Abstract Objective Yam virus X (YVX; Potexvirus ecsdioscoreae ) is a positive-sense, flexuous RNA virus belonging to the family Alphaflexiviridae . It has been first reported from Guadeloupe, a French archipelago located in the Caribbean Sea. In this study, we investigated the virome in yam ( Dioscorea spp.) plant material collected in the state of Bahia (Brazil) by high-throughput sequencing (HTS) on Illumina platform. The objective of the investigation was to explore the occurrence of YVX in yam from South America, and to study its genetic diversity compared to the only one YVX genome sequence available in the GenBank public database. Results An initial investigation by HTS of bulked RNA extracts (n=23, combined into 4 pools) revealed occurrence of YVX only in samples collected in the region of Valença. Subsequent screening by RT-PCR of the individual samples composing the pool uncovered infection with YVX only in Discorea trifida. Total RNA extracts from three infected plants were individually sequenced, resulting in the assembly of three complete genome sequences of YVX, showing ~84% nucleotide identity to the reference sequence from Guadeloupe. Our results contribute to expanding the pool of sequences available for YVX, supporting detection purposes and stimulating additional investigations for future studies on YVX diversity and evolution.
The recent integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into academia could usher in transformative efficiencies across scholarly workflows—from manuscript drafting to data analysis—yet it also presents problematic ethical challenges that urgently require intense attention. While some surveys suggest that over 50
Urine collection from neonates can be difficult. We therefore designed a study to compare success rates and effectiveness of different urine collection methods in neonates. Urine collection by compress and by sponge methods were unsuccessful and not further evaluated. Data was obtained from 23 neonates for analysis of effectiveness of the other methods of urine collection. The cotton wool pad achieved the most measurable samples of urine (82
Major depressive disorder represents a critical global health burden with limited rapid-acting therapeutic options. This study investigated the natural triterpenoid saponin polygalic acid for rapid antidepressant efficacy and its mechanistic relationship with neuroinflammation. In male C57BL/6 mice subjected to chronic unpredictable mild stress, acute intraperitoneal administration of polygalic acid (30 mg/kg) produced robust behavioral improvements 2 h postinjection ( n = 8-10 per group), as evidenced by reduced immobility in the tail suspension and forced swimming tests (indicative of enhanced stress coping), restored sucrose preference (reversal of anhedonia), and decreased latency to feed in the novelty-suppressed feeding test (improved motivation) - all without altering locomotor activity or anxiety-like behavior in the open field test. Mechanistically, polygalic acid concurrently suppressed hippocampal nuclear factor-kappa B activation and elevated antiinflammatory cytokines (tumor necrosis factor-beta and interleukin-10) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). To causally examine whether inflammatory status gates polygalic acid's efficacy, coadministration of lipopolysaccharide, which induces acute systemic inflammation, completely abolished polygalic acid's behavioral and molecular effects. These findings demonstrate that polygalic acid produces ketamine-like rapid antidepressant effects specifically through the resolution of chronic neuroinflammatory dysregulation and BDNF restoration. However, the presence of acute inflammatory activation nullifies its therapeutic efficacy, establishing neuroinflammatory context as a critical determinant of treatment response. While limited to male subjects and acute (2-h) assessment, this work identifies polygalic acid as a promising rapid-acting antidepressant candidate and underscores the therapeutic importance of patient stratification based on inflammatory biomarkers when targeting the nuclear factor-kappa B-BDNF axis.
Abstract Objective SSR markers are used for a myriad of genetic analyses, such as genotyping, parentage analysis or genetic structure, due to their high polymorphism, co-dominance and genomic ubiquity. Most downstream analysis tools usually require a diploid dataset but some plant species may have higher ploidy levels or there may be genotypes within the species that differ in ploidy level. Additionally, SSR markers can show multi-locus behaviour and are prone to genotyping errors. Consequently, existing analysis tools often do not meet the requirements of plant datasets. Nevertheless, accurately estimating genetic diversity parameters remains essential, even for polyploid datasets. This emphasizes the importance of adapting such datasets appropriately to enable subsequent analysis while preserving their biological validity. Results This study examines an example dataset of pear cultivars to evaluate how genetic diversity parameters are affected by data adjustments. The original dataset, which includes numerous markers with more than two alleles, was compared with three modified subsets in which additional alleles (more than two) and selected markers were excluded. The results show that genetic diversity statistics remain largely consistent across datasets. The script used in this work thus provides a robust basis for making dataset adjustments before further analyses.
