NS3 (acyl-KR-aldehyde/NS2B-NS3) are due to the amino acid residues Asp83*, His51, Asp129, Ser81*, Gly133, Ala132, Tyr161, Asn152 and Asp75 (Asp83*, Asp129, His51, Asn152, Tyr161, Tyr130, Gly153, Gly151, Asp75, Pro131, and Gly82). Additionally, we have considered missense mutation analysis of these residues to evaluate the destabilization and the increase of the flexibility of the protease, showing that mutation of the residues Tyr161 and Tyr130 causes more impact. Our simulations are a valuable tool for a better understanding of the binding mechanism of recognized inhibitors of NS2B-NS3 protease, and can lead to the rational design and development of novel anti-Zika drugs with improved efficiency.
Structural representation and graphic panel showing the most relevant residues that contribute to the ZIKV NS2B-NS3-ligand complexes.
Rapid diagnosis tests (RDTs) are easy to carry out, provide fast results, and could potentially guide medical treatment decisions. We investigated the performance of a commercially available RDT, ...which simultaneously detects the non-structural 1 (NS1) dengue virus (DENV) antigen, and IgM and IgG DENV antibodies, using representative serum samples from individuals in a dengue endemic area in Salvador, Brazil.
We evaluated the accuracy of the SD BIOLINE Dengue Duo RDT (Abbott, Santa Clara, USA; former Alere Inc, Waltham, USA) in a random collection of sera. Samples included acute-phase sera from 246 laboratory-confirmed dengue cases and 108 non-dengue febrile patients enrolled in a surveillance study for dengue detection, 73 healthy controls living in the same surveillance community, and 73 blood donors. RDT accuracy was blindly assessed based on the combined results for the NS1 and the IgM test components. The RDT sensitivity was 46.8% (38.6% for the NS1 component and 13.8% for the IgM component). Sensitivity was greater for samples obtained from patients with secondary DENV infections (49.8%) compared to primary infections (31.1%) (P: 0.02) and was also influenced by the result in the confirmatory dengue diagnostic test, ranging from 39.7% for samples of cases confirmed by IgM-ELISA seroconversion between paired samples to 90.4% for samples of cases confirmed by a positive NS1-ELISA. The RDT specificity was 94.4% for non-dengue febrile patients, 87.7% for the community healthy controls, and 95.9% for the blood donors.
The SD BIOLINE Dengue Duo RDT showed good specificities, but low sensitivity, suggesting that it may be more useful to rule in than to rule out a dengue diagnosis in dengue endemic regions.
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Seasonal weight loss (SWL) is a primary constraint for farmers in the Mediterranean and tropics. One cost-effective solution to SWL is utilizing breeds like the Damara sheep that have adapted to deal ...with nutritional stress. Previous studies concluded that one of the adaptation mechanisms of SWL is a specialized fatty acid metabolism. Accordingly, hepatic-mitochondrial proteomes were compared across two different breeds (24 sheep total, Merino, n = 12 and Damara, n = 12) and two different diets (restricted vs unrestricted diet, 6 per breed, per diet, 24 total). Mitochondrial-proteins were isolated and relatively quantified using Blue native PAGE / 2D-electrophoresis and then analyzed via mass spectrometry. The tool ReviGO summarized the proteomes' gene-ontology terms. A total of 50 proteins were identified with 7 changing significantly in abundance (ANOVA p-value<0.05). Specific abundance patterns of corticosteroid and inflammatory response-associated proteins such as annexin and glutamate dehydrogenase suggests that the Damara has an unusual inflammation response when subjected to SWL in addition to its unique metabolism. All significant proteins warrant further study; Annexin in particular shows promise as a potentially useful biomarker.
