Haleymoss0790
Antipredatory behavioral responses tend to be energetically expensive, and prey species thus need to resolve trade-offs between these behaviors and other activities such as foraging and mating. While these trade-offs have been well-studied across taxa, less is known about how costs and benefits vary in different life-history contexts, and associated consequences. To address this question, we compared responses of the yellow fever mosquito (Aedes aegypti [Diptera Culicidae]) to predation threat from guppy (Poecilia reticulata [Cyprinodontiformes Poeciliidae]) across two life-history stages-larvae (data from previous study) and pupae (from this study). Pupae are motile but do not feed and are comparable to larvae in terms of behavior. To understand how physiological costs affect the threat sensitivity of pupae, we used sex (with size as a covariate) as a proxy for stored energy reserves, and quantified movement and space use patterns of male (small-sized) and female (large-sized) pupae when exposed to predation threat. We found that pupae did not alter movement when exposed to predator cues but instead altered spatial use by spending more time at the bottom of the water column. We found no effect of pupa sex (or size) on the behavioral responses we measured. We conclude that pupa behavior, both antipredatory and otherwise, is primarily targeted at minimizing energy expenditure, as compared with larval behavior, which appears to balance energy expenditure between the opposing pressures of foraging and of avoiding predation. We suggest that antipredatory defenses in metamorphosing prey are modulated by varying energetic trade-offs associated with different life-history stages.The COVID-19 pandemic has slowed research progress, with particularly disruptive effects on investigations of addressing urgent public health challenges, such as chronic pain. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Department of Defense (DoD) Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Pain Management Collaboratory (PMC) supports 11 large-scale, multisite, embedded pragmatic clinical trials (PCTs) in military and veteran health systems. The PMC rapidly developed and enacted a plan to address key issues in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The PMC tracked and collaborated in developing plans for addressing COVID-19 impacts across multiple domains and characterized the impact of COVID-19 on PCT operations, including delays in recruitment and revisions of study protocols. A harmonized participant questionnaire will facilitate later meta-analyses and cross-study comparisons of the impact of COVID-19 across all 11 PCTs. The pandemic has affected intervention delivery, outcomes, regulatory and ethics issues, participant recruitment, and study design. The PMC took concrete steps to ensure scientific rigor while encouraging flexibility in the PCTs, while paying close attention to minimizing the burden on research participants, investigators, and clinical care teams. Sudden changes in the delivery of pain management interventions will probably alter treatment effects measured via PMC PCTs. Through the use of harmonized instruments and surveys, we are capturing these changes and plan to monitor the impact on research practices, as well as on health outcomes. Analyses of patient-reported measures over time will inform potential relationships between chronic pain, mental health, and various socioeconomic stressors common among Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic.In plants, post-transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS) tightly regulates development, maintains genome stability and protects plant against foreign genes. PTGS can be triggered by virus infection, transgene, and endogenous transcript, thus commonly serves as an RNA-based immune mechanism. Accordingly, based on the initiating factors, PTGS can be divided into viral-PTGS, transgene-PTGS, and endo-gene-PTGS. Unlike the intensely expressed invading transgenes and viral genes that frequently undergo PTGS, most endogenous genes do not trigger PTGS, except for a few that can produce endogenous small RNAs (sRNAs), including microRNA (miRNA) and small interfering RNA (siRNA). Different lengths of miRNA and siRNA, mainly 21-, 22- or 24-nucleotides (nt) exert diverse functions, ranging from target mRNA degradation, translational inhibition, or DNA methylation and chromatin modifications. The abundant 21-nt miRNA or siRNA, processed by RNase-III enzyme DICER-LIKE 1 (DCL1) and DCL4, respectively, have been well studied in the PTGS pathways. By contrast, the scarceness of endogenous 22-nt sRNAs that are primarily processed by DCL2 limits their research, although a few encouraging studies have been reported recently. Therefore, we review here our current understanding of diverse PTGS pathways triggered by a variety of sRNAs and summarize the distinct features of the 22-nt sRNA mediated PTGS.
The use of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) for the care of critically ill adult patients has increased over the past decade. It has been utilized in more austere locations, to include combat wounded. The U.S. military established the Acute Lung Rescue Team in 2005 to transport and care for patients unable to be managed by standard medical evacuation resources. In 2012, the U.S. military expanded upon this capacity, establishing an ECMO program at Brooke Army Medical Center. To maintain currency, the program treats both military and civilian patients.
We conducted a single-center retrospective review of all patients transported by the sole U.S. military ECMO program from September 2012 to December 2019. We analyzed basic demographic data, ECMO indication, transport distance range, survival to decannulation and discharge, and programmatic growth.
