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Abstract Multiple neurological disorders are associated with gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, it is unclear whether GI distress itself can modify aspects of behavior. Here, we show that mice that experience repeated colitis have impaired active social engagement, as measured by interactions with a foreign mouse, even though signs of colitis were no longer present. We then tested the hypothesis that individuals with ASD harbor a microbiota that might differentially influence GI health by performing microbiota transplantation studies into male germfree animals, followed by induction of colitis. Animals that harbor a microbiota from ASD individuals have worsened gut phenotypes when compared to animals colonized with microbiotas from familial neurotypical (NT) controls. We identify the enrichment of Blautia species in all familial NT controls and observe an association between elevated abundance of Bacteroides uniformis and reductions in intestinal injury. Oral treatment with either of these microbes reduces colon injury in mice. Finally, provision of a Blautia isolate from a NT control ameliorates gut injury-associated active social engagement in mice. Collectively, our data demonstrate that past intestinal distress is associated with changes in active social behavior in mice that can be ameliorated by supplementation of members of the human microbiota.

Intelligence (IQ) scores are used in educational and vocational planning for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) yet little is known about the stability of IQ throughout development. We examined longitudinal age-related IQ stability in 119 individuals with ASD (3-36 years of age at first visit) and 128 typically developing controls. Intelligence measures were collected over a 20-year period. In ASD, Full Scale (FSIQ) and Verbal (VIQ) Intelligence started lower in childhood and increased at a greater rate with age relative to the control group. By early adulthood, VIQ and working memory stabilized, whereas nonverbal and perceptual scores continued to change. Our results suggest that in individuals with ASD, IQ estimates may be dynamic in childhood and young adulthood.

Studi ini mengkaji dampak fluktuasi harga komoditas terhadap volatilitas saham dan kinerja keuangan perusahaan batubara dan kelapa sawit Indonesia antara tahun 2011 dan 2022. Selama pandemi COVID-19, sektor-sektor ini sangat dipengaruhi oleh fluktuasi harga komoditas. Dengan menggunakan pendekatan Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) dan Dynamic Conditional Correlation Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (DCC GARCH), serta regresi panel, penelitian ini menganalisis volatilitas harga dan pengaruhnya terhadap kinerja keuangan. Temuan mengungkapkan pola volatilitas yang berbeda dalam industri kelapa sawit dan batubara, memberikan wawasan berharga bagi investor untuk memahami risiko yang terkait dengan fluktuasi harga dan untuk mengidentifikasi perusahaan yang secara signifikan dipengaruhi oleh volatilitas tersebut. Penelitian ini memberikan kontribusi untuk memahami hubungan antara fluktuasi harga komoditas dan harga saham perusahaan kelapa sawit dan batubara, serta kinerja keuangannya, dalam konteks perekonomian Indonesia yang sangat bergantung pada kedua komoditas tersebut. Dengan menekankan pentingnya memahami dinamika harga komoditas, kajian ini memberikan informasi berharga bagi investor dalam pengambilan keputusan dan manajemen risiko dalam menghadapi gejolak harga komoditas.

Introducción. Los pacientes con Covid-19 tienen el riesgo de presentar síndrome de dificultad respiratoria aguda, por lo que pueden requerir ventilación mecánica y traqueostomía. De este modo, la decanulación es un proceso importante que está a cargo del equipo rehabilitador. Objetivos. Describir y caracterizar el proceso de decanulación en pacientes traqueostomizados con COVID-19 para identificar posibles factores que influyen en su realización exitosa. Métodos. Estudio descriptivo transversal realizado en los pacientes que fueron sometidos a traqueostomía entre junio de 2020 y julio del 2021 en la Clínica de Alta Complejidad Santa Bárbara de Palmira, Colombia. Las variables categóricas se presentaron con porcentajes y para las cuantitativas se contrastó la hipótesis de normalidad a través de la prueba de Kolmogorov-Smirnov. Resultados. Los pacientes, al momento de ingreso, tenían características de severidad, con un promedio de PaO2/FiO2 de 99,7 mmhg y bloqueo neuromuscular hasta por 20 días; el tiempo promedio de ventilación mecánica fue 17,3 días. A todos los pacientes el equipo de rehabilitación les realizó intervención; de los 15 pacientes incluidos, tres no fueron decanulados. Se realizó un análisis descriptivo de los objetivos y de la interven- ción realizada por cada disciplina; para los tres pacientes no decanulados se analizaron las principales barreras y los predictores del fracaso de una decanulación. Conclusión. Gracias a la instauración de un plan constante y activo de rehabilitación multidisciplinario en el que los pacientes reciben intervención desde su ingreso hasta su egreso se logró decanular de manera exitosa al 80% de los pacientes traqueostomizados.

