El presente artículo consiste en una bitácora y divagación reflexiva a partir de la revisión y puesta en diálogo de dos proceso de investigación artística desarrollados entre los años 2014-2016 y ...2019-2020, en torno al Oasis de Niebla de Alto Patache, Desierto de Atacama, Región de Tarapacá (Chile). Articulando nodos especulativos entre procesos diferidos espacial y temporalmente, el artículo busca establecer conexiones y derivas entre un primer proceso de investigación mediante metodología de trabajo de de exploración de campo, y un segundo proceso de investigación mediante metodología de análisis de crónicas y archivos históricos. De esta manera, el artículo va hilvanando preguntas y relaciones entre la calidad material, sentidos simbólicos y denominación que da nombre al fenómeno de niebla costera llamada “camanchaca”, transitando también por las nociones de desierto, frontera y visibilidad, y reflexionando sobre sus implicancias en la configuración del imaginario paisajístico en el desierto tarapaqueño.
During the last years, an extraordinary effort has been made to identify biomarkers as potential tools for improving prevention, diagnosis, drug response and drug development in psychiatric ...disorders. Contrary to other diseases, mental illnesses are classified by diagnostic categories with a broad variety list of symptoms. Consequently, patients diagnosed from the same psychiatric illness present a great heterogeneity in their clinical presentation. This fact together with the incomplete knowledge of the neurochemical alterations underlying mental disorders, contribute to the limited efficacy of current pharmacological options. In this respect, the identification of biomarkers in psychiatry is becoming essential to facilitate diagnosis through the developing of markers that allow to stratify groups within the syndrome, which in turn may lead to more focused treatment options. In order to shed light on this issue, this review summarizes the concept and types of biomarkers including an operational definition for therapeutic development. Besides, the advances in this field were summarized and sorted into five categories, which include genetics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and epigenetics. While promising results were achieved, there is a lack of biomarker investigations especially related to treatment response to psychiatric conditions. This review includes a final conclusion remarking the future challenges required to reach the goal of developing valid, reliable and broadly-usable biomarkers for psychiatric disorders and their treatment. The identification of factors predicting treatment response will reduce trial-and-error switches of medications facilitating the discovery of new effective treatments, being a crucial step towards the establishment of greater personalized medicine.
This study establishes a fetal cannabinoid syndrome model to evaluate the effects of high doses of dronabinol (synthetic THC) during pregnancy and lactation on behavioral and brain changes in male ...and female progeny and their susceptibility to alcohol consumption. Female C57BL/6J mice received dronabinol (10 mg/kg/12 h, p.o.) from gestational day 5 to postnatal day 21. On the weaning day, the offspring were separated by sex, and on postnatal day 60, behavioral and neurobiological changes were analyzed. Mice exposed to dronabinol exhibited increased anxiogenic and depressive-like behaviors and cognitive impairment. These behaviors were associated with neurodevelopment-related gene and protein expression changes, establishing, for the first time, an association among behavioral changes, cognitive impairment, and neurobiological alterations. Exposure to dronabinol during pregnancy and lactation disrupted the reward system, leading to increased motivation to consume alcohol in the offspring. All these modifications exhibited sex-dependent patterns. These findings reveal the pronounced adverse effects on fetal neurodevelopment resulting from cannabis use during pregnancy and lactation and strongly suggest the need to prevent mothers who use cannabis in this period from the severe and permanent side effects on behavior and brain development that may occur in their children.
The potential therapeutic use of some
plant compounds has been attracting great interest, especially for managing neuropsychiatric disorders due to the relative lack of efficacy of the current ...treatments. Numerous studies have been carried out using the main phytocannabinoids, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD). CBD displays an interesting pharmacological profile without the potential for becoming a drug of abuse, unlike THC. In this review, we focused on the anxiolytic, antidepressant, and antipsychotic effects of CBD found in animal and human studies. In rodents, results suggest that the effects of CBD depend on the dose, the strain, the administration time course (acute vs. chronic), and the route of administration. In addition, certain key targets have been related with these CBD pharmacological actions, including cannabinoid receptors (CB
r and CB
r), 5-HT
receptor and neurogenesis factors. Preliminary clinical trials also support the efficacy of CBD as an anxiolytic, antipsychotic, and antidepressant, and more importantly, a positive risk-benefit profile. These promising results support the development of large-scale studies to further evaluate CBD as a potential new drug for the treatment of these psychiatric disorders.
This study evaluated the effects of cannabidiol (CBD) and/or sertraline (STR) on behavioral and gene expression alterations induced by a new chronic animal model of post-traumatic stress disorder ...(PTSD). C57BL/6J male mice were repeatedly exposed to physical and psychogenic alternate stressful stimuli. Fear-related memory and anxiety-like behaviors were evaluated. The effects of the administration of CBD (20 mg/kg, i.p.) and/or STR (10 mg/kg, p.o.) were analyzed on behavioral and gene expression changes induced by the model of PTSD. Gene expression alterations of targets related with stress regulation, endocannabinoid and serotonergic systems were analyzed by real-time PCR. The results revealed an increased and long-lasting fear-related memory and anxiety-like behaviors in mice exposed to the animal model of PTSD. Treatment with CBD improved these behaviors in PTSD animals, effects that were significantly potentiated when combined with STR. Gene expression analyses revealed a long-term increase of corticotropin releasing factor (
Crf
) that was significantly normalized with the combination CBD plus STR. Cannabinoid receptors (
Cnr1
and
Cnr2
) were up regulated in PTSD mice whereas the serotonin transporter (
Slc6a4
) was reduced. Interestingly, CBD and STR alone or combined induced a significant and marked increase of
Slc6a4
gene expression. These results point out the cooperative action of the combination CBD plus STR to enhance fear extinction and reduce anxiety-like behaviors, normalizing gene expression alterations in this animal model of PTSD and suggesting that the combination of CBD with STR deserves to be further explored for the treatment of patients with PTSD.
