Experimental studies have provided convincing evidence that food bioactive compounds (FBCs) have a positive biological impact on human health, exerting protective effects against non-communicable ...diseases (NCD) including cancer and cardiovascular (CVDs), metabolic, and neurodegenerative disorders (NDDs). These benefits have been associated with the presence of secondary metabolites, namely polyphenols, glucosinolates, carotenoids, terpenoids, alkaloids, saponins, vitamins, and fibres, among others, derived from their antioxidant, antiatherogenic, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, antithrombotic, cardioprotective, and vasodilator properties. Polyphenols as one of the most abundant classes of bioactive compounds present in plant-based foods emerge as a promising approach for the development of efficacious preventive agents against NCDs with reduced side effects. The aim of this review is to present comprehensive and deep insights into the potential of polyphenols, from their chemical structure classification and biosynthesis to preventive effects on NCDs, namely cancer, CVDs, and NDDS. The challenge of polyphenols bioavailability and bioaccessibility will be explored in addition to useful industrial and environmental applications. Advanced and emerging extraction techniques will be highlighted and the high-resolution analytical techniques used for FBCs characterization, identification, and quantification will be considered.
Carbene transfer reactions are very important transformations in organic synthesis, allowing the generation of structurally challenging products by catalysed cyclopropanation, cyclopropenation, ...carbene C-H, N-H, O-H, S-H, and Si-H insertion, and olefination of carbonyl compounds. In particular, chiral and achiral metalloporphyrins have been successfully explored as biomimetic catalysts for these carbene transfer reactions under both homogeneous and heterogeneous conditions. In this work the use of synthetic metalloporphyrins (MPorph, M = Fe, Ru, Os, Co, Rh, Ir, Sn) as homogeneous or heterogeneous catalysts for carbene transfer reactions in the last years is reviewed, almost exclusively focused on the literature since the year 2010, except when reference to older publications was deemed to be crucial.
Rationale
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is defined as a group of neurodevelopmental disorders whose symptoms include impaired communication and social interaction, restricted and repetitive patterns ...of behavior, and varying levels of intellectual disability. ASD is observed in early childhood and is one of the most severe chronic childhood disorders in prevalence, morbidity, and impact on society. It is usually accompanied by attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, and epilepsy. The treatment of ASD has low efficacy, possibly because it has a heterogeneous nature, and its neurobiological basis is not clearly understood. Drugs such as risperidone and aripiprazole are the only two drugs available that are recognized by the Food and Drug Administration, primarily for treating the behavioral symptoms of this disorder. These drugs have limited efficacy and a high potential for inducing undesirable effects, compromising treatment adherence. Therefore, there is great interest in exploring the endocannabinoid system, which modulates the activity of other neurotransmitters, has actions in social behavior and seems to be altered in patients with ASD. Thus, cannabidiol (CBD) emerges as a possible strategy for treating ASD symptoms since it has relevant pharmacological actions on the endocannabinoid system and shows promising results in studies related to disorders in the central nervous system.
Objectives
Review the preclinical and clinical data supporting CBD’s potential as a treatment for the symptoms and comorbidities associated with ASD, as well as discuss and provide information with the purpose of not trivializing the use of this drug.
A special source of difficulty in the statistical analysis is the possibility that some subjects may not have a complete observation of the response variable. Such incomplete observation of the ...response variable is called censoring. Censorship can occur for a variety of reasons, including limitations of measurement equipment, design of the experiment, and non-occurrence of the event of interest until the end of the study. In the presence of censoring, the dependence of the response variable on the explanatory variables can be explored through regression analysis. In this paper, we propose to examine the censorship problem in context of the class of asymmetric, i.e., we have proposed a linear regression model with censored responses based on skew scale mixtures of normal distributions. We develop a Monte Carlo EM (MCEM) algorithm to perform maximum likelihood inference of the parameters in the proposed linear censored regression models with skew scale mixtures of normal distributions. The MCEM algorithm has been discussed with an emphasis on the skew-normal, skew Student-t-normal, skew-slash and skew-contaminated normal distributions. To examine the performance of the proposed method, we present some simulation studies and analyze a real dataset.
Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death in the majority of developed and developing countries. African countries are currently facing an increase in both cardiovascular and transmitted ...diseases. In addition, cardiovascular risk varies among different socioeconomic groups. Thus, we determined the prevalence of modifiable cardiovascular risk factors in apparently healthy public-sector workers and investigated possible relationships with socioeconomic status.
We employed a cross-sectional study comprising 42.2% (n = 615) of the public-sector workers at Agostinho Neto University, 48% (n = 294) male and 52% (n= 321) female, with ages between 20 and 72 years and from various socioeconomic groups. The study was conducted from February 2009 to December 2010. Personal, anthropometric, biochemical, hemodynamic, socioeconomic, and physical activity data were collected.
The prevalence rates of cardiovascular risk factors were as follows: hypertension, 45.2% (men 46.3%, women 44.2%, P > 0.05); hypercholesterolemia, 11.1% (men 10.5%, women 11.5%, P > 0.05); low high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, 50.1% (men 36.9%, women 62.3%; P < 0.05); hypertriglyceridemia, 10.6% (men 12.6%, women 8.7%, P > 0.05); smoking, 7.2% (men 10.2%, women 4.4%; P < 0.05); diabetes, 5.7% (men 5.5%, women 5.9%, P > 0.05); overweight, 29.3% (men 27.3%, women 31.2%, P > 0.05); obesity, 19.6% (men 9.2%, women 29.0%; P < 0.05); sedentary lifestyle, 87.2% (men 83.0%, women 91,0%, P < 0.05); and left ventricular hypertrophy, 20% (men 32.0%, women 9.0%; P < 0.05). At least one risk factor was present in 27.7% of the sample; 15.2% had two risk factors, and 31.4% had three or more risk factors. Among the individuals with low socioeconomic status, 41.0% had three or more risk factors.