Chronic pain is a common complication of many diseases, often leading to severe hyperalgesia and allodynia with limited therapeutic options. Opioids are restricted in widespread clinical use due to side effects such as addiction and tolerance. Therefore, identifying novel pain-modulating targets is of great significance for the comprehensive and long-term treatment of chronic pain. This study reports that an endogenous polypeptide, phoenixin-14 (PNX-14), exhibits sexually dimorphic regulatory effects in various pain models. Briefly, intrathecally administered PNX-14 produces a more potent, dose-dependent elevation of pain thresholds in female mice than in male mice under physiological conditions. In models of spared nerve injury-induced neuropathic pain and complete Freund's adjuvant-induced inflammatory pain, intrathecal injection of PNX-14 elicited antinociceptive responses in both sexes, yet the magnitude observed in females was significantly greater than that in males. Further investigation revealed that this sexually dimorphic effect is not attributable to differential pharmacokinetics, as the plasma half-life of PNX-14 shows no difference between male and female mice both in vivo and in vitro . Notably, surgical and pharmacological manipulations revealed that PNX-14-regulated pain is promoted by estrogen but suppressed by androgen, suggesting an involvement of sex hormones. These results collectively position PNX-14 as a novel, nonopioid, and female-specific target for chronic pain management.
Depression remains a leading cause of disability worldwide, yet the predictive validity of many preclinical behavioral assays for antidepressant efficacy remains limited. The differential reinforcement of low-rate behavior (DRL) task has classically been used in rodents to identify antidepressant-like effects, but its utility in non-human primates (NHPs) has not been established. Here, we adapted the DRL task for use in adult male cynomolgus macaques ( Macaca fascicularis ) and evaluated its pharmacological sensitivity and translational relevance across 19 compounds spanning multiple drug classes. Antidepressants, including selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, noradrenergic reuptake inhibitors, norepinephrine-dopamine reuptake inhibitors, tricyclic antidepressants, monoamine oxidase inhibitors, and phosphodiesterase-4 (PDE4) inhibitors, generally shifted DRL performance in an antidepressant-like direction, increasing reinforcers earned and inter-response times while decreasing response output. In contrast, benzodiazepine and antipsychotic control compounds did not produce a consistent antidepressant-like profile, whereas stimulant effects were mixed, with nicotine and cocaine also producing overlapping antidepressant-like behavioral effects. Importantly, the primate DRL task identified antidepressant-like effects of PDE4 inhibitors while also capturing emesis, a dose-limiting side effect not observable in rodent models. These findings support the primate DRL task as a translationally relevant platform for screening antidepressant-like efficacy, while also highlighting important design considerations for interpreting pharmacological sensitivity in the NHP setting. By modeling behavioral processes implicated in depression, including response inhibition and temporal regulation, this assay offers a unique opportunity to bridge preclinical and clinical antidepressant development with improved sensitivity to both efficacy and tolerability.
