La evaluación de la calidad de vida en personas con demencia

Quality of life (QoL) is one of the most important outcome variables in the study of the efficacy of interventions with people with dementia. However, its assessment is difficult 1) because it is a complex construct for which there is no unified theoretical or conceptual approach, and 2) because of the inherent difficulties in the cognitive impairments of the people under study. In this work different methods and instruments to this end are reviewed, and related findings are discussed. It is important to take into account the subjective view of the assessed person, as assessments done by proxies tend to underestimate QoL. In spite of the need for further development in this field, it is concluded that the instrument of choice is the QOL-AD, as it is change-sensitive, it correlates with health measurements, it is translated into several languages and it can be administered to people with low MMSE scores.     

Pond Acoustic Sampling Scheme: A draft protocol for rapid acoustic data collection in small waterbodies

1. Freshwater conservation is vital to the maintenance of global biodiversity. Ponds are a critical, yet often under‐recognized, part of this, contributing to overall ecosystem functioning and diversity. They provide habitats for a range of aquatic, terrestrial, and amphibious life, often including rare and declining species.
2. Effective, rapid, and accessible survey methods are needed to enable evidence‐based conservation action, but freshwater taxa are often viewed as “difficult”—and few specialist surveyors are available. Datasets on ponds are therefore limited in their spatiotemporal coverage.
3. With the advent of new recording technologies, acoustic survey methods are becoming increasingly available to researchers, citizen scientists, and conservation practitioners. They can be an effective and noninvasive approach for gathering data on target species, assemblages, and environmental variables. However, freshwater applications are lagging behind those in terrestrial and marine spheres, and as an emergent method, research studies have employed a multitude of different sampling protocols.
4. We propose the Pond Acoustic Sampling Scheme (PASS), a simple protocol to allow a standardized minimal sample to be collected rapidly from small waterbodies, alongside environmental and methodological metadata. This sampling scheme can be incorporated into a variety of survey designs and is intended to allow access to a wide range of participants, without requiring complicated or prohibitively expensive equipment.
5. Adoption of this sampling protocol would enable consistent sound recordings to be gathered by researchers and conservation organizations, and allow the development of landscape‐scale surveys, data sharing, and collaboration within an expanding freshwater ecoacoustic community—rather than individual approaches that produce incompatible datasets. The compilation of standardized data would improve the prospects for effective research into the soundscapes of small waterbodies and aid freshwater conservation efforts.

     

Novel Tools to Analyze the Function of Salmonella Effectors Show That SvpB Ectopic Expression Induces Cell Cycle Arrest in Tumor Cells

In order to further characterize its role in pathogenesis and to establish whether its overproduction can lead to eukaryotic tumor cell death, Salmonella strains able to express its virulence factor SpvB (an ADP-ribosyl transferase enzyme) in a salicylate-inducible way have been constructed and analyzed in different eukaryotic tumor cell lines. To do so, the bacterial strains bearing the expression system have been constructed in a ∆purD background, which allows control of bacterial proliferation inside the eukaryotic cell. In the absence of bacterial proliferation, salicylate-induced SpvB production resulted in activation of caspases 3 and 7 and apoptotic cell death. The results clearly indicated that controlled SpvB production leads to F-actin depolimerization and either G1/S or G2/M phase arrest in all cell lines tested, thus shedding light on the function of SpvB in Salmonella pathogenesis. In the first place, the combined control of protein production by salicylate regulated vectors and bacterial growth by adenine concentration offers the possibility to study the role of Salmonella effectors during eukaryotic cells infection. In the second place, the salicylate-controlled expression of SpvB by the bacterium provides a way to evaluate the potential of other homologous or heterologous proteins as antitumor agents, and, eventually to construct novel potential tools for cancer therapy, given that Salmonella preferentially proliferates in tumors.     