The results of this study suggest the existence of a high prevalence of multiple risk factors for cardiovascular disease in apparently healthy public-sector workers in Angola. The workers in lower socioeconomic groups had higher incidences of hypertension, smoking, and left ventricular hypertrophy.
Heterocyclic rings having nitrogen atoms are the molecular fragments most used in drug design by using the tools of medicinal chemistry. The 1,2,4-triazole rings are part of an extensive family of ...drugs that are in use in the pharmaceutical market. More recently, 1,2,3-triazole rings have begun to arouse the great interest of scientists and therefore, many researches have been developed seeking the synthesis of new substances and their possible biological activities. A number of articles have been published by us and others highlighting the synthetic and biological aspects of 1,2,3-triazoles. The growth of new substances of this class was largely due to the simple and selective synthetic method of 1,2,3- triazole ring developed by Sharpless et al. However, some 1,2,3-triazole cannot be synthesized by this method. This review focuses on other synthetic methods that give access to other variations around the 1,2,3-triazole core. The systematic arrangement in this review explores the possibility of providing practical guidance to alternatives of this heterocycle. It has been divided into sections according to the types of starting materials and reactions.
The emergence and reemergence of mosquito-borne diseases in Brazil such as yellow fever, zika, chikungunya, and dengue have had serious impacts on public health. Concerns have been raised due to the ...rapid dissemination of the chikungunya virus across the country since its first detection in 2014 in Northeast Brazil. In this work, we carried out on-site training activities in genomic surveillance in partnership with the National Network of Public Health Laboratories that have led to the generation of 422 chikungunya virus genomes from 12 Brazilian states over the past two years (2021-2022), a period that has seen more than 312 thousand chikungunya fever cases reported in the country. These genomes increased the amount of available data and allowed a more comprehensive characterization of the dispersal dynamics of the chikungunya virus East-Central-South-African lineage in Brazil. Tree branching patterns revealed the emergence and expansion of two distinct subclades. Phylogeographic analysis indicated that the northeast region has been the leading hub of virus spread towards other regions. Increased frequency of C > T transitions among the new genomes suggested that host restriction factors from the immune system such as ADAR and AID/APOBEC deaminases might be driving the genetic diversity of the chikungunya virus in Brazil.
The phytochemical investigation of the stem bark crude extract of Aniba firmula (Lauraceae) led to the isolation of undescribed bicyclic 3.2.1 octane neolignans, 1 and 2, characterized by unusual ...bicyclic patterns and two other known bicyclic neolignans 3 and 4. Anti-inflammatory bicyclic 3.2.1 octane neolignans metabolites were previously reported in the literature, and the A. firmula stands out in the Lauraceae family as a source of potentially bioactive compounds. Thus, herein the anti-inflammatory potential of four isolated compounds from A. firmula was accessed via an ex vivo anti-inflammatory model that included plasmatic quantification of the prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) inflammatory mediator. Compounds 2 and 3 exhibited significant anti-inflammatory activity by inhibiting the production of PGE2 in plasma samples, thus by interference with the cyclooxygenase (COX) inflammatory pathway. Therefore, these findings demonstrate that the bicyclic octane neolignan classes 3.2.1 can present anti-inflammatory potential.
Source-to-sink systems are poorly known in tropical rivers. For the Amazonian rivers, the majority of the provenance studies remain focused on the suspended load, implying a poor understanding of the ...processes governing production and distribution of sands. In this study, we perform heavy mineral and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) analysis to cover the entire spectrum (heavy and light minerals fraction) of 29 sand samples of the Lower Madeira river region (Amazon and Madeira rivers), of which the main goal was to find provenance indicators specific to these rivers. Despite the tropical humid climate, the sands of the Amazon and Lower Madeira rivers are rich in unstable heavy minerals as augite, hypersthene, green hornblende and andalusite. The Madeira river is highlighted by its higher content of andalusite, with source attributed to the Amazon Craton (medium-to-high grade metamorphic rocks), while the Amazon river, upstream of the Madeira river mouth, has a signature of augite and hypersthene, that suggests an Andean provenance (volcanic rocks). Sands from the Madeira river can be tracked in the Amazon river by the increasing concentration in andalusite. OSL analysis of the light minerals fraction was used as an index of feldspar concentration and sedimentary history of quartz grains. Lower feldspar concentration and quartz grains with longer sedimentary history (higher OSL sensitivity) also point to a major contribution of cratonic sources for the sands in the Madeira river. While the sands from the Lower Madeira would be mainly supplied by cratonic rocks, previous work recognised that suspended sediments (silt and clay) are derived from Andean rocks. Therefore, we interpret a decoupling between the sources of sand and mud (silt and clay) under transport in the Madeira river. Andean sands (rich in augite and hypersthene) would be trapped in the foreland zones of the Beni and Mamoré tributaries. In the Amazon river sands, the low OSL sensitivity of the quartz, higher content of feldspar and unstable heavy mineral assemblage dominated by augite and hypersthene suggest both a fast transport from Andean sources with fine sediment bypass over foreland areas.
•Despite climate, Lower Madeira river sands are enriched in unstable minerals.•Madeira river is andalusite rich, low feldspar/quartz, and high quartz OSL sensitivity.•Amazon river is augite rich, high feldspar/quartz, and low quartz OSL sensitivity.•There was a decoupling between sand and mud supplied to Madeira river.•There was a poor mixing of sands on the confluence between these two rivers.
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