Differential hnRNP D isoform incorporation may confer plasticity to the ESSV-mediated repressive state across HIV-1 exon 3

Publication date: Available online 3 December 2016
Source:Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) - Gene Regulatory Mechanisms
Author(s): Frank Hillebrand, Jan Otto Peter, Anna-Lena Brillen, Marianne Otte, Heiner Schaal, Steffen Erkelenz
Even though splicing repression by hnRNP complexes bound to exonic sequences is well-documented, the responsible effector domains of hnRNP proteins have been described for only a select number of hnRNP constituents. Thus, there is only limited information available for possible varying silencer activities amongst different hnRNP proteins and composition changes within possible hnRNP complex assemblies. In this study, we identified the glycine-rich domain (GRD) of hnRNP proteins as a unifying feature in splice site repression. We also show that all four hnRNP D isoforms can act as genuine splicing repressors when bound to exonic positions. The presence of an extended GRD, however, seemed to potentiate the hnRNP D silencer activity of isoforms p42 and p45. Moreover, we demonstrate that hnRNP D proteins associate with the HIV-1 ESSV silencer complex, probably through direct recognition of "UUAG" sequences overlapping with the previously described "UAGG" motifs bound by hnRNP A1. Consequently, this spatial proximity seems to cause mutual interference between hnRNP A1 and hnRNP D. This interplay between hnRNP A1 and D facilitates a dynamic regulation of the repressive state of HIV-1 exon 3 which manifests as fluctuating relative levels of spliced vpr- and unspliced gag/pol-mRNAs.



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Sleep-related modifications of EEG connectivity in the sensory-motor networks in Huntington Disease: An eLORETA Study and Review of the Literature

Huntington's disease (HD) is a progressive hereditary neurodegenerative disorder caused by an abnormal expansion of a CAG triplet in the gene encoding the protein huntingtin on chromosome 4 (The Huntington's Disease Collaborative Research Group, 1993). HD is associated with severe clinical consequences such as progressive motor dysfunction, cognitive decline, and psychiatric disturbance (Walker, 2007). Sleep disturbances are a widespread problem in patients with HD (Nguyen et al., 2010; Morton, 2013).

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Acute Liver Injury Induced by Levetiracetam and Temozolomide Co-treatment

Temozolomide (TMZ) is an alkylating agent used for treatment of brain neoplasms and levetiracetam (LEV) is a commonly used antiepileptic. When administered separately each medication has few negative side effects impacting the liver.

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Anxiety and depression in caregivers of individuals with celiac disease — A population-based study

Partner burden is common in celiac disease (CD), but it is unclear if parents of children with CD have increased burden, and if this may translate into depression and anxiety meriting healthcare.

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Factors associated with blood transfusion during intracranial aneurysm surgery

The purpose of this study was to identify risk factors associated with intraoperative blood transfusions in patients presenting for intracranial aneurysm surgery in the current era of more restrictive transfusion guidelines.

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Trauma-related dissociation: Psychological features and psychophysiological responses to script-driven imagery in borderline personality disorder

Abstract

Defense reactions to threatening situations are vital adaptations to stress that protect organisms from injury and ensure survival. We retrospectively investigated the role of peritraumatic dissociation (PD) in the occurrence of severe psychopathology and dissociative patterns of reactions in borderline personality disorder (BPD). We recruited 28 patients with a clinical diagnosis of BPD and 15 healthy controls. The BPD group was divided according to the level of PD (low vs. high): BPD and PD (n = 15) and BPD only (n = 13). We conducted an extensive investigation of history of trauma, clinical status, and measurements of emotional and physiologic responses to recall of personalized aversive experiences. Participants with BPD and high PD displayed highest degrees of trauma exposure and clinical symptoms. Their significant heart rate decline during the imagery of personal traumatic events was opposed to the heart rate increases exhibited by the other two groups and may indicate a dissociative reaction pattern. Skin conductance responses did not differentiate between groups. Several emotional responses to imagery also reinforced the idea that PD may play a role in memory processing of traumatic events and thus in the aggravation and maintenance of symptoms in particularly severe forms of BPD. Within a stepwise linear regression analysis, the best model for trauma-evoked heart rate responses included PD and borderline symptoms, but no measures of state or trait dissociation. Our findings may provide initial evidence of an evolutionary model of peritraumatic reaction stages evolving from arousal to dissociation.

