Aim: To evaluate the microbial disinfection efficacy of a plasmachemical solution obtained by the activation of water with gliding electric discharges.
Methods and Results: Distilled water was ...activated for 5 min by a nonthermal quenched plasma of the glidarc type operating in humid air and at atmospheric pressure. The plasma‐activated water (PAW) was then used to treat planktonic and adherent cells of Staphylococcus epidermidis, Leuconostoc mesenteroides (as models of Gram‐positive bacteria), Hafnia alvei (a Gram‐negative bacteria) and Saccharomyces cerevisiae (as a yeast model). The treatments were less efficient on adherent cells than on planktonic cells in the case of bacteria, but not of S. cerevisiae. Inactivation was more effective for bacteria than for the yeast.
Conclusions: Significant reductions in microbial populations were achieved in all cases, demonstrating the effectiveness of this new approach to treat contaminated media.
Significance and Impact of the Study: PAW is a promising solution with potential application to the decontamination of equipment and surfaces.
To investigate the role of oxidative stress and/or mitochondrial impairment in the occurrence of acute kidney injury (AKI) during sepsis, we developed a sepsis-induced in vitro model using proximal ...tubular epithelial cells exposed to a bacterial endotoxin (lipopolysaccharide, LPS). This investigation has provided key features on the relationship between oxidative stress and mitochondrial respiratory chain activity defects.
LPS treatment resulted in an increase in the expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and NADPH oxidase 4 (NOX-4), suggesting the cytosolic overexpression of nitric oxide and superoxide anion, the primary reactive nitrogen species (RNS) and reactive oxygen species (ROS). This oxidant state seemed to interrupt mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation by reducing cytochrome c oxidase activity. As a consequence, disruptions in the electron transport and the proton pumping across the mitochondrial inner membrane occurred, leading to a decrease of the mitochondrial membrane potential, a release of apoptotic-inducing factors and a depletion of adenosine triphosphate. Interestingly, after being targeted by RNS and ROS, mitochondria became in turn producer of ROS, thus contributing to increase the mitochondrial dysfunction.
The role of oxidants in mitochondrial dysfunction was further confirmed by the use of iNOS inhibitors or antioxidants that preserve cytochrome c oxidase activity and prevent mitochondrial membrane potential dissipation. These results suggest that sepsis-induced AKI should not only be regarded as failure of energy status but also as an integrated response, including transcriptional events, ROS signaling, mitochondrial activity and metabolic orientation such as apoptosis.
•Mitochondrial respiratory chain dysfunction is a key player in sepsis-induced AKI.•NADPH oxidase-derived O2− production participates in the cytosolic oxidative•stress.•NO and ONOO- are important mediators in the LPS-induced mitochondrial•impairment.•LPS stress reduces cytochrome c oxidase activity and ATP production.•After being targeted by ROS, mitochondria became producer of ROS.
L’épisclérite et la sclérite sont deux entités clairement distinctes en termes de pronostic visuel, de fréquence de l’association à des maladies systémiques et de prise en charge thérapeutique. La ...pertinence de la classification clinique des épisclérites et sclérites établie en 1976 reste d’actualité pour ses corrélations avec les complications oculaires, l’association à des maladies générales et les orientations thérapeutiques. Une épisclérite nécessite très rarement des explorations poussées, et sa prise en charge est alors similaire à celle d’une sclérite. Dans cette revue, l’analyse de 1358 cas de sclérites issus des grandes séries publiées depuis 1976 montre une étiologie infectieuse sous-jacente dans 8 % des cas (herpès principalement), et une maladie systémique dans 28 % des cas en moyenne : principalement les rhumatismes inflammatoires (12,8 %) et les vascularites systémiques (7,8 %). Globalement, le risque de baisse visuelle lié aux sclérites est de 16 %. Néanmoins, le risque de maladie systémique associée, comme le risque de baisse visuelle, sont très variables selon le type de sclérite, culminant à 80 % et 50 % respectivement dans les formes nécrosantes. Comparativement aux séries anciennes de sclérites, les séries récentes montrent une nette diminution des formes nécrosantes, probablement liées aux progrès des thérapeutiques immunomodulatrices des 20 dernières années et à leur large utilisation dans les principales maladies responsables de sclérite. La prise en charge thérapeutique des sclérites demande l’implication de médecins rompus aux traitements immunosuppresseurs, nécessaires dans environ 50 % des cas.