BackgroundAutism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition commonly studied in the context of early childhood. As ASD is a life-long condition, understanding the characteristics of brain microstructure from adolescence into adulthood and associations to clinical features is critical for improving outcomes across the lifespan. In the current work, we utilized Tract Based Spatial Statistics (TBSS) and Gray Matter Based Spatial Statistics (GBSS) to examine the white matter (WM) and gray matter (GM) microstructure in neurotypical (NT) and autistic males.MethodsMulti-shell diffusion MRI was acquired from 78 autistic and 81 NT males (12-to-46-years) and fit to the DTI and NODDI diffusion models. TBSS and GBSS were performed to analyze WM and GM microstructure, respectively. General linear models were used to investigate group and age-related group differences. Within the ASD group, relationships between WM and GM microstructure and measures of autistic symptoms were investigated.ResultsAll dMRI measures were significantly associated with age across WM and GM. Significant group differences were observed across WM and GM. No significant age-by-group interactions were detected. Within the ASD group, positive relationships with WM microstructure were observed with ADOS-2 Calibrated Severity Scores.ConclusionUsing TBSS and GBSS our findings provide new insights into group differences of WM and GM microstructure in autistic males from adolescence into adulthood. Detection of microstructural differences across the lifespan as well as their relationship to the level of autistic symptoms will deepen to our understanding of brain-behavior relationships of ASD and may aid in the improvement of intervention options for autistic adults.

The article presents a case study of a 5-month-old infant who developed new-onset Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) following a COVID-19 infection. Topics discussed include the relationship between viral infections and autoimmune diabetes, the challenges in diagnosing T1DM in very young patients, and the increased incidence of diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) during the COVID-19 pandemic.

ObjectiveObsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and Tourette's syndrome are highly heritable neurodevelopmental disorders that are thought to share genetic risk factors. However, the identification of definitive susceptibility genes for these etiologically complex disorders remains elusive. The authors report a combined genome-wide association study (GWAS) of Tourette's syndrome and OCD.MethodThe authors conducted a GWAS in 2,723 cases (1,310 with OCD, 834 with Tourette's syndrome, 579 with OCD plus Tourette's syndrome/chronic tics), 5,667 ancestry-matched controls, and 290 OCD parent-child trios. GWAS summary statistics were examined for enrichment of functional variants associated with gene expression levels in brain regions. Polygenic score analyses were conducted to investigate the genetic architecture within and across the two disorders.ResultsAlthough no individual single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) achieved genome-wide significance, the GWAS signals were enriched for SNPs strongly associated with variations in brain gene expression levels (expression quantitative loci, or eQTLs), suggesting the presence of true functional variants that contribute to risk of these disorders. Polygenic score analyses identified a significant polygenic component for OCD (p=2×10(-4)), predicting 3.2% of the phenotypic variance in an independent data set. In contrast, Tourette's syndrome had a smaller, nonsignificant polygenic component, predicting only 0.6% of the phenotypic variance (p=0.06). No significant polygenic signal was detected across the two disorders, although the sample is likely underpowered to detect a modest shared signal. Furthermore, the OCD polygenic signal was significantly attenuated when cases with both OCD and co-occurring Tourette's syndrome/chronic tics were included in the analysis (p=0.01).ConclusionsPrevious work has shown that Tourette's syndrome and OCD have some degree of shared genetic variation. However, the data from this study suggest that there are also distinct components to the genetic architectures of these two disorders. Furthermore, OCD with co-occurring Tourette's syndrome/chronic tics may have different underlying genetic susceptibility compared with OCD alone.

Aseptic prosthetic loosening and periprosthetic joint infections (PJI) are among the most frequent complications after total knee/hip joint arthroplasty (TJA). Current research efforts focus on understanding the involvement of the immune system in these frequent complications. Different immune cell types have already been implicated in aseptic prosthetic loosening and PJI. The aim of this study was to systematically analyze aspirates from knee and hip joints, evaluating the qualitative and quantitative composition of soluble immunoregulatory markers, with a focus on co-inhibitory and co-stimulatory markers. It has been shown that these molecules play important roles in immune regulation in cancer and chronic infectious diseases, but they have not been investigated in the context of joint replacement. For this purpose, aspirates from control joints (i.e., native joints without implanted prostheses), joints with TJA (no signs of infection or aseptic loosening), joints with aseptic implant failure (AIF; i.e., aseptic loosening), and joints with PJI were collected. Fourteen soluble immunoregulatory markers were assessed using bead-based multiplex assays. In this study, it could be shown that the concentrations of the analyzed immunoregulatory molecules vary between control, TJA, AIF, and PJI joints. Comparing TJA patients to CO patients, sCD80 was significantly elevated. The marker sBTLA was significantly elevated in AIF joints compared to TJA joints. In addition, a significant difference for eight markers could be shown when comparing the AIF and CO groups (sCD27, sCTLA-4, sCD137, sCD80, sCD28, sTIM-3, sPD-1, sBTLA). A significant difference was also reached for nine soluble markers when the PJI and CO groups were compared (sLAG-3, sCTLA-4, sCD27, sCD80, sCD28, sTIM-3, sPD-1, IDO, sBTLA). In summary, the analyzed immunoregulatory markers could be useful for diagnostic purposes as well as to develop new therapeutic approaches for AIF and PJI.