Recently, deep learning models in medical imaging have undergone tremendous advancements. However, these deterministic discriminative models often tend to overfit and produce overconfident predictions. To explore a more efficient strategy, we propose a diffusion-conditioned representation learning that leverages the internal dynamics of a diffusion model to extract noise-level awareness and diverse semantic representations in disease classification and detecting distributional shifts. The proposed method inherently encodes aleatoric uncertainty by sampling features from multiple denoising time steps, which is then used to regularize prediction during training via entropy regularized loss. We conducted extensive experimentation over five diverse clinical datasets, and our framework demonstrates competitive performance with reduced prediction entropy and improved robustness to input degradation. The negative entropy–accuracy correlation, expected calibration error, and dynamic uncertainty demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework in classification tasks. Our framework achieved competitive performance compared with traditional convolutional neural networks and vision transformers with an AUC of 83.81
This study examined whether feeling thermometer ratings toward older adults vary across older-adult subgroups and how such ratings are positioned relative to other common prejudice targets. Using an online sample of 520 Japanese adults aged 18–64, we assessed feeling thermometer ratings (0 = coldest, 100 = warmest) for 14 targets: nursing-home, on-deathbed, handicapped, solitary, senile, on-welfare, and grumpy older adults, as well as immigrants and refugees, foreign tourists, sexual minorities, racial minorities, and persons with mental, physical, or intellectual disabilities. We also tested whether these evaluations differed by participants’ age group (younger and middle-aged adults). Feeling thermometer ratings differed significantly across targets, indicating that older adults were not evaluated as a homogeneous category. Relatively lower ratings were observed for some subgroups, particularly on-welfare and grumpy older adults, suggesting that evaluations of older adults may vary depending on the specific attributes associated with the target. Ratings also differed by participant age group: middle-aged adults tended to report warmer evaluations than younger adults across most of the targets, including all older-adult subgroups, although these differences should be interpreted cautiously given the small interaction effect.
Canine distemper virus (CDV) is a pathogen that causes systemic infection in dogs and wildlife. Among the highly variable regions in the genome of the virus, the H gene is commonly sequenced for phylogenetic studies. The aim of the present study was to screen for the presence of CDV infection in dogs in Iran and to identify the genotype of the virus. Seventy-five dogs with gastrointestinal symptoms were screened via an immunochromatographic test. Fifty of them were positive. CDV was isolated from rectal swabs, and PCR was performed. The top 10 positive cases were subsequently selected for sequencing. Phylogenetic analyses were subsequently conducted. Among the 75 dogs analyzed, 50 (66.7
Motivational orientation and immersive tendency describe complementary questionnaire-based dimensions of player characterization. Motivation instruments capture why players report engaging with games, whereas immersive-tendency instruments describe individual predispositions toward absorption, involvement, and attention focusing in mediated environments. To support reuse in questionnaire-based player modelling, we created an open, item-level, single-cohort survey dataset linking Bartle Test responses, ITQ-18 responses, demographics, and self-reported gaming preferences among IT students and teachers. The dataset contains a single comma-separated values (CSV) file (one record per participant), with n = 175 and 64 variables. It includes: demographics (age, gender); self-reported weekly gaming time (total and excluding mobile); preferred mode (single-player or multiplayer); binary genre indicators with the most popular genre; item-level responses from the 30-item Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology with response options Achiever, Socializer, Explorer, Killer; and 18 items from the Immersive Tendencies Questionnaire rated on a seven-point Likert scale. The dataset is fully anonymized, contains no free-text fields, and uses categorical codes to facilitate reuse.
To evaluate the relationship between percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) and major in-hospital adverse cardiovascular events (MACEs) in patients with acute myocardial infarction (PCI) after PCI by monitoring the level of arterial lactate at the time of admission. A total of 77 patients with acute myocardial infarction who received emergency PCI treatment in our hospital from June 2022 to December 2023 were enrolled, and they were divided according to the preoperative arterial blood lactate level after admission, the control group (40 cases) with normal lactate and the observation group (37 cases) with elevated lactate were enrolled. At the same time, the following major cardiovascular adverse events in the hospital were recorded during the course of the disease: cardiogenic death, cardiogenic shock, new-onset heart failure, angina/exacerbation of pre-existing heart failure, and malignant arrhythmia. The incidence of major cardiovascular adverse events in the observation group was higher than that in the control group, and the difference was statistically significant(P < 0.05). Compared with the control group, the observation group had a higher peak cTnI (P < 0.05), a faster heart rate (P < 0.05), a lower systolic blood pressure (P < 0.05), a higher fasting blood glucose (P < 0.05), and a longer time from symptom to catheter (P < 0.05). With the increase of lactate level, the incidence of major cardiovascular adverse events in the hospital showed an overall upward trend. Binary logistic regression analysis showed that heart rate, systolic blood pressure, elevated lactate and fasting blood glucose were the main factors associated with in-hospital adverse cardiovascular events in patients with acute myocardial infarction after PCI. The level of lactate in the arterial blood can be used as an effective early warning indicator to evaluate the occurrence of major adverse cardiovascular events in the hospital.
