Psoriasis and Gut Microbiome—Current State of Art

Psoriasis is a chronic, immune-mediated inflammatory disease that affects around 125 million people worldwide. Several studies concerning the gut microbiota composition and its role in disease pathogenesis recently demonstrated significant alterations among psoriatic patients. Certain parameters such as Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes ratio or Psoriasis Microbiome Index were developed in order to distinguish between psoriatic and healthy individuals. The “leaky gut syndrome” and bacterial translocation is considered by some authors as a triggering factor for the onset of the disease, as it promotes chronic systemic inflammation. The alterations were also found to resemble those in inflammatory bowel diseases, obesity and certain cardiovascular diseases. Microbiota dysbiosis, depletion in SCFAs production, increased amount of produced TMAO, dysregulation of the pathways affecting the balance between lymphocytes populations seem to be the most significant findings concerning gut physiology in psoriatic patients. The gut microbiota may serve as a potential response-to-treatment biomarker in certain cases of biological treatment. Oral probiotics administration as well as fecal microbial transplantation were most reported in bringing health benefits to psoriatic patients. However, the issue of psoriatic bacterial gut composition, its role and healing potential needs further investigation. Here we reviewed the literature on the current state of the relationship between psoriasis and gut microbiome.     

Development of green extraction process to produce antioxidant-rich extracts from purple coneflower

The present study was conducted to develop subcritical water extraction (SWE) of Echinacea purpurea flowers. The influence of temperature and extraction time on quality of extracts considering total phenols content, total flavonoids content, antioxidant capacity and extraction yield, was determined. Optimized extraction parameters for maximised investigated responses were as follows: 147.56 °C and 8.43 min. The experimental values agreed with the values predicted, thus indicating the adequacy of central composite experimental design for modelling the SWE of bioactive compounds from E. purpurea. Results of the study also highlighted the potential application of E. purpurea subcritical water extracts as a source of valuable bioactive compounds.     

The Pathophysiological Role of CoA

The importance of coenzyme A (CoA) as a carrier of acyl residues in cell metabolism is well understood. Coenzyme A participates in more than 100 different catabolic and anabolic reactions, including those involved in the metabolism of lipids, carbohydrates, proteins, ethanol, bile acids, and xenobiotics. However, much less is known about the importance of the concentration of this cofactor in various cell compartments and the role of altered CoA concentration in various pathologies. Despite continuous research on these issues, the molecular mechanisms in the regulation of the intracellular level of CoA under pathological conditions are still not well understood. This review summarizes the current knowledge of (a) CoA subcellular concentrations; (b) the roles of CoA synthesis and degradation processes; and (c) protein modification by reversible CoA binding to proteins (CoAlation). Particular attention is paid to (a) the roles of changes in the level of CoA under pathological conditions, such as in neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, myopathies, and infectious diseases; and (b) the beneficial effect of CoA and pantethine (which like CoA is finally converted to Pan and cysteamine), used at pharmacological doses for the treatment of hyperlipidemia.     

Changes in medical stability upon admission to a rehabilitation unit

The implementation of Medicare's prospective payment system in acute care has coincided with a steady increase in medically unstable admissions to our freestanding rehabilitation facility. We investigated the consequences of these admissions by collecting medical information regarding transfers beginning in 1983. Patients requiring transfer back to the acute setting within 1 day of admission were considered medically unstable and their charts were reviewed. The number of patients requiring transfer back within 1 day increased from 1.5% of all first admissions to 3.1% in 1988 (Mantel - Haenszel chi 2 = 8.03, (df = 1), p < .01), but the increase among Medicare patients alone was not significant. This progressive increase was most pronounced in the cerebrovascular accident and spinal cord injury populations. Beginning in 1988, an intensified preadmission evaluation program was implemented, resulting in a significant decline in unstable patient transfers from hospitals where our consultants were on staff. Physiatric consultations at referral institutions decreased the number of unstable patients at admission.     

