Plos One
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Blast lung injury is a common type of blast injury and has very high mortality. Therefore, research to identify medical therapies for blast injury is important. Perfluorocarbon (PFC) is used to improve gas exchange in diseased lungs and has anti-inflammatory functions in vitro and in vivo. The aim of this study was to determine whether PFC reduces damage to A549 cells caused by blast injury and to elucidate its possible mechanisms of action. ⋯ Our research showed that PFC reduced A549 cell damage caused by blast injury. The potential mechanism may be associated with the following signaling pathways: 1) the signaling pathways of NF-κB and MAPK, which inhibit inflammation and reactive oxygen species (ROS); and 2) the signaling pathways of Bcl-2/Bax and caspase-3, which inhibit apoptosis.
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The opioid epidemic in the United States carries significant morbidity and mortality and requires a coordinated response among emergency providers, outpatient providers, public health departments, and communities. Anecdotally, providers across the spectrum of care at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston, MA have noticed that Charlestown, a community in northeast Boston, has been particularly impacted by the opioid epidemic and needs both emergency and longer-term resources. We hypothesized that geospatial analysis of the home addresses of patients presenting to the MGH emergency department (ED) with opioid-related emergencies might identify "hot spots" of opioid-related healthcare needs within Charlestown that could then be targeted for further investigation and resource deployment. ⋯ The signal from this census tract remains strong after adjusting for population differences between census tracts, and while this tract is one of the higher utilizing census tracts in Charlestown of the MGH ED for all cause visits, it also has a 2.9-fold higher rate of opioid-related visits than the remainder of Charlestown. Identifying this hot spot of opioid-related emergency needs within Charlestown may help re-distribute existing resources efficiently, empower community and ED-based physicians to advocate for their patients, and serve as a catalyst for partnerships between MGH and local community groups. More broadly, this analysis demonstrates that EDs can use geospatial analysis to address the emergency and longer-term health needs of the communities they are designed to serve.
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Adopting successful climate change mitigation policies requires the public to choose how to balance the sometimes competing goals of managing CO2 emissions and achieving economic growth. It follows that collective action on climate change depends on members of the public to be knowledgeable of the causes and economic ramifications of climate change. The existing literature, however, shows that people often struggle to correctly reason about the fundamental accumulation dynamics that drive climate change. ⋯ However, these existing studies have neglected the role economic factors might play in shaping people's decisions in relation to climate change. Here, we introduce a novel iterated decision task in which people attempt to achieve a specific economic goal by interacting with a causal dynamic system in which human economic activities, CO2 emissions, and warming are all causally interrelated. We show that when the causal links between these factors are highlighted, people's ability to achieve the economic goal of the task is enhanced in a way that approaches optimal responding, and avoids dangerous levels of warming.
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The causes of the large and persistent Black-White disparity in preterm birth (PTB) are unknown. It is biologically plausible that chronic stress across a woman's life course could be a contributor. Prior research suggests that chronic worry about experiencing racial discrimination could affect PTB through neuroendocrine, vascular, or immune mechanisms involved in both responses to stress and the initiation of labor. This study aimed to examine the role of chronic worry about racial discrimination in Black-White disparities in PTB. ⋯ Chronic worry about racial discrimination may play an important role in Black-White disparities in PTB and may help explain the puzzling and repeatedly observed greater PTB disparities among more socioeconomically-advantaged women. Although the single measure of experiences of racial discrimination used in this study precluded examination of the role of other experiences of racial discrimination, such as overt incidents, it is likely that our findings reflect an association between one or more experiences of racial discrimination and PTB. Further research should examine a range of experiences of racial discrimination, including not only chronic worry but other psychological and emotional states and both subtle and overt incidents as well. These dramatic results from a large statewide-representative study add to a growing-but not widely known-literature linking racism-related stress with physical health in general, and shed light on the links between racism-related stress and PTB specifically. Without being causally definitive, this study's findings should stimulate further research and heighten awareness of the potential role of unmeasured social variables, such as diverse experiences of racial discrimination, in racial disparities in health.
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Spinocerebellar ataxia type-3 (SCA-3) is the most prevalent autosomal dominant inherited ataxia. We recently found that the endocannabinoid system is altered in the post-mortem cerebellum of SCA-3 patients, and similar results were also found in the cerebellar and brainstem nuclei of a SCA-3 transgenic mouse model. Given that the neuropathology of SCA-3 is not restricted to these two brain regions but rather, it is also evident in other structures (e.g., the basal ganglia), we studied the possible changes to endocannabinoid signaling in the striatum of these transgenic mice. ⋯ We also measured the endocannabinoid lipids in the striatum and despite a marked increase in the FAAH enzyme in this area, no overall changes in these lipids were found. Collectively, these studies confirm that the striatal endocannabinoid system is altered in SCA-3 mutant mice, adding to the equivalent changes found in other strongly affected CNS structures in this type of ataxia (i.e.: the cerebellum and brainstem). These data open the way to search for drugs that might correct these changes.