This study investigates the effects of replacing dietary casein by soya protein on the underlying mechanisms involved in the impaired metabolic fate of glucose and lipid metabolisms in the heart of ...dyslipidaemic rats chronically fed (8 months) a sucrose-rich (62·5 %) diet (SRD). To test this hypothesis, Wistar rats were fed an SRD for 4 months. From months 4 to 8, half the animals continued with the SRD and the other half were fed an SRD in which casein was substituted by soya. The control group received a diet with maize starch as the carbohydrate source. Compared with the SRD-fed group, the following results were obtained. First, soya protein significantly (P<0·001) reduced the plasma NEFA levels and normalised dyslipidaemia and glucose homoeostasis, improving insulin resistance. The protein levels of fatty acid translocase at basal state and under insulin stimulation and the protein levels and activity of muscle-type carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1 were normalised. Second, a significant (P<0·001) reduction of TAG, long-chain acyl CoA and diacylglycerol levels was observed in the heart muscle. Third, soya protein significantly increased (P<0·01) GLUT4 protein level under insulin stimulation and normalised glucose phosphorylation and oxidation. A reduction of phosphorylated AMP protein kinase protein level was recorded without changes in uncoupling protein 2 and PPARα. Fourth, hydroxyproline concentration decreased in the left ventricle and hypertension was normalised. The new information provided shows the beneficial effects of soya protein upon the altered pathways of glucose and lipid metabolism in the heart muscle of this rat model.
Just as failure to diagnose an acute ischemic stroke (AIS) in a timely manner affects the patient's outcome; an inaccurate and misplaced impression of the AIS diagnosis is not without its drawbacks. ...Here, we introduce a two-stage clinical tool to aid in the screening of AIS cases in need of imaging in the emergency department (ED).
This was a multicenter cross-sectional study, in which suspected AIS patients who underwent a brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) were included. The 18 variables from nine existing AIS screening tools were extracted and a two-stage screening tool was developed based on expert opinion (stage-one or rule in stage) and multivariate logistic regression analysis (stage-two or rule out stage). Then, the screening performance characteristics of the two-stage mode was evaluated.
Data from 803 patients with suspected AIS were analyzed. Among them, 57.4 % were male, and their overall mean age was 66.9 ± 13.9 years. There were 561 (69.9%) cases with a final confirmed diagnosis of AIS. The total sensitivity and specificity of the two-stage screening model were 99.11% (95% CI: 98.33 to 99.89) and 35.95% (95% CI: 29.90 to 42.0), respectively. Also, the positive and negative predictive values of two-stage screening model were 78.20% (95% CI: 75.17 to 81.24) and 94.57% (95% CI: 89.93 to 81.24), respectively. The area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of the two-stage screening model for AIS was 67.53% (95% CI: 64.48 to 70.58). Overall, using the two-stage screening model presented in this study, more than 11% of suspected AIS patients were not referred for MRI, and the error of this model is about 5%.
Here, we proposed a 2-step model for approaching suspected AIS patients in ED for an attempt to safely exclude patients with the least probability of having an AIS as a diagnosis. However, further surveys are required to assess its accuracy and it may even need some modifications.
Purpose
Pyruvate kinase deficiency (PKD) is a rare disease and understanding of its epidemiology and associated burden remains limited. With no current curative therapy, clinical manifestations can ...be life threatening, clinically managed by maintaining adequate hemoglobin levels through transfusion and subsequent support, but with frequent complications. Treatment goals are to maintain/improve the patient’s quality of life. With new therapies, reliable, valid, and relevant patient-reported outcome (PRO) tools are required for use in clinical trials.
Methods
Systematic literature search identified no current PRO tools for capturing/measuring the impact of PKD and treatments in clinical trials. Therefore, the search strategy was revised to consider conditions analogous to PKD in terms of symptoms and impacts that might serve as parallels to the experience in PKD; this included sickle cell anemia, thalassemia, and hemolytic anemia. Psychometric properties, strengths, and weakness of selected appropriate PRO instruments were compared, and recommendations made for choice of PRO tools.