Adaptive perceptual color-texture image segmentation.

We propose a new approach for image segmentation that is based on low-level features for color and texture. It is aimed at segmentation of natural scenes, in which the color and texture of each segment does not typically exhibit uniform statistical characteristics. The proposed approach combines knowledge of human perception with an understanding of signal characteristics in order to segment natural scenes into perceptually/semantically uniform regions. The proposed approach is based on two types of spatially adaptive low-level features. The first describes the local color composition in terms of spatially adaptive dominant colors, and the second describes the spatial characteristics of the grayscale component of the texture. Together, they provide a simple and effective characterization of texture that the proposed algorithm uses to obtain robust and, at the same time, accurate and precise segmentations. The resulting segmentations convey semantic information that can be used for content-based retrieval. The performance of the proposed algorithms is demonstrated in the domain of photographic images, including low-resolution, degraded, and compressed images.     

Tracking control and robustness analysis for planar vertical takeoff and landing aircraft under bounded feedbacks

We study feedback tracking problems for the planar vertical takeoff and landing (PVTOL) aircraft dynamics, which is a benchmark model in aerospace engineering. We provide a survey of the literature on the model. Then we construct new feedback stabilizers for the PVTOL tracking dynamics. The novelty of our work is in the boundedness of our feedback controllers and their applicability to cases where the velocity measurements may not be available, coupled with the uniform global asymptotic stability and uniform local exponential stability of the closed‐loop tracking dynamics and the input‐to‐state stable performance of the closed‐loop tracking dynamics with respect to actuator errors. Our proofs are based on a new bounded backstepping result. We illustrate our work in a tracking problem along a circle. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Role of HMOX1 Promoter Genetic Variants in Chemoresistance and Chemotherapy Induced Neutropenia in Children with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

Whilst the survival rates of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) have increased remarkably over the last decades, the therapy resistance and toxicity are still the major causes of treatment failure. It was shown that overexpression of heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) promotes proliferation and chemoresistance of cancer cells. In humans, the HO-1 gene (HMOX1) expression is modulated by two polymorphisms in the promoter region: (GT)n-length polymorphism and single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) A(−413)T, with short GT repeat sequences and 413-A variants linked to an increased HO-1 inducibility. We found that the short alleles are significantly more frequent in ALL patients in comparison to the control group, and that their presence may be associated with a higher risk of treatment failure, reflecting the role of HO-1 in chemoresistance. We also observed that the presence of short alleles may predispose to develop chemotherapy-induced neutropenia. In case of SNP, the 413-T variant co-segregated with short or long alleles, while 413-A almost selectively co-segregated with long alleles, hence it is not possible to determine if SNPs are actually of phenotypic significance. Our results suggest that HO-1 can be a potential target to overcome the treatment failure in ALL patients.     

iPSC-Cardiomyocyte Models of Brugada Syndrome—Achievements,Challenges and Future Perspectives

Brugada syndrome (BrS) is an inherited cardiac arrhythmia that predisposes to ventricular fibrillation and sudden cardiac death. It originates from oligogenic alterations that affect cardiac ion channels or their accessory proteins. The main hurdle for the study of the functional effects of those variants is the need for a specific model that mimics the complex environment of human cardiomyocytes. Traditionally, animal models or transient heterologous expression systems are applied for electrophysiological investigations, each of these models having their limitations. The ability to create induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (iPSC-CMs), providing a source of human patient-specific cells, offers new opportunities in the field of cardiac disease modelling. Contemporary iPSC-CMs constitute the best possible in vitro model to study complex cardiac arrhythmia syndromes such as BrS. To date, thirteen reports on iPSC-CM models for BrS have been published and with this review we provide an overview of the current findings, with a focus on the electrophysiological parameters. We also discuss the methods that are used for cell derivation and data acquisition. In the end, we critically evaluate the knowledge gained by the use of these iPSC-CM models and discuss challenges and future perspectives for iPSC-CMs in the study of BrS and other arrhythmias.