Episcleritis and scleritis are distinct entities with regard to visual prognosis, risk of associated systemic disease, and treatment. The pertinence of the clinical classification of episcleritis and scleritis established in 1976 still persists, with significant differences in terms of visual prognosis, associated general conditions, and therapeutic choices according to each scleritis subtype. Episcleritis requires rarely to be referred to a tertiary care centre, and if so it has to be monitored similarly to scleritis. In this paper, an analysis of 1358 scleritis cases from the main distinct large series published since 1976 shows a mean proportion of 8% of infectious aetiologies (mainly herpes viruses), and 28% of systemic diseases with two main subgroups: inflammatory rheumatisms 12.8%, and systemic vasculitis 7.8%. Overall, the risk for visual loss following scleritis is around 16%. However, the risks of associated systemic disease and visual loss are both highly variable according to the type of scleritis, and culminate at 80% and 50% in the necrotizing subtype respectively. As compared with older series, the proportion of necrotizing scleritis is lower in recent series which is likely due to the advances obtained over the past 20 years in immunomodulatory therapy, as well as its wide use in the treatment of the main systemic conditions associated with scleritis. The treatment of scleritis should be managed by physicians who are experts in the use of immunosuppressive drugs that may be required in one out of two affected patients.
•Ability of bacteria to adhere on agarose hydrogels.•Impact of stiffness of hydrogels on bacterial adhesion.•Modification of adhered bacteria phenotype following the stiffness of hydrogels.
The aim ...of this paper is to study the impact of the substrate stiffness on the bacterial adhesion. For this purpose, agarose hydrogels are used as substrates with controlled mechanical properties. Indeed, the elastic modulus of these hydrogels, more precisely the shear storage moduli G′, evolves with the agarose concentration (in this study from 0.75% to 3%). Other physico-chemical characteristics of the surface, known to be involved in bacterial adhesion, as hydrophobicity, were confirmed to remain constant. Two marine bacterial strains, a positive Gram Bacillus sp. 4J6 and a negative Gram Pseudoalteromonas sp. D41 were selected. Their retention on the substrates was analysed by confocal laser scanning microscopy and by counting of viable adhered bacteria. It was demonstrated that surface elastic modulus correlated with bacterial retention. Bacteria D41 adhered in higher numbers to rigid surfaces. For 4J6, bacterial adhesion patterns were changed: clusterings were observed on surfaces with lower elastic modulus. Furthermore, a proteomic study, based on the total soluble proteome of D41 strain, highlights an impact of elastic modulus on proteins synthesis. These data demonstrated an adapted response of adhering bacteria on hydrogels of varying mechanical properties.
This article presents the development of the “Hoosier Vocal Emotions Corpus,” a stimulus set of recorded pseudo-words based on the pronunciation rules of English. The corpus contains 73 controlled ...audio pseudo-words uttered by two actresses in five different emotions (i.e., happiness, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust) and in a neutral tone, yielding 1,763 audio files. In this article, we describe the corpus as well as a validation study of the pseudo-words. A total of 96 native English speakers completed a forced choice emotion identification task. All emotions were recognized better than chance overall, with substantial variability among the different tokens. All of the recordings, including the ambiguous stimuli, are made freely available, and the recognition rates and the full confusion matrices for each stimulus are provided in order to assist researchers and clinicians in the selection of stimuli. The corpus has unique characteristics that can be useful for experimental paradigms that require controlled stimuli (e.g., electroencephalographic or fMRI studies). Stimuli from this corpus could be used by researchers and clinicians to answer a variety of questions, including investigations of emotion processing in individuals with certain temperamental or behavioral characteristics associated with difficulties in emotion recognition (e.g., individuals with psychopathic traits); in bilingual individuals or nonnative English speakers; in patients with aphasia, schizophrenia, or other mental health disorders (e.g., depression); or in training automatic emotion recognition algorithms. The Hoosier Vocal Emotions Corpus is available at
https://psycholinguistics.indiana.edu/hoosiervocalemotions.htm
.