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The understanding of interactions between electrons and phonons in atomically thin heterostructures is crucial for the engineering of novel two-dimensional devices. Electron-phonon (el-ph) ...interactions in layered materials can occur involving electrons in the same layer or in different layers. Here we report on the possibility of distinguishing intralayer and interlayer el-ph interactions in samples of twisted bilayer graphene and of probing the intralayer process in graphene/h-BN by using Raman spectroscopy. In the intralayer process, the el-ph scattering occurs in a single graphene layer and the other layer (graphene or h-BN) imposes a periodic potential that backscatters the excited electron, whereas for the interlayer process the el-ph scattering occurs between states in the Dirac cones of adjacent graphene layers. Our methodology of using Raman spectroscopy to probe different types of el-ph interactions can be extended to study any kind of graphene-based heterostructure.
Since their emergence in the Americas, chikungunya (CHIKV) and Zika (ZIKV) viruses co-circulate with dengue virus (DENV), hampering clinical diagnosis. We investigated clinical and epidemiological ...characteristics of arboviral infections during the introduction and spread of CHIKV and ZIKV through northeastern Brazil.
Surveillance for arboviral diseases among febrile patients was performed at an emergency health unit of Salvador, Brazil, between September 2014 and July 2016. We interviewed patients to collect data on symptoms, reviewed medical records to obtain the presumptive diagnoses, and performed molecular and serological testing to confirm DENV, CHIKV, ZIKV, or nonspecific flavivirus (FLAV) diagnosis.
Of 948 participants, 247 (26.1%) had an acute infection, of which 224 (23.6%) were single infections (DENV, 32 3.4%; CHIKV, 159 16.7%; ZIKV, 13 1.4%; and FLAV, 20 2.1%) and 23 (2.4%) coinfections (DENV/CHIKV, 13 1.4%; CHIKV/FLAV, 9 0.9%; and DENV/ZIKV, 1 0.1%). An additional 133 (14.0%) patients had serological evidence for a recent arboviral infection. Patients with ZIKV presented with rash and pruritus (69.2% each) more frequently than those with DENV (37.5% and 31.2%, respectively) and CHIKV (22.9% and 14.7%, respectively) (P < .001 for both comparisons). Conversely, arthralgia was more common in CHIKV (94.9%) and FLAV/CHIKV (100.0%) than in DENV (59.4%) and ZIKV (53.8%) (P < .001). A correct presumptive clinical diagnosis was made for 9%-23% of the confirmed patients.
Arboviral infections are frequent causes of febrile illness. Coinfections are not rare events during periods of intense, concomitant arboviral transmission. Given the challenge to clinically distinguish these infections, there is an urgent need for rapid, point-of-care, multiplex diagnostics.
Osteoporosis is a disease characterized by impairment of bone microarchitecture that causes high socioeconomic impacts in the world because of fractures and hospitalizations. Although dual-energy ...X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) is the gold standard for diagnosing the disease, access to DXA in developing countries is still limited due to its high cost, being present only in specialized hospitals. In this paper, we analyze the performance of Osseus, a low-cost portable device based on electromagnetic waves that measures the attenuation of the signal that crosses the medial phalanx of a patient's middle finger and was developed for osteoporosis screening. The analysis is carried out by predicting changes in bone mineral density using Osseus measurements and additional common risk factors used as input features to a set of supervised classification models, while the results from DXA are taken as target (real) values during the training of the machine learning algorithms. The dataset consisted of 505 patients who underwent osteoporosis screening with both devices (DXA and Osseus), of whom 21.8% were healthy and 78.2% had low bone mineral density or osteoporosis. A cross-validation with k-fold = 5 was considered in model training, while 20% of the whole dataset was used for testing. The obtained performance of the best model (Random Forest) presented a sensitivity of 0.853, a specificity of 0.879, and an F1 of 0.859. Since the Random Forest (RF) algorithm allows some interpretability of its results (through the impurity check), we were able to identify the most important variables in the classification of osteoporosis. The results showed that the most important variables were age, body mass index, and the signal attenuation provided by Osseus. The RF model, when used together with Osseus measurements, is effective in screening patients and facilitates the early diagnosis of osteoporosis. The main advantages of such early screening are the reduction of costs associated with exams, surgeries, treatments, and hospitalizations, as well as improved quality of life for patients.
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