Poultry and poultry‐derived products such as meat and eggs are among the main sources of non‐typhoidal Salmonella (NTS) transmission to humans. Therefore, we performed a systematic review and used ...random‐effects meta‐analyses to (1) estimate the prevalence of NTS in poultry samples from birds, products and subproducts and environmental samples, (2) examine the diversity and frequency of their serovars and (3) estimate the prevalence and profiles of anti‐microbial resistance (AMR) in NTS isolates reported in studies from the Americas. We included 157 studies from 15 countries comprising 261,408 poultry samples and estimated an overall pooled prevalence of 17.9% (95% Confidence Interval: 10.8–26.3) in birds, 21.8% (17.7–26.1) in products and subproducts and 29.5% (24.2–35.1) in environmental samples. At the national level, the prevalence of NTS was heterogeneous across countries with the highest values in Mexico, the United States and Canada. In total, 131 serovars were identified from 13,388 isolates; Heidelberg, Kentucky, Enteritidis and Typhimurium were the most prevalent in the overall top 10 ranking (range 6.5%–20.8%). At the national level, Enteritidis and Typhimurium were identified in most of the countries, though with national differences in their ranks. The prevalence of AMR increased from 24.1% for 1 antibiotic to 36.2% for 2–3 antibiotics and 49.6% for ≥ 4 antibiotics. Kentucky, Heidelberg, Typhimurium and Enteritidis were the serovars with the highest prevalence of AMR. Besides, tetracycline, ampicillin, streptomycin, ceftiofur and amoxicillin‐clavulanic acid were the most frequent antibiotics to which NTS showed resistance. In conclusion, NTS was distributed through the avian production chain with high and heterogeneous values of prevalence in poultry samples. Besides, there were distinctive patterns of serovars distribution across countries and an alarming prevalence of AMR among zoonotic serovars.
The high heterogeneity of psychiatric disorders leads to a lack of diagnostic precision. Therefore, the search of biomarkers is a fundamental aspect in psychiatry to reach a more personalized ...medicine. The endocannabinoid system (ECS) has gained increasing interest due to its involvement in many different functional processes in the brain, including the regulation of emotions, motivation, and cognition. This article reviews the role of the main components of the ECS as biomarkers in certain psychiatric disorders. Studies carried out in rodents evaluating the effects of pharmacological and genetic manipulation of cannabinoid receptors or endocannabinoids (eCBs) degrading enzymes were included. Likewise, the ECS-related alterations occurring at the molecular level in animal models reproducing some behavioral and/or neuropathological aspects of psychiatric disorders were reviewed. Furthermore, clinical studies evaluating gene or protein alterations in
brain tissue or
blood, plasma, and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) samples were analyzed. Also, the results from neuroimaging studies using positron emission tomography (PET) or functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) were included. This review shows the close involvement of cannabinoid receptor 1 (CB1r) in stress regulation and the development of mood disorders anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder (BD), in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as well as in the etiopathogenesis of schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), or eating disorders (
anorexia and bulimia nervosa). On the other hand, recent results reveal the potential therapeutic action of the endocannabinoid tone manipulation by inhibition of eCBs degrading enzymes, as well as by the modulation of cannabinoid receptor 2 (CB2r) activity on anxiolytic, antidepressive, or antipsychotic associated effects. Further clinical research studies are needed; however, current evidence suggests that the components of the ECS may become promising biomarkers in psychiatry to improve, at least in part, the diagnosis and pharmacological treatment of psychiatric disorders.
Drug treatments available for the management of substance use disorders (SUD) present multiple limitations in efficacy, lack of approved treatments or alarming relapse rates. These facts hamper the ...clinical outcome and the quality of life of the patients supporting the importance to develop new pharmacological agents. Lately, several reports suggest that cannabidiol (CBD) presents beneficial effects relevant for the management of neurological disorders such as epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, or Alzheimer’s diseases. Furthermore, there is a large body of evidence pointing out that CBD improves cognition, neurogenesis and presents anxiolytic, antidepressant, antipsychotic, and neuroprotective effects suggesting potential usefulness for the treatment of neuropsychiatric diseases and SUD. Here we review preclinical and clinical reports regarding the effects of CBD on the regulation of the reinforcing, motivational and withdrawal-related effects of different drugs of abuse such as alcohol, opioids (morphine, heroin), cannabinoids, nicotine, and psychostimulants (cocaine, amphetamine). Furthermore, a special section of the review is focused on the neurobiological mechanisms that might be underlying the ‘anti-addictive’ action of CBD through the regulation of dopaminergic, opioidergic, serotonergic, and endocannabinoid systems as well as hippocampal neurogenesis. The multimodal pharmacological profile described for CBD and the specific regulation of addictive behavior-related targets explains, at least in part, its therapeutic effects on the regulation of the reinforcing and motivational properties of different drugs of abuse. Moreover, the remarkable safety profile of CBD, its lack of reinforcing properties and the existence of approved medications containing this compound (Sativex®, Epidiolex®) increased the number of studies suggesting the potential of CBD as a therapeutic intervention for SUD. The rising number of publications with substantial results on the valuable therapeutic innovation of CBD for treating SUD, the undeniable need of new therapeutic agents to improve the clinical outcome of patients with SUD, and the upcoming clinical trials involving CBD endorse the relevance of this review.
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