Results
In adult populations, EORTC QLQ C30 and SF-36v2 are recommended, the former being a basic minimum, covering generic HRQoL, and core symptoms such as fatigue. In pediatric populations, PedsQL Generic Core Scale to measure HRQoL and PedsQL MFS scale to measure fatigue are recommended.
Conclusions
Some symptoms/life impacts may be unique to PKD and not observable in analogous conditions. A ‘Physico-Psychosocial Model’ derived from the ‘Medical Model’ is proposed to form the basis for a hypothesized conceptual framework to address the development of PKD-specific PRO instruments.
Metabolic syndrome (MS) is a cluster of risk factors for the development of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes mellitus. Some dietary bioactive compounds such as peptides can exert dual ...antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects. The aim of this study was to analyze the effects of microencapsulated brewers' spent grain peptides (BSG-P-MC) on hepatic injury, lipid peroxidation, oxidative stress and inflammation in the liver-spleen axis in Wistar rats fed with a sucrose-rich diet (SRD). Male rats received for 100 days a reference diet (RD), SRD or RD and SRD containing 700 mg per kg body weight per day of BSG-P-MC. The results demonstrated that BSG-P-MC reversed injury, lipid peroxidation, and oxidative stress in the liver. For the spleen, BSG-P-MC decreased the levels of lipid peroxidation, CAT activity, NFκB, PAI-1 and F4/80 protein mass levels with respect to the SRD-fed rats. Three peptides identified by LC-MS/MS from BSG-P-MC after
gastrointestinal digestion showed high
free radical scavenging activity (LPRDPYVDPMAPLPR, ANLPRDPYVDPMAPLPRSGPE and ANLPRDPYVDPMAPLPR). Moreover, two identified peptides presented high
anti-inflammatory properties (LTIGDTVPNLELDSTHGKIR and VDPDEKDAQGQLPSRT). This study is the first report of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties of microencapsulated BSG-peptides exerted in the liver-spleen axis in a MS rodent model.
El Sistema de Afloramiento de la Corriente de Humboldt, definido como “a Large Marine Ecosystem”, se extiende a lo largo de la Costa Occidental de América del Sur, desde la zona Centro Sur de Chile ...(app. 42°S) hasta el Norte del Perú (4°S). Es uno de los mayores sistemas de afloramiento del mundo y responsable por los extraordinariamente altos niveles de producción. Es considerado un sistema clase 1, altamente productivo (>300 g·C/m2-año). Los altos valores de producción primaria de este sistema soportan las más grandes pesquerías a nivel mundial (Alheit & Bernal, 1993). Alrededor del 18-20% de las capturas mundiales provienen de este sistema, específicamente de pelágicos pequeños como anchoveta (Engraulis ringens Jenyns, 1842), sardina (Sardinops sagax (Jenyns, 1842)) y jurel (Trachurus murphyi Nichols, 1920). De un sistema de estas características deberá esperarse una alta diversidad biológica.
X-ray free-electron lasers delivering up to 1 × 1013 coherent photons in femtosecond pulses are bringing about a revolution in X-ray science. However, some plasma-based soft X-ray lasers are ...attractive because they spontaneously emit an even higher number of photons (1 × 1015 ), but these are emitted in incoherent and long (hundreds of picoseconds) pulses as a consequence of the amplification of stochastic incoherent self-emission. Previous experimental attempts to seed such amplifiers with coherent femtosecond soft X-rays resulted in as yet unexplained weak amplification of the seed and strong amplification of incoherent spontaneous emission. Using a time-dependent Maxwell-Bloch model describing the amplification of both coherent and incoherent soft X-rays in plasma, we explain the observed inefficiency and propose a new amplification scheme based on the seeding of stretched high harmonics using a transposition of chirped pulse amplification to soft X-rays. This scheme is able to deliver 5 × 1014 fully coherent soft X-ray photons in 200 fs pulses and with a peak power of 20 GW.