Abstract Background Autism is hypothesized to represent a disorder of brain connectivity, yet patterns of atypical functional connectivity show marked heterogeneity across individuals. Methods We used a large multi-site dataset comprised of a heterogeneous population of individuals with autism and typically developing individuals to compare a number of resting-state functional connectivity features of autism. These features were also tested in a single site sample that utilized a high-temporal resolution, long-duration resting-state acquisition technique. Results No one method of analysis provided reproducible results across research sites, combined samples, and the high-resolution dataset. Distinct categories of functional connectivity features that differed in autism such as homotopic, default network, salience network, long-range connections, and corticostriatal connectivity, did not align with differences in clinical and behavioral traits in individuals with autism. One method, lag-based functional connectivity, was not correlated to other methods in describing patterns of resting-state functional connectivity and their relationship to autism traits. Conclusion Overall, functional connectivity features predictive of autism demonstrated limited generalizability across sites, with consistent results only for large samples. Different types of functional connectivity features do not consistently predict different symptoms of autism. Rather, specific features that predict autism symptoms are distributed across feature types.

The direct estimation of heritability from genome-wide common variant data as implemented in the program Genome-wide Complex Trait Analysis (GCTA) has provided a means to quantify heritability attributable to all interrogated variants. We have quantified the variance in liability to disease explained by all SNPs for two phenotypically-related neurobehavioral disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and Tourette Syndrome (TS), using GCTA. Our analysis yielded a heritability point estimate of 0.58 (se = 0.09, p = 5.64e-12) for TS, and 0.37 (se = 0.07, p = 1.5e-07) for OCD. In addition, we conducted multiple genomic partitioning analyses to identify genomic elements that concentrate this heritability. We examined genomic architectures of TS and OCD by chromosome, MAF bin, and functional annotations. In addition, we assessed heritability for early onset and adult onset OCD. Among other notable results, we found that SNPs with a minor allele frequency of less than 5% accounted for 21% of the TS heritability and 0% of the OCD heritability. Additionally, we identified a significant contribution to TS and OCD heritability by variants significantly associated with gene expression in two regions of the brain (parietal cortex and cerebellum) for which we had available expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs). Finally we analyzed the genetic correlation between TS and OCD, revealing a genetic correlation of 0.41 (se = 0.15, p = 0.002). These results are very close to previous heritability estimates for TS and OCD based on twin and family studies, suggesting that very little, if any, heritability is truly missing (i.e., unassayed) from TS and OCD GWAS studies of common variation. The results also indicate that there is some genetic overlap between these two phenotypically-related neuropsychiatric disorders, but suggest that the two disorders have distinct genetic architectures.

Antecedentes: La infección con la varicela zoster es mundial. La incidencia varía por grupos de edad, localización geográfica. En Colombia la transmisibilidad el virus se favorece por la multiplicidad de climas, aspectos geográficos y atmosféricos. En el año 2016 se notificaron 112.400 casos, 34.037 en población adulta, 744 fueron población privada de la libertad (PPL). La definición de brote en establecimientos carcelarios se da a partir de un caso. Condiciones de hacinamiento y el contexto social hacen interesante conocer el estudio de brote y las medidas de implementación realizadas. Objetivo: Describir los factores de riesgo, características demográficas y evaluar medidas de control de la varicela en el Centro de Prisiones y Prisiones de Seguridad Moderada (EPMSC) de Cali de 2017 a 2018 Métodos: Se realizó un estudio observacional descriptivo de corte transversal entre el 2017 al 2018 en PPL, mediante registros, entrevistas y fichas de notificación se analizaron variables de tiempo, lugar y persona, se realizaron distribuciones de frecuencias, se calcularon medidas de tendencia central, tasas de ataque y proporciones por pabellón. Resultados: Fue un brote de fuente propagada, se registraron 146 casos. La tasa de ataque del brote (2017) fue de 2.2% y en 2018 fue de 0.4%. El pabellon con mayor tasa de ataque (2017) fue el 5 (4.9%) y en 2018 el 1A (2.5%). El hacinamiento en el 2017 fue de 264% y en el 2018 de 192%. Conclusiones: El hacinamiento y las condiciones de salud en los centros penitenciarios dificultan el control oportuno de las epidemias.