Lichen planus (LP) is a chronic inflammatory condition that can have systemic implications, including effects on vascular health. This exploratory study aimed to evaluate orbital hemodynamics and vascular changes in patients with mucosal LP using color Doppler ultrasound (CDU). This retrospective case‑control study enrolled 25 mucosal LP patients along with 30 age‑ and gender‑matched subjects. CDU was used to evaluate the resistive index (RI), pulsatility index (PI), peak systolic velocity (PSV), and end‑diastolic velocity (EDV) in the ophthalmic artery (OA), short posterior ciliary arteries (PCAs), and central retinal artery (CRA). The severity of mucosal LP was assessed with the White Erosive Atrophic Modified Scoring System (WEA‑MOD). All patients underwent complete ophthalmic examination as well as determination of choroidal thickness (CT) using a high‑speed, high‑resolution spectral‑domain optical coherence tomography (SD‑OCT) device. Doppler ultrasonographic measurements revealed significant differences in multiple hemodynamic parameters between LP patients and controls associated with the PCA (p < 0.05). Notable differences were observed in parameters such as OA‑RI, OA‑PI, CRA‑EDV, CRA‑RI, CRA‑PI, and PCA‑PSV (all p < 0.05), with significant variations correlating with different LP severity scores (p = 0.021). Although CT measurements did not differ significantly between the two groups overall, notable variations were observed when assessing CT across different levels of LP severity. CT measurements were significantly lower in the LP group, and significant variations were observed when assessing CT across different levels of LP severity (p < 0.001). These associational findings suggest that mucosal LP severity is associated with altered orbital hemodynamics. These findings raise the possibility that color Doppler ultrasound might serve as a non‑invasive tool to identify patients at higher risk of subclinical ocular vascular changes. Prospective studies are needed to determine whether these hemodynamic alterations predict future ocular complications and whether they warrant monitoring or adjunctive vascular‑protective strategies. Due to the retrospective and cross‑sectional design, causality cannot be inferred. This hypothesis‑generating study underscores the need for larger, longitudinal investigations.
This study investigated the effects of total sleep deprivation (SD) on gastric ulcer (GU) healing, anxiety-like behavior, neuro-oxidative stress, antioxidant defenses, and prefrontal cortical histoarchitecture in male Wistar rats. SD exacerbated weight loss, elevated corticosterone levels, ulcer area, and delayed GU healing. Ulcer+sleep-deprived rats exhibited increased thigmotaxis, reduced center exploration, locomotion, and rearing. Biochemical analyses revealed sustained malondialdehyde elevation and decreased antioxidant activity. Histology demonstrated progressive prefrontal cortex neurodegeneration, most severe in ulcer+sleep-deprived group by day 14. These findings demonstrates that SD during GU healing intensifies neuro-oxidative stress, disrupts antioxidant defenses, aggravates anxiety-like behavior and promotes neurodegeneration, collectively delaying gastric-mucosal repair.
Reports of gabapentin misuse among people with opioid use disorder have increased, as has the presence of gabapentin in opioid overdose deaths. Despite these trends and known interactions between these drugs in other settings (e.g. gabapentin as an 'opioid-sparing' agent), few studies have evaluated the impact of gabapentin on reinforcing effects of opioids. Intravenous self-administration in rats was used to determine whether gabapentin modifies the reinforcing effects of heroin or cocaine. Rats self-administered drugs under a progressive ratio schedule of reinforcement after saline or gabapentin pretreatment. Pretreatment with 32 mg/kg gabapentin increased the number of infusions earned on the ascending limb of the heroin dose-response curve but had no effect on cocaine self-administration. While the magnitude of effect was modest, these data suggest that gabapentin can potentiate the reinforcing effects of opioids and lays the groundwork for future studies characterizing interactions between gabapentinoids and opioids in the context of reinforcement.