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Statistical considerations for reporting and planning heart rate variability case-control studies

Abstract

The calculation of heart rate variability (HRV) is a popular tool used to investigate differences in cardiac autonomic control between population samples. When interpreting effect sizes to quantify the magnitude of group differences, researchers typically use Cohen's guidelines of small (0.2), medium (0.5), and large (0.8) effects. However, these guidelines were originally proposed as a fallback for when the effect size distribution (ESD) was unknown. Despite the availability of effect sizes from hundreds of HRV studies, researchers still largely rely on Cohen's guidelines to interpret effect sizes and to perform power analyses to calculate required sample sizes for future research. This article describes an ESD analysis of 297 HRV effect sizes from between-group/case-control studies, revealing that the 25th, 50th, and 75th effect size percentiles correspond with effect sizes of 0.26, 0.51, and 0.88, respectively. The analyses suggest that Cohen's guidelines may underestimate the magnitude of small and large effect sizes and that HRV studies are generally underpowered. Therefore, to better reflect the observed ESD, effect sizes of 0.25, 0.5, and 0.9 should be interpreted as small, medium, and large effects (after rounding to the closest 0.05). Based on power calculations using the ESD, suggested sample sizes are also provided for planning suitably powered studies that are more likely to replicate. Researchers are encouraged to use the ESD data set or their own collected data sets in tandem with the provided analysis script to perform custom ESD and power analyses relevant to their specific research area.

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Mathematical detection of aortic valve opening (B point) in impedance cardiography: A comparison of three popular algorithms

Abstract

The preejection period (PEP) is an index of left ventricle contractility widely used in psychophysiological research. Its computation requires detecting the moment when the aortic valve opens, which coincides with the B point in the first derivative of impedance cardiogram (ICG). Although this operation has been traditionally made via visual inspection, several algorithms based on derivative calculations have been developed to enable an automatic performance of the task. However, despite their popularity, data about their empirical validation are not always available. The present study analyzes the performance in the estimation of the aortic valve opening of three popular algorithms, by comparing their performance with the visual detection of the B point made by two independent scorers. Algorithm 1 is based on the first derivative of the ICG, Algorithm 2 on the second derivative, and Algorithm 3 on the third derivative. Algorithm 3 showed the highest accuracy rate (78.77%), followed by Algorithm 1 (24.57%) and Algorithm 2 (13.82%). In the automatic computation of PEP, Algorithm 2 resulted in significantly more missed cycles (48.57%) than Algorithm 1 (6.3%) and Algorithm 3 (3.5%). Algorithm 2 also estimated a significantly lower average PEP (70 ms), compared with the values obtained by Algorithm 1 (119 ms) and Algorithm 3 (113 ms). Our findings indicate that the algorithm based on the third derivative of the ICG performs significantly better. Nevertheless, a visual inspection of the signal proves indispensable, and this article provides a novel visual guide to facilitate the manual detection of the B point.

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Short-term trained lexical categories affect preattentive shape perception: Evidence from vMM

Abstract

Perceptual processing of colors and shapes in the right visual field is modulated by the lexical category information of the stimuli, a phenomenon known as the lateralized Whorfian effect. For color stimuli, lateralized Whorfian effect is characterized by preattentive occurrence and dependency on acquired lexical information, but it remains unknown whether these key features are generalizable to other domains of perceptual processing. Here, we investigated whether lateralized Whorfian effect in the shape perception domain also depends on acquired lexical category and occurs preattentively using ERPs. Participants were trained to associate novel, irregular polygons with lexical category labels via short-term intensive training. Using the visual oddball paradigm, we found stronger visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) component elicited by the deviant stimuli whose lexical category differed from the standard stimuli when the deviant was presented in the right visual field, indicating higher perceptual conspicuity for between-category stimuli. These findings provide direct evidence of similar preattentive lexical category-contingent modulation on shape perception akin to color perception, suggesting that the lateralized Whorfian effect is not epiphenomenal but rather might reflect the interaction between higher-level lexical processing and the lower-level perceptual processing more broadly.