PARP-1 Regulates Metastatic Melanoma through Modulation of Vimentin-induced Malignant Transformation

PARP inhibition can induce anti-neoplastic effects when used as monotherapy or in combination with chemo- or radiotherapy in various tumor settings; however, the basis for the anti-metastasic activities resulting from PARP inhibition remains unknown. PARP inhibitors may also act as modulators of tumor angiogenesis. Proteomic analysis of endothelial cells revealed that vimentin, an intermediary filament involved in angiogenesis and a specific hallmark of EndoMT (endothelial to mesenchymal transition) transformation, was down-regulated following loss of PARP-1 function in endothelial cells. VE-cadherin, an endothelial marker of vascular normalization, was up-regulated in HUVEC treated with PARP inhibitors or following PARP-1 silencing; vimentin over-expression was sufficient to drive to an EndoMT phenotype. In melanoma cells, PARP inhibition reduced pro-metastatic markers, including vasculogenic mimicry. We also demonstrated that vimentin expression was sufficient to induce increased mesenchymal/pro-metastasic phenotypic changes in melanoma cells, including ILK/GSK3-β-dependent E-cadherin down-regulation, Snail1 activation and increased cell motility and migration. In a murine model of metastatic melanoma, PARP inhibition counteracted the ability of melanoma cells to metastasize to the lung. These results suggest that inhibition of PARP interferes with key metastasis-promoting processes, leading to suppression of invasion and colonization of distal organs by aggressive metastatic cells.     

Phosphate starvation affects the synthesis of outer membrane proteins in Thiobacillus ferrooxidans

The outer membrane protein (omp40) component from the chemolithoautotrophic acidophilic Thiobacillus ferrooxidans is apparently regulated by the external pH and the concentration of phosphorus. Its amino-terminal sequence showed little identity with the Escherichia coli OmpC, OmpF or PhoE porins, but was 38.5% identical to the outer membrane channel-forming protein NosA from Pseudomonas stutzeri, whose expression is also regulated environmentally. In addition, the partial amino acid sequence of T. ferrooxidans omp40 showed between 34 and 38% identity with the amino-terminal end of the small outer membrane proteins Rck and PagC from Salmonella typhimurium and OmpX from Enterobacter cloacae.     

Experimental Adaptation of Rotaviruses to Tumor Cell Lines

A number of viruses show a naturally extended tropism for tumor cells whereas other viruses have been genetically modified or adapted to infect tumor cells. Oncolytic viruses have become a promising tool for treating some cancers by inducing cell lysis or immune response to tumor cells. In the present work, rotavirus strains TRF-41 (G5) (porcine), RRV (G3) (simian), UK (G6-P5) (bovine), Ym (G11-P9) (porcine), ECwt (murine), Wa (G1-P8), Wi61 (G9) and M69 (G8) (human), and five wild-type human rotavirus isolates were passaged multiple times in different human tumor cell lines and then combined in five different ways before additional multiple passages in tumor cell lines. Cell death caused by the tumor cell-adapted isolates was characterized using Hoechst, propidium iodide, 7-AAD, Annexin V, TUNEL, and anti-poly-(ADP ribose) polymerase (PARP) and -phospho-histone H2A.X antibodies. Multiple passages of the combined rotaviruses in tumor cell lines led to a successful infection of these cells, suggesting a gain-of-function by the acquisition of greater infectious capacity as compared with that of the parental rotaviruses. The electropherotype profiles suggest that unique tumor cell-adapted isolates were derived from reassortment of parental rotaviruses. Infection produced by such rotavirus isolates induced chromatin modifications compatible with apoptotic cell death.     

Recent origin,active speciation and dispersal for the lichen genus Nephroma (Peltigerales) in Macaronesia

Aim We reconstructed the phylogeny of the lichen genus Nephroma (Peltigerales) to assess the relationships of species endemic to Macaronesia. We estimated dates of divergences to test the hypothesis that the species arose in Macaronesia (neo‐endemism) versus the oceanic archipelagos serving as refugia for formerly widespread taxa (palaeo‐endemism). Location Cosmopolitan with a special focus on the archipelagos of the Azores, Madeira and the Canary Islands. Methods DNA sequences were obtained from 18 species for three loci and analysed using maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood and Bayesian inferences. Divergence dates were estimated for the internal transcribed spacer (ITS)‐based phylogeny using a relaxed molecular clock. Reconstruction of the ancestral geographical range was conducted using the Bayesian 50% majority rule consensus tree under a parsimony method. Results The backbone phylogenetic tree was fully supported