PD-1 as an immune checkpoint molecule down-regulates T cell activity during immune responses in order to prevent autoimmune tissue damage. In chronic infections or tumors, lasting antigen-exposure leads to permanent PD-1 expression that can limit immune-mediated clearance of pathogens or degenerated cells. Blocking PD-1 can enhance T cell function; in cancer treatment PD-1 blockade is already used as a successful therapy. However, the role of PD-1 expression and blocking in the context of acute and chronic infections is less defined. Building on its success in cancer therapy leads to the hypothesis that blocking PD-1 in infectious diseases is also beneficial in acute or chronic infections. This review will focus on the role of PD-1 expression in acute and chronic infections with virus, bacteria, and parasites, with a particular focus on recent studies regarding PD-1 blockade in infectious diseases.

The purpose of this study was to investigate comorbid psychiatric disorders and psychotropic medication use among adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) ascertained as children during a 1980's statewide Utah autism prevalence study (n = 129). Seventy-three individuals (56.6%) met criteria for a current psychiatric disorder; 89 participants (69.0%) met lifetime criteria for a psychiatric disorder. Caregivers reported a psychiatric diagnosis in 44 participants (34.1%). Anxiety disorder had the highest current and lifetime prevalence (39.5 and 52.7%, respectively). Participants with intellectual disability (n = 94, 72.8 %) were significantly less likely to have community-based diagnoses of anxiety (?[superscript 2] = 5.37, p = 0.02) or depression (?[superscript 2] = 13.18, p < 0.001) reported by caregivers. Seventy-six participants (58.9%) were taking =1 psychotropic medication. Comorbid psychiatric disorders occur frequently in adults with ASD, though identifying these disorders poses a challenge in community settings. A greater understanding of the presentation of these conditions within this population will increase assessment validity and the potential for efficacious intervention.

Os portadores de hanseníase vivenciam situações de preconceito que, com o estigma e a discriminação, culminam para o isolamento social e a restrição dos relacionamentos sociais. Este estudo teve o objetivo de avaliar a percepção do estigma nos indivíduos com hanseníase e suas repercussões sociais. Caracterizou-se por um estudo qualitativo mediante aplicação de entrevistas semiestruturadas em 20 usuários cadastrados para tratamento poliquimioterápico nas unidades de referência na Zona da Mata Mineira, no primeiro semestre de 2014. A análise foi realizada por meio da análise de conteúdo e foram definidas as seguintes categorias de análise: Desconhecimento sobre a doença; Diagnóstico e cura; Discriminação e medo; Encobrimento da doença; Apoio social; e Vínculo e participação social. O desconhecimento sobre a doença interfere no enfrentamento por parte dos indivíduos e, aliado ao receio da discriminação, foi suficiente para que eles ocultassem seu diagnóstico para os outros. Dessa forma, não foi possível perceber nenhuma alteração em seu vínculo social. Destacaram-se as diversas reações emocionais no momento do diagnóstico além da ênfase dada à cura pelos entrevistados. Neste trabalho, ficou evidente que o encobrimento da doença e o suporte social atuaram como fatores de proteção que impediram momentos de discriminação e restrição de participação social.

Keberadaan software musik komputer di Prodi Seni Musik FBS UNIMED didasari oleh berdirinya komunitas Robert Moog computer studio pada pertengahan tahun 2008 yang menggunakan software-software musik komputer seperti sibelius avid 7, acid pro, sonar, finale 2010, fruity loops dan nuendo dalam pembuatan musik elektronik. Software yang sering digunakan oleh Mahasiswa di Prodi Seni Musik FBS UNIMED dalam pembelajaran pembuatan karya musik adalah Software Sibelius Avid 7, Finale 2010, Fruity Loops dan Nuendo. Proses pembuatan karya musik dengan menggunakan software musik komputer di Prodi Seni Musik FBS UNIMED dilakukan dengan waktu yang lebih cepat dibandingkan dengan pembuatan karya secara live dengan beberapa pemain musik yang dibutuhkan. Manfaat pembelajaran software musik komputer terhadap mahasiswa di Prodi Seni Musik FBS UNIMED adalah dapat dijadikan sebagai file notasi, editing dan compossing.