Seeding soft-X-ray plasma amplifiers with high harmonics has been demonstrated to generate high-brightness soft-X-ray laser pulses with full spatial and temporal coherence. The interaction between ...the injected coherent field and the swept-gain medium has been modelled. However, no experiment has been conducted to probe the gain dynamics when perturbed by a strong external seed field. Here, we report the first X-ray pump-X-ray probe measurement of the nonlinear response of a plasma amplifier perturbed by a strong soft-X-ray ultra-short pulse. We injected a sequence of two time-delayed high-harmonic pulses (λ = 18.9 nm) into a collisionally excited nickel-like molybdenum plasma to measure with femtosecond resolution the gain depletion induced by the saturated amplification of the high-harmonic pump and its subsequent recovery. The measured fast gain recovery in 1.5-1.75 ps confirms the possibility to generate ultra-intense, fully phase-coherent soft-X-ray lasers by chirped pulse amplification in plasma amplifiers.
The near-infrared (NIR) emission lines of Fe+ at 1.257, 1.321, and 1.644 m share the same upper level; their ratios can then be exploited to derive the extinction to a line emitting region once the ...relevant spontaneous emission coefficients are known. This is commonly done, normally from low-resolution spectra, in observations of shocked gas from jets driven by Young Stellar Objects. In this paper we review this method, provide the relevant equations, and test it by analyzing high-resolution (R ∼ 50,000) NIR spectra of two young stars, namely the Herbig Be star HD 200775 and the Be star V1478 Cyg, which exhibit intense emission lines. The spectra were obtained with the new GIANO echelle spectrograph at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo. Notably, the high-resolution spectra allowed checking the effects of overlapping telluric absorption lines. A set of various determinations of the Einstein coefficients are compared to show how much the available computations affect extinction derivation. The most recently obtained values are probably good enough to allow reddening determination within 1 visual mag of accuracy. Furthermore, we show that Fe ii line ratios from low-resolution pure emission-line spectra in general are likely to be in error due to the impossibility to properly account for telluric absorption lines. If low-resolution spectra are used for reddening determinations, we advice that the ratio 1.644 / 1.257 , rather than 1.644 / 1.321 , should be used, being less affected by the effects of telluric absorption lines.
Purpose
The present study analyzes the effect of the replacement of dietary casein by soy protein on the mechanisms underlying dyslipidemia, liver steatosis and altered glucose and lipid metabolism ...in the skeletal muscle which developed in rats fed long-term a sucrose-rich diet (SRD).
Methods
Wistar rats were fed a SRD for 4 months. From months 4 to 8, half the animals continued with the SRD, and the other half were fed a SRD in which the source of protein casein was replaced by soy. The control group received a diet with cornstarch as source of carbohydrate.
Results
Compared to SRD-fed animals, the rats fed soy showed: A—in the liver: reduction of triglyceride and cholesterol storage and decreased steatosis; normalization of mature forms of the protein mass levels of SREBP-1 and the activities of lipogenic enzymes, while the protein mass level of PPAR-α and fatty acid oxidase activity increased. B—in the gastrocnemius muscle: normalization of the enhanced lipid storage and the altered glucose oxidation, improving glucose phosphorylation; decreasing protein mass level of nPKCθ in the membrane fraction; reversion of the impaired insulin-stimulated glucose transporter Glut-4, and glucose-6-phosphate and glycogen concentrations. Besides, dyslipidemia and glucose homeostasis returned to control values.
Conclusions
This study provides new information concerning some key mechanisms related to the effect of dietary soy on hepatic lipid metabolism and insulin action in the skeletal muscle in the presence of pre-existing dyslipidemia and insulin resistance induced by a SRD.
We report the first experimental demonstration of a laser-driven circularly polarized soft-x-ray laser chain. It has been achieved by seeding a 32.8 nm Kr ix plasma amplifier with a high-order ...harmonic beam, which has been circularly polarized using a four-reflector polarizer. Our measurements testify that the amplified radiation maintains the initial polarization of the seed pulse in good agreement with our Maxwell-Bloch modeling. The resulting fully circular soft-x-ray laser beam exhibits a Gaussian profile and yields about 10^{10} photons per shot, fulfilling the requirements for laboratory-scale photon-demanding application experiments.
PDF