The present experiment examined the effects of the number of conditioned stimulus sessions on (a) the rate of extinction of conditioned hyperactivity and (b) the subsequent expression of context-specific sensitization in mice. Male, Swiss Webster mice (n = 10/group) received methamphetamine (0.5 mg/kg) associated with locomotor activity chambers (paired) or home cages (unpaired) for five sessions (acquisition) followed by vehicle injections (saline) for either 5 (1 session/day × 5 days) or 20 (2 sessions/day × 10 days) sessions (extinction). All mice received an escalating methamphetamine-dose regimen (0.25-1.0 mg/kg, 1 dose/day for 3 days) regimen 24 h after the last extinction session (tests for context-specific sensitization). Distance traveled and vertical counts assessed locomotor activity. Both measures of locomotor activity detected between-session sensitization; however, the distance traveled measure was more sensitive in detecting conditioned hyperactivity. The vertical counts, but not the distance traveled measure, found that 5 extinction sessions compared with 20 extinction sessions produced slower extinction, perhaps owing to the trial spacing effect. However, the distance traveled measure revealed that 20, but not 5, extinction sessions completely suppressed context-specific sensitization following the 0.25 mg/kg methamphetamine challenge dose. These results suggest that increasing the number of conditioned stimulus sessions during extinction effectively suppresses the expression of context-specific sensitization, lending support to a 'Pavlovian excitatory conditioning hypothesis' of context-specific sensitization.
Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) remain the leading cause of global mortality, with dyslipidemia being a major modifiable risk factor. Dyslipidemia remains inadequately studied in developing countries like Iraq, so this study aims to assess the prevalence and determinants of dyslipidemia among residents of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. This cross-sectional study was conducted between January and April 2025 and included 1132 participants aged ≥ 18 years. Dyslipidemia was defined based on prior confirmed diagnosis with documented laboratory, chronic disease registry identification card or specialist physician report. The overall prevalence of dyslipidemia was 13.5
Carers from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds may experience challenges navigating healthcare systems that require English language proficiency. This study aimed to explore the experiences of carers supporting community-dwelling Macedonian older adults in a large regional city in Australia. An interpretative qualitative study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with informal carers of community-dwelling Macedonian older adults between August and November 2022. Data were analysed using an inductive thematic approach. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 65 years and were predominantly adult children of the care recipient. Three overarching themes were identified: (1) persevering under the weight of ongoing interpreting responsibilities; (2) organising life around the demands of care; and (3) reconciling cultural expectations with the pressures of caregiving. Carers frequently assumed responsibility for interpreting during healthcare encounters, coordinating services, and navigating complex aged care systems. Many participants reported modifying employment and daily routines to accommodate caregiving responsibilities. Cultural expectations of family responsibility also influenced how carers understood and accepted their caregiving role. Family carers play a critical role in supporting older CALD adults to access healthcare and aged care services. However, gaps remain in the provision of culturally appropriate information, care coordination and interpreter support. Strengthening culturally responsive models of care and improving access to tailored service navigation support may help reduce caregiver burden and improve access to services for CALD communities.
The amyloid precursor protein, central to the pathology of several disease including Alzheimer’s disease, cancer and obesity, represents a therapeutic target. Being able to screen amyloid precursor protein, and its domains, in rapid high-throughput assays could advance drug discovery efforts. The purpose of this study was to determine if removal of a C-terminal tag from the amyloid precursor protein E2 domain was necessary for ligand screening using differential scanning fluorometry. To this end, we assessed both the thermal stability and metal-ion binding propensity in both the tagged and untagged protein. The C-terminal myc-6xHis-tag does not impact the amyloid precursor protein E2 domain thermal stability with comparable melting temperatures of 59.4 °C and 59.1 °C in sodium phosphate buffer, for tagged and untagged protein, respectively. Additionally, the tag had no influence on the ability of the metal-ions, Zn2+ and Cu2+, to shift the thermal stability of the E2 domain indicating that metal-ion binding is not influenced by the tag. We therefore suggest that it is not necessary to remove the C-terminal tag from the E2 domain for ligand screening using differential scanning fluorometry.
