Browse Articles

Debunking COVID-19 vaccine misinformation with an audio drama in Ghana, a randomized control trial

All-cause hospital admissions and incidence of asthma in children in Kazakhstan: a population-based retrospective cohort study

Melatonin-protein interactions are dependent on yeast carbon metabolism

Evaluation of caries experience among schoolchildren in Central African Republic

Bioorganic fertilizers from agricultural waste enhance rice growth under saline soil conditions

Synergistic antibacterial activity of curcumin and phage against multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii

Impact of perinatal hypertonic NaCl access on adult offspring’s sodium intake and angiotensin and vasopressin systems under hypertension model

Abstract Perinatal natriophilia has programming effects on blood pressure control, inducing anatomical and molecular changes in the kidney and brain that impair blood pressure reestablishment after a pressor challenge, such as an osmotic stimulation. However, the imprinted effect of voluntary sodium consumption during this period on the development of hypertension is unclear. To evaluate this, we studied the effect of deoxycorticosterone acetate and high-salt diet (DOCA-salt) treatment on blood pressure and sodium intake responses, and gene expression in the kidney and brain in adult offspring exposed to voluntary hypertonic sodium consumption during the perinatal period (PM-NaCl group). Male PM-NaCl rats consumed more sodium than controls (PM-Ctrol group) during DOCA treatment. However, the hypertension induced did not differ between the PM-NaCl and PM-Ctrol groups. This behavioral change was accompanied by a higher angiotensin type 1 receptor (Agtr1a) gene expression at brain level in the subfornical organ and the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus of PM-NaCl, areas key to the modulation of salt appetite and autonomic function. At renal level, programmed animals showed differing responses in gene expression induced by DOCA-salt treatment compared to the PM-Ctrol group, such as expression of Agtr1a, transient receptor potential vanilloid type 1 channel in the medulla and vasopressin 2 receptor in the renal cortex. The data indicates that the availability of a rich source of sodium during the perinatal period induces a long-term effect in DOCA-salt treated rats, modifying behavioral, brain and renal responses, suggesting that this early sodium exposure affects the vulnerability of the organisms to chronic non-communicable diseases mainly caused by changes in sodium intake and the regulatory mechanisms of the angiotensin and vasopressin systems.

Screening necroptosis genes influencing osteoarthritis development based on machine learning

A new hybrid image denoising algorithm using adaptive and modified decision-based filters for enhanced image quality

Analysis of the 50-mile ultramarathon distance using a predictive XGBoost model

Comparative assessment of the effects of dotinurad and febuxostat on the renal function in chronic kidney disease patients with hyperuricemia

Strong antiferromagnetic interlayer exchange coupling induced by small additions of Re to an Ir interlayer in synthetic antiferromagnetic systems

On the calculation of carbon and nutrient transport to the oceans

mPEG-PCL modified Caffeic acid eye drops for endotoxin-induced uveitis treatment

Multilingual hope speech detection from tweets using transfer learning models

Abstract Social media has become a powerful tool for public discourse, shaping opinions and the emotional landscape of communities. The extensive use of social media has led to a massive influx of online content. This content includes instances where negativity is amplified through hateful speech but also a significant number of posts that provide support and encouragement, commonly known as hope speech. In recent years, researchers have focused on the automatic detection of hope speech in languages such as Russian, English, Hindi, Spanish, and Bengali. However, to the best of our knowledge, detection of hope speech in Urdu and English, particularly using translation-based techniques, remains unexplored. To contribute to this area we have created a multilingual dataset in English and Urdu and applied a translation-based approach to handle multilingual challenges and utilized several state-of-the-art machine learning, deep learning, and transfer learning based methods to benchmark our dataset. Our observations indicate that a rigorous process for annotator selection, along with detailed annotation guidelines, significantly improved the quality of the dataset. Through extensive experimentation, our proposed methodology, based on the Bert transformer model, achieved benchmark performance, surpassing traditional machine learning models with accuracies of 87% for English and 79% for Urdu. These results show improvements of 8.75% in English and 1.87% in Urdu over baseline models (SVM 80% English and 78% in Urdu).

Cardiopulmonary exercise capacity markers and their link to symptom burden in patients at risk for heart failure with non-reduced ejection fraction

Abstract The American Heart Association (AHA) guidelines assess heart failure (HF) via comorbidities, laboratory markers, and echocardiography, while the New York Heart Association (NYHA) classification evaluates functional capacity. The primary objective of this study was to investigate the correlation between objectified HF-related symptoms and cardiac and muscular exercise capacity in Stage B HF patients with non-reduced ejection fraction. As secondary endpoints, we stratified this analysis for subgroups of NYHA classes to evaluate the primary endpoint for different levels of impairment and for sex to address for differences between men and women. Sixty-two Stage B HF patients with non-reduced EF were screened from an HF-risk cohort. Assessments included medical history, HF-related symptoms (Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire, KCCQ), physical examination, laboratory tests, echocardiography, and cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) with cardiac output monitoring. Correlations were analyzed between KCCQ score and exercise capacity markers: maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max), arterio-venous oxygen difference (avDO2), cardiac power output (CPO), mean arterial pressure (MAP), and respiratory efficiency (Ve/VO2). Subgroup analyses were performed by sex and NYHA class determined by VO2max or KCCQ functional scores. Our HF patient cohort showed reduced KCCQ scores (78.3) and VO₂max (22.9 ml/kg/min), and a progressed reduction in avDO₂. In the total cohort, KCCQ scores showed moderate correlations with Ve/VO₂ (r = -0.39) and MAP (r = 0.27). NYHA stratification by VO₂max revealed differences in avDO₂ and cardiac output but not KCCQ scores, while KCCQ-functional stratification only showed differences in Ve/VO₂. Sex-specific analysis showed KCCQ scores correlated with CPO in men (r = 0.65) and Ve/VO2 in women (r = -0.68). Our identified Stage B HFpEF cohort showed already alterations in total, cardiac and muscular exercise limitation. The HF symptom severity was weakly associated to the higher blood pressure and ventilatory inefficiency and, but moderately to strongly correlated CPO in men and Ve/VO2 in women in sex-specific analyses.

