PeerJ最新文献

Objective: Inflammation and immunity play major roles in the etiopathogenesis of functional intestinal disorders. The salusins that were identified in this study are important because of their ease of collection, sensitivity and reliability. For that reason, the aim of this study was to analyze the importance of the levels of salusin in the blood, an inflammation-related parameter, in the diagnosis and prediction of irritable bowel disease.

Methodology: The study participants included 28 diagnosed with constipation-predominant IBS, 29 (34.1%) diagnosed with diarrhea-predominant IBS (D-IBS), and 28 (32.9%) controls. Enzyme-linked immune-sorbent assay (ELISA) method has been used for the measurement of salusin levels.

Results: Participants were 50 (58.8%) female and 35 (41.2%) male. The serum levels of salusin-α were substantially reduced in the diarrhea-predominant IBS group vs controls. There was also no major difference in the levels of salusin between the constipation-predominant-IBS and the diarrhea-predominant IBS group.

Conclusion: A major prognostic relationship was found between the level of salusins and the subgroup of D-IBS. It is well known that salusins have been related to inflammatory processes and oxidative injury in previous studies. The relationship between salusin and gastrointestinal diseases should be further investigated. Low-grade submucosal intestinal inflammation is also associated with irritable bowel syndrome. It is our belief that salusins may be useful in diagnosing, predicting or treating IBS.

We describe a new species of Leptophis (parrot snake) from the Cerrado ecoregion of Brazil. The new species, L. mystacinus sp. nov., differs from all other congeners in the following unique character combination: two Spectrum Green (129) to Light Parrot Green (133) dorsolateral stripes separated by a Buff (5) vertebral stripe, usually continuous onto the tail; loreal scale absent; postocular stripe Jet Black (300), wide and long (up 11 scales long onto nuchal region); maxillary teeth 21-25; ventrals 158-173; subcaudals 141-164; black spots on head absent; supracephalic plates of head not edged with black pigment; adult color pattern lacking dark oblique bands; keels absent on first dorsal scale rows; hemipenis unilobed, noncapitate, with undivided sulcus spermaticus, and first row of hemipenial body with four spines. Phylogenetic analysis of 16S mtDNA sequences indicate the new species is the sister taxon of L. dibernardoi, a species occurring in the neighboring Caatinga ecoregion.

Aim: Effective management strategies for conserving biodiversity and mitigating the impacts of global change rely on access to comprehensive and up-to-date biodiversity data. However, manual search, retrieval, evaluation, and integration of this information into databases present a significant challenge to keeping pace with the rapid influx of large amounts of data, hindering its utility in contemporary decision-making processes. Automating these tasks through advanced algorithms holds immense potential to revolutionize biodiversity monitoring.

Innovation: In this study, we investigate the potential for automating the retrieval and evaluation of biodiversity data from Dryad and Zenodo repositories. We have designed an evaluation system based on various criteria, including the type of data provided and its spatio-temporal range, and applied it to manually assess the relevance for biodiversity monitoring of datasets retrieved through an application programming interface (API). We evaluated a supervised classification to identify potentially relevant datasets and investigate the feasibility of automatically ranking the relevance. Additionally, we applied the same appraoch on a scientific literature source, using data from Semantic Scholar for reference. Our evaluation centers on the database utilized by a national biodiversity monitoring system in Quebec, Canada.

Main conclusions: We retrieved 89 (55%) relevant datasets for our database, showing the value of automated dataset search in repositories. Additionally, we find that scientific publication sources offer broader temporal coverage and can serve as conduits guiding researchers toward other valuable data sources. Our automated classification system showed moderate performance in detecting relevant datasets (with an F-score up to 0.68) and signs of overfitting, emphasizing the need for further refinement. A key challenge identified in our manual evaluation is the scarcity and uneven distribution of metadata in the texts, especially pertaining to spatial and temporal extents. Our evaluative framework, based on predefined criteria, can be adopted by automated algorithms for streamlined prioritization, and we make our manually evaluated data publicly available, serving as a benchmark for improving classification techniques.

Background: Dynamic postural control is impaired in older adults, as evidenced from worse dynamic postural stability compared to young adults during upright stance while concurrent goal-directed tasks. Prefrontal cortex (PFC) is considered to play an important role in goal-directed tasks. This study aimed to investigate the age effects on dynamic postural stability and PFC activation during precision fitting tasks.