Objective: To investigate the longitudinal development of callous-unemotional traits (CU) in middle childhood using developmental trajectory analyses in a large twin dataset and examine the degree to ...which genetic and environmental influences contributed to the CU trajectory-group membership in children. Method: The study included 9,462 youths from the Twins Early Development Study, a population-based sample of twins from the United Kingdom. Developmental trajectories were described using teachers' ratings of CU at 7, 9, and 12 years old. Results: We identified four trajectories of CU through general growth mixture modeling: stable high, increasing, decreasing, and stable low. In most cases, the trajectory-group membership was largely driven by genetic and to a lesser extent by nonshared environmental influences for boys and girls. The most notable exception was a strong contribution of shared environment for the girls in the stable-high trajectory group. Conclusions: Our findings suggest distinct developmental trajectories of CU from childhood to early adolescence, which are in most cases influenced by genetic factors and, to a lesser degree, by nonshared environmental factors. Highest heritability was observed for boys on a stable-high CU trajectory. Interestingly, the trajectory-group membership for girls on a stable-high CU trajectory appeared to be almost entirely driven by shared environmental influences. These differences in the etiology of stable-high CU in boys and girls have potential implications for clinical practice and studies attempting to identify genetic and environmental risk factors for high CU. (Contains 1 figure and 4 tables.)
Background
Google Trends (GTs) is a web‐based surveillance tool that explores the searching trends of specific queries via Google. This tool proposes to reflect the real‐life epidemiology of allergic ...rhinitis and asthma. However, the validation of GTs against pollen concentrations is missing at the country level.
Objectives
In the present study, we used GTs (a) to compare the terms related to allergy in France, (b) to assess seasonal variations across the country for 5 years and (c) to compare GTs and pollen concentrations for 2016.
Methods
Google Trends queries were initially searched to investigate the terms reflecting pollen and allergic diseases. 13‐ and 5‐year GTs were used in France. Then, 5‐year GTs were assessed in all metropolitan French regions to assess the seasonality of GTs. Finally, GTs were compared with pollen concentrations (Réseau National de Surveillance en Aerobiology) for 2016 in seven regions (GTs) and corresponding cities (pollen concentrations).
Results
The combination of searches for “allergy” as a disease, “pollen” as a disease cause and “ragweed” as a plant was needed to fully assess the pollen season in France. “Asthma” did not show any seasonality. Using the 5‐year GTs, an annual and clear seasonality of queries was found in all regions depending on the predicted pollen exposure for spring and a summer peak but not for winter peaks. The agreement between GT queries and pollen concentrations is usually poor except for spring trees and grasses. Moreover, cypress pollens are insufficiently reported by GTs.
Conclusions
Google Trends cannot predict the pollen season in France.
Google Trends (GTs) is a web‐based tool that explores searching trends. This tool was used to search the terms related to allergy in France, to assess 5‐year seasonal variations across the country and to compare GTs with the pollen concentrations for 2016. The combination of terms “allergy,” “pollen” and “ragweed” was needed to fully assess the pollen season in France. GTs cannot predict the pollen season in France.
Behaviour and genetic structure are intimately related: mating patterns and patterns of movement between groups or populations influence the movement of genetic variation across the landscape and ...from one generation to the next. In hybrid zones, the behaviour of the hybridizing taxa can also impact the incidence and outcome of hybridization events. Hybridization between yellow baboons and anubis baboons has been well documented in the Amboseli basin of Kenya, where more anubis‐like individuals tend to experience maturational and reproductive advantages. However, it is unknown whether these advantages are reflected in the genetic structure of populations surrounding this area. Here, we used microsatellite genotype data to evaluate the structure and composition of baboon populations in southern Kenya. Our results indicate that, unlike for mitochondrial DNA, microsatellite‐based measures of genetic structure concord with phenotypically based taxonomic distinctions and that the currently active hybrid zone is relatively narrow. Isolation with migration analysis revealed asymmetric gene flow in this region from anubis populations into yellow populations, in support of the anubis‐biased phenotypic advantages observed in Amboseli. Populations that are primarily yellow but that receive anubis gene flow exhibit higher levels of genetic diversity than yellow populations far from the introgression front. Our results support previous work that indicates a long history of hybridization and introgression among East African baboons. Specifically, it suggests that anubis baboons are in the process of gradual range expansion into the range of yellow baboons, a pattern potentially explained by behavioural and life history advantages that correlate with anubis ancestry.
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