Chronic administration of ivabradine improves cardiac Ca handling and function in a rat model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy

Abstract Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a severe muscle disease caused by mutations in the gene encoding for the intracellular protein dystrophin, is associated with impaired cardiac function and arrhythmias. A causative factor for complications in the dystrophic heart is abnormal calcium (Ca) handling in ventricular cardiomyocytes, and restoration of normal Ca homeostasis has emerged as therapeutic strategy. Here, we used a rodent model of DMD, the dystrophin-deficient DMDmdx rat, to test the following hypothesis: chronic administration of ivabradine (IVA), a drug clinically approved for the treatment of heart failure, improves Ca handling in dystrophic ventricular cardiomyocytes and thereby enhances contractile performance in the dystrophic heart. Intracellular Ca measurements revealed that 4-months administration of IVA to DMDmdx rats significantly improves Ca handling properties in dystrophic ventricular cardiomyocytes. In particular, IVA treatment increased electrically-evoked Ca transients and speeded their decay. This suggested enhanced sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca release and faster removal of Ca from the cytosol. Chronic IVA administration also enhanced the sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca load. Transthoracic echocardiography revealed a significant improvement of cardiac systolic function in IVA-treated DMDmdx rats. Thus, left ventricular ejection fraction and fractional shortening were enhanced, and end-systolic as well as end-diastolic diameters were diminished by the drug. Finally, chronic IVA administration neither significantly attenuated cardiac fibrosis and apoptosis, nor was vascular function improved by the drug. Collectively our findings suggest that long-term IVA administration enhances contractile function in the dystrophic heart by improvement of Ca handling in ventricular cardiomyocytes. Chronic IVA administration may be beneficial for DMD patients.

Multimodal machine learning for deception detection using behavioral and physiological data

Relationship between serum uric acid levels and metabolism associated fatty liver disease in postmenopausal women based on NHANES 2017–2020

Abstract Studies have shown that postmenopausal women have more metabolic abnormalities than premenopausal women. No consensus exists on how serum uric acid (sUA) affects metabolism-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) in postmenopausal women.This prospective observational study examined this link using National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2017 to 2020 data. We divided women’s sUA levels into four quartiles and used logistic regression, subgroup analyses, and restricted triple spline methods to compare the prevalence of MAFLD in postmenopausal and non-menopausal women. We also used histograms to analyze the effect of BMI-based indices. This population-based study involved 4477 women, including 1139 postmenopausal women aged 55–73 years. Multivariate logistic regression showed that, in the fully adjusted model, we found that participants in the highest quartile of sUA had a statistically significant 254% increased risk of MAFLD compared with participants in the lowest quartile (OR: 3.54; 95% CI 3.54 1.47–8.55; P < 0.001). Subgroup analyses showed no significant interaction between sUA levels and specific subgroups P( > 0.05 for all interactions). Additionally, RCS and threshold analysis showed a linear correlation (P = 0.186) and an ideal inflection point of 4.6 (P = 0.818) to the left. Right of the inflection point, the effect size was 1.524 (95% CI 1.291–1.814; P < 0.01). Histograms demonstrated that postmenopausal BMI increased sUA’s influence on MAFLD and higher sUA levels and BMI may enhance the prevalence of MAFLA in US postmenopausal women. The results of this study suggest that monitoring sUA levels in the postmenopausal period is critical in determining the occurrence of and interventions for MAFLD.

Genome-wide association studies of dairy cattle resistance to digital dermatitis recorded at four distinct lactation stages

Abstract Digital dermatitis (DD) is an endemic infectious hoof disease causing lameness in dairy cattle. The aim of the present study was to investigate the genetic profile of DD development using phenotypic and genotypic data on 2192 Holstein cows. The feet of each cow were clinically examined four times: pre-calving, shortly after calving, near peak of milk production, and in late lactation. Presence or absence of disease and proportion of healthy feet per cow constituted two DD phenotypes of study. For each phenotype and timepoint of clinical examination, we conducted single-step genome-wide association analyses to identify individual markers and genomic regions linked to DD. We focused on the ten 1-Mb windows that explained the largest proportion of the total genetic variance as well as windows that enclosed significant markers. Functional enrichment analysis was also applied to determine functional candidate genes for DD. Significant (P < 0.05) genomic heritability estimates were derived ranging from 0.21 to 0.25. Results revealed two markers on chromosomes 7 and 15 that were related to both disease phenotypes. Furthermore, we identified three genomic windows on chromosome 14 and one window on chromosome 7 each explaining more than 1% of the trait additive genetic variance. Functional enrichment analysis revealed multiple promising candidate genes implicated in hoof health, wound healing, and inflammatory skin diseases. Collectively, our results provide novel insights into the biological mechanism of host resistance to DD development in dairy cattle and support genomic selection towards improving foot health.