The U.S. military ECMO team conducted 110 ECMO transports. Of these, 88 patients (80%) were transported to our facility and 81 (73.6%) were cannulatedl care transport, survival to decannulation and discharge rates exceed national benchmarks as described in ELSO published data. The ability to cannulate patients in remote locations and provide critical care transport to a military medical treatment facility has allowed the U.S. military to maintain readiness of a critical medical asset.
We assessed the relationship between specialist and non-specialist admissions for alcohol withdrawal since the introduction of the UK government Health and Social Care Act in 2012.
Using publicly available national data sets from 2009 to 2019, we compared the number of alcohol withdrawal admissions and estimated costs in specialist and non-specialist treatment settings.
A significant negative correlation providing strong evidence of an association was observed between the fall in specialist and rise in non-specialist admissions. Significant cost reductions within specialist services were displaced to non-specialist settings.
The shift in demand from specialist to non-specialist alcohol admissions due to policy changes in England should be reversed by specialist workforce investment to improve outcomes. In the meantime, non-specialist services and staff must be resourced and equipped to meet the complex needs of these service users.
The shift in demand from specialist to non-specialist alcohol admissions due to policy changes in England should be reversed by specialist workforce investment to improve outcomes. In the meantime, non-specialist services and staff must be resourced and equipped to meet the complex needs of these service users.
The present multicenter study aimed at defining the clinical profile of patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and comorbid migraine.
Demographic and clinical information for 1410 MDD patients with vs without concurrent migraine were compared by descriptive statistics, analyses of covariance, and binary logistic regression analyses.
The point prevalence rate for comorbid migraine was 13.5% for female and 6.2% for male patients. MDD + migraine patients were significantly younger, heavier, more likely female, of non-Caucasian origin, outpatient, and suffering from asthma. The presence of MDD + migraine resulted in a significantly higher functional disability. First-line antidepressant treatment strategy revealed a trend towards agomelatine. Second-generation antipsychotics were significantly less often administered for augmentation treatment in migraineurs. CA074methylester Overall, MDD + migraine patients tended to respond worse to their pharmacotherapy.
Treatment guidelines for comorbid depression and migraine are warranted to ensure optimal efficacy and avoid possible pitfalls in psychopharmacotherapy, including serotonin syndrome.
Treatment guidelines for comorbid depression and migraine are warranted to ensure optimal efficacy and avoid possible pitfalls in psychopharmacotherapy, including serotonin syndrome.The aim of the present study was to determine the effect of microRNA (miR)-132 on cardiac fibrosis in myocardial infarction (MI)-induced heart failure and angiotensin (Ang) II-treated cardiac fibroblasts (CFs). Experiments were carried out in Sprague-Dawley rat treatment with ligation of left coronary artery to induce heart failure, and in CFs administration of Ang II to induce fibrosis. The level of miR-132 was increased in the heart of rats with MI-induced heart failure and the Ang II-treated CFs. In MI rats, left ventricle (LV) ejection fraction, fractional shortening, the maximum of the first differentiation of LV pressure (LV +dp/dtmax) and decline (LV -dp/dtmax) and LV systolic pressure (LVSP) were reduced, and LV end-systolic diameter (LVESD), LV end-diastolic diameter (LVEDD), LV volumes in systole (LVVS) and LV volumes in diastole (LVVD) were increased, which were reversed by miR-132 agomiR but deteriorated by miR-132 antagomiR. The expression levels of collagen I, collagen III, transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β), and α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) were increased in the heart of rat with MI-induced heart failure and CFs administration of Ang II. These increases were inhibited by miR-132 agomiR but enhanced by miR-132 antagomiR treatment. MiR-132 inhibited PTEN expression, and attenuated PI3K/Akt signal pathway in CFs. These results indicated that the up-regulation of miR-132 improved the cardiac dysfunction, attenuated cardiac fibrosis in heart failure via inhibiting PTEN expression, and attenuating PI3K/Akt signal pathway. Up-regulation of miR-132 may be a strategy for the treatment of heart failure and cardiac fibrosis.Statins inhibit cholesterol biogenesis and modulate atheroma inflammation to reduce cardiovascular risks. Promoted by immune and non-immune cells, serum C-reactive protein (CRP) might be a biomarker suboptimal to assess inflammation status. Although it has been reported that statins modulated inflammation via microRNAs (miRNAs), evidence remains lacking on comprehensive profiling of statin-induced miRNAome alterations in immune cells. We recruited 19 hypercholesterolemic patients receiving 2 mg/day pitavastatin and 15 ones receiving 10 mg/day atorvastatin treatment for 12 weeks, and performed microarray-based profiling of 1733 human mature miRNAs in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) before and after statin treatment. Differentially expressed miRNAs were determined if their fold changes were >1.50 or less then 0.67, after validated using quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). The miRSystem and miTALOS platforms were utilized for pathway analysis. Of the 34 patients aged 63.7 ± 6.2 years, 27 were male and 19 were with coronary artery disease.