Plos One
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Recent Alzheimer's disease (AD) research has focused on finding biomarkers to identify disease at the pre-clinical stage of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), allowing treatment to be initiated before irreversible damage occurs. Many studies have examined brain imaging or cerebrospinal fluid but there is also growing interest in blood biomarkers. The Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) has generated data on 190 plasma analytes in 566 individuals with MCI, AD or normal cognition. We conducted independent analyses of this dataset to identify plasma protein signatures predicting pre-clinical AD. ⋯ Applying these novel analysis approaches to the powerful and well-characterized ADNI dataset has identified sets of plasma biomarkers for pre-clinical AD. While studies of independent test sets are required to validate the signatures, these analyses provide a starting point for developing a cost-effective and minimally invasive test capable of diagnosing AD in its pre-clinical stages.
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Knowledge of sedentary behaviour associations with health has relied mainly on television-viewing as a proxy and studies with other measures are less common. To clarify whether sedentary behaviour is associated with disease-risk, we examined associations for television-viewing and sitting at work. ⋯ Associations with cardiovascular disease and diabetes biomarkers in mid-adulthood differed for television-viewing and work sitting. The role of sedentary behaviour may vary by leisure and work domains or the two indicators reflect differing associations with other disease-related influences.
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Decompressive craniectomy has been traditionally used as a lifesaving rescue treatment in severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). This study assessed whether objective information on long-term prognosis would influence healthcare workers' opinion about using decompressive craniectomy as a lifesaving procedure for patients with severe TBI. ⋯ Access to objective information on risk of an unfavourable long-term outcome influenced healthcare workers' decision to recommend decompressive craniectomy, considered as a lifesaving procedure, for patients with very severe TBI.
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The lateral prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortices have both been implicated in emotion regulation, but their distinct roles in regulation of negative emotion remain poorly understood. To address this issue we enrolled 58 participants in an fMRI study in which participants were instructed to reappraise both negative and neutral stimuli. ⋯ However, activity in the DLPFC was related to reappraisal independently of whether negative or neutral stimuli were reappraised, whereas the lateral OFC was uniquely related to reappraisal of negative stimuli. We suggest that relative to the lateral OFC, the DLPFC serves a more general role in emotion regulation, perhaps by reflecting the cognitive demand that is inherent to the regulation task.
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We report the development of a genetically encodable and ratiometic pH probe named "pHlash" that utilizes Bioluminescence Resonance Energy Transfer (BRET) rather than fluorescence excitation. The pHlash sensor-composed of a donor luciferase that is genetically fused to a Venus fluorophore-exhibits pH dependence of its spectral emission in vitro. ⋯ Moreover, it can be used to image pH in single cells. This is the first BRET-based sensor of H(+) ions, and it should allow the approximation of pH in cytosolic and organellar compartments in applications where current pH probes are inadequate.