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Clinical feasibility of brain-computer interface based on steady-state visual evoked potential in patients with locked-in syndrome: Case studies

Abstract

Although the feasibility of brain-computer interface (BCI) systems based on steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) has been extensively investigated, only a few studies have evaluated its clinical feasibility in patients with locked-in syndrome (LIS), who are the main targets of BCI technology. The main objective of this case report was to share our experiences of SSVEP-based BCI experiments involving five patients with LIS, thereby providing researchers with useful information that can potentially help them to design BCI experiments for patients with LIS. In our experiments, a four-class online SSVEP-based BCI system was implemented and applied to four of five patients repeatedly on multiple days to investigate its test-retest reliability. In the last experiments with two of the four patients, the practical usability of our BCI system was tested using a questionnaire survey. All five patients showed clear and distinct SSVEP responses at all four fundamental stimulation frequencies (6, 6.66, 7.5, 10 Hz), and responses at harmonic frequencies were also observed in three patients. Mean classification accuracy was 76.99% (chance level = 25%). The test-retest reliability experiments demonstrated stable performance of our BCI system over different days even when the initial experimental settings (e.g., electrode configuration, fixation time, visual angle) used in the first experiment were used without significant modifications. Our results suggest that SSVEP-based BCI paradigms might be successfully used to implement clinically feasible BCI systems for severely paralyzed patients.

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Correlation Between Anteversion and neck-Shaft Femoral Angles, For Designing Of Hip Prostheses

2016-12-03T04-56-28Z
Source: National Journal of Integrated Research in Medicine
Ehsan Golchini*, Baghermin Aeezangi**, Mohammad Barbarestani***, Tahminehmo Khtari****, Reza Pakzad*****.
Abstract: Background& Objective: Femoral neck anteversion angle (FNA) and neck-shaft angle (NSA) or inclination angle are important anatomic indicators in clinical orthopedics. Main aim of this study, is to determine correlation between FNA and NSA to prediction one of these parameters from other to designing of hip prostheses .Methods: Each femur was placed with the posterior surface of its condyles and greater trochanter touching a smooth horizontal surface (Kingsley and Olmsted method). For measurement of anteversion angle, Retrocondylar axis andfemoral neck axis were made with digital photography and with Digimizer software. For measurement of inclination angle, femoral neck axis and Diaphyseal axis were made with same manner. Results: 159 dried femora were studied. Average anteversion angle in degree for male was 12.17° (±6.83°) and in female was 15.14° (±9.17°). According to this study, in left male femur, for one degree increase in NSA, FNA grows 0.38°; in right male femur, for one degree increase in NSA, FNA grows 0.74°; in right female femur, for on degree increase in NSA, FNA grows 1.55°.Interpretation& Conclusion: In this research, we found that there is a meaningful positive relationship between FNA and NSA, to prediction on of them from the other. This relationship is seen in male femur (right and left) and Female femur (just right). [Ehsan golchini NJIRM 2016; 7(5): 25-32]


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Correlation Between Anteversion and neck-Shaft Femoral Angles, For Designing Of Hip Prostheses

2016-12-03T04-56-28Z
Source: National Journal of Integrated Research in Medicine
Ehsan Golchini*, Baghermin Aeezangi**, Mohammad Barbarestani***, Tahminehmo Khtari****, Reza Pakzad*****.
Abstract: Background& Objective: Femoral neck anteversion angle (FNA) and neck-shaft angle (NSA) or inclination angle are important anatomic indicators in clinical orthopedics. Main aim of this study, is to determine correlation between FNA and NSA to prediction one of these parameters from other to designing of hip prostheses .Methods: Each femur was placed with the posterior surface of its condyles and greater trochanter touching a smooth horizontal surface (Kingsley and Olmsted method). For measurement of anteversion angle, Retrocondylar axis andfemoral neck axis were made with digital photography and with Digimizer software. For measurement of inclination angle, femoral neck axis and Diaphyseal axis were made with same manner. Results: 159 dried femora were studied. Average anteversion angle in degree for male was 12.17° (±6.83°) and in female was 15.14° (±9.17°). According to this study, in left male femur, for one degree increase in NSA, FNA grows 0.38°; in right male femur, for one degree increase in NSA, FNA grows 0.74°; in right female femur, for on degree increase in NSA, FNA grows 1.55°.Interpretation& Conclusion: In this research, we found that there is a meaningful positive relationship between FNA and NSA, to prediction on of them from the other. This relationship is seen in male femur (right and left) and Female femur (just right). [Ehsan golchini NJIRM 2016; 7(5): 25-32]


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