Methods: Participant performed precision fitting tasks under four different conditions: large opening size with their arm's length (close-large), small opening size with their arm's length (close-small), large opening size with 1.3 times arm's length (far-large), and small opening size with 1.3 times arm's length (far-small). We analyzed the center of pressure-related outcomes representing dynamic postural stability and PFC activation at the six different subregions from healthy older adults (n = 15, 68.0 ± 3.5 years), and gender-matched middle-aged (n = 15, 48.73 ± 3.06 years) and young (n = 15, 19.47 ± 0.64 years) adults.

Results: The dynamic postural stability presented the young > middle-aged > older groups across the conditions. Specifically, the young group presented better dynamic postural stability than the older group in the close-large, far-large, and far-small conditions (p < .05), while showed better dynamic postural stability than the middle-aged group in the close-large condition (p < .05). Additionally, the older group had greater PFC activation at all PFC subregions than the young group (p < .05), while had greater activation at left dorsolateral and ventrolateral PFC than the middle-aged group (p < .05). The middle-aged group presented greater activation at left dorsomedial PFC than the young group (p < .05).

Conclusion: Heightened dorsomedial PFC activation in middle-aged adults compared to young adults may reflect a deficit in processing the visuomotor information during the precision fitting tasks. Degeneration of the ability in automatic coordination of dynamic postural control may begin to occur at midlife.

The research on electromagnetic detection technology for brain diseases requires precise simulation of the human head. This article combines high-precision computed tomography (CT) images and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images to establish an electromagnetic numerical model of the human head with a real anatomical structure. (1) It had Asian characteristics and encompassed 14 different structures, including skin, muscles, cranial bones, cerebrospinal fluid, cerebral veins, cerebral arteries, gray matter, white matter of the brain, basal ganglia, thalamus, cerebellum, brainstem, eyeballs, and vertebrae. (2) The model used a combination of 0.625 mm-resolution CT and 1 mm-resolution MRI image data for reconstruction, with a smooth surface and high accuracy. (3) Within the simulation environment, this model enabled the generation of various brain disease scenarios, such as different types and degrees of cerebral hemorrhage and cerebral ischemia. It proved valuable for studying the distribution of electromagnetic fields in the human head and for investigating novel electromagnetic detection techniques exploiting brain tissue dielectric properties. (4) The created physical model and the numerical model were derived from the same person, which provided a good continuity between simulation experiments and physical experiments, and provided a realistic verification platform for the research of electromagnetic detection technology for brain diseases, such as differentiating the kind of stroke, monitoring brain edema, brain tumor microwave imaging, and diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease.

The immune status of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients in different stages of infection remains difficult to determine. In this study, we performed high-throughput single-cell mass cytometry on peripheral blood samples from 10 COVID-19 patients and four healthy donors to analyze their immune status at acute and convalescence phases. During the acute stage, the proportion of neutrophils increased significantly while natural killer (NK) cells decreased. In contrast, during the convalescence phase, the proportion of plasma cells decreased from the acute stage of disease onset and was lower than normal. The proportions of B, mast and plasma cell subsets decreased significantly with the process of disease recovery. Further analysis of the subsets of major immune cell types in COVID-19 patients with different clinical presentations in different stages showed that in the acute stages of disease progression, the T helper cell 1 (Th1), IgD⁺ B and neutrophil subsets increased in COVID-19 patients, especially in symptomatic patients, while the central memory CD4⁺T cells (CD4 TCM), mucosa-associated invariant T (MAIT) and NK cell subsets decreased significantly, especially in symptomatic patients. Then CD4 TCM and MAIT returned to normal levels at the recovery phase. Dynamic assessment displayed that the immune imbalance at the onset of COVID-19 could be corrected during recovery. Our study provides additional information on the immune status of COVID-19 patients with different clinical manifestations in different stages. These findings may provide new insights into COVID-19 immunotherapy and immune intervention.

Ischemic stroke (IS) is an important cause of death worldwide. Dihydromyricetin (DHM) has been reported to have neuroprotective potential, but its role and mechanism in IS have not been fully elucidated. The MTT (3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide) assay was used to determine the safe dose of DHM in BV2 microglia and its applicability in OGD/R-treated cells. The mechanism of action of DHM was explored by RT-qPCR, ELISA, luciferase reporter gene assay and western blotting. DHM dose-dependently enhanced BV2 cell viability post-OGD/R and attenuated inflammation and oxidative stress. The protective effects of DHM were found to be mediated through the downregulation of SNHG17, which in turn modulated miR-452-3p expression. miR-452-3p was identified as a negative regulator of pro-inflammatory CXCR4, a direct target whose expression was inversely affected by SNHG17. The interaction between SNHG17 and miR-452-3p was further confirmed by RNA pull-down assays. Furthermore, manipulation of the SNHG17/miR-452-3p/CXCR4 axis was shown to modulate the NF-κB signaling pathway as evidenced by changes in phosphorylation levels. In conclusion, our findings elucidate a novel DHM-mediated neuroprotective mechanism in microglial cells involving the SNHG17/miR-452-3p/CXCR4 regulatory axis. This axis attenuates OGD/R-induced inflammatory and oxidative stress, suggesting a therapeutic potential for DHM in conditions characterized by such pathological processes.

The incidence of stroke ranks third among the leading causes of mortality worldwide. It has the characteristics of high morbidity, high disability rate and high recurrence rate. The current risk associated with stroke surgery is exceedingly high. It may potentially outweigh the benefits and fail to ameliorate the cerebral tissue damage following ischemia. Therefore, pharmacological intervention assumes paramount importance. The use of thrombolytic drugs is most common in the treatment of stroke; however, its efficacy is limited due to its time-sensitive nature and propensity for increased bleeding. Over the past few years, the treatment of stroke has witnessed a surge in interest towards neuroprotective drugs that possess the potential to enhance neurological function. The PDE4D gene has been demonstrated to have a positive correlation with the risk of ischemic stroke. Additionally, the utilization of phosphodiesterase 4 inhibitors can enhance synaptic plasticity within the neural circuitry, regulate cellular metabolism, and prevent secondary brain injury caused by impaired blood flow. These mechanisms collectively facilitate the recovery of functional neurons, thereby serving as potential therapeutic interventions. Therefore, the comprehensive investigation of phosphodiesterase 4 as an innovative pharmacological target for stroke injury provides valuable insights into the development of therapeutic interventions in stroke treatment. This review is intended for, but not limited to, pharmacological researchers, drug target researchers, neurologists, neuromedical researchers, and behavioral scientists.

Over the past decade, research in the montane forests of the Mira River basin, spanning Ecuador and Colombia, has identified it as crucial for the adaptive radiation of flora and fauna, shaped by its complex geological and climatic history. This study focuses on the phylogenetic and systematic revision of a frog clade initially labeled as Pristimantis verecundus, revealing significant cryptic diversity. Through detailed analyses of type material and expanded molecular sampling, we found that the original description actually included specimens representing two additional species, which are described herein. In this work, we discovered and formally described four new species within montane forests at elevations from 1,600 to 2,300 meters. Genetic distances of 3.34% to 14% and clear morphological differences underscore the clade's hidden diversity. We propose renaming the group Pristimantis celator clade within Pristimantis myersi species group and subgenus Trachyphrynus, aligning with phylogenetic evidence and resolving taxonomic ambiguities using the oldest available name, Pristimantis celator (Lynch, 1976). This reclassification includes 14 species, seven formally described, and seven as candidates, distributed across northwestern Ecuador and southwestern Colombia, particularly in Mira and Esmeraldas River basins. The study highlights the Andean orogeny's role in species diversification within Pristimantis celator clade, with geographic barriers like Cerro Golondrinas influencing genetic isolation. Genetic divergences exceeding 3.34% indicate evolutionary isolation across these landscapes. Our findings provide insights into montane ecosystem speciation, emphasizing vicariance, niche adaptation, and altitudinal gradients in shaping biodiversity. A polytomy among three well-supported clades within Pristimantis myersi species group is noted due to incomplete genetic data, yet distinctiveness and evolutionary relationships are affirmed. Cryptic diversity within Pristimantis celator clade links to unique orogenic and climatic conditions, highlighting conservation needs. Lastly, we provide a redescription of Pristimantis verecundus and species identification key to aid future research and conservation in this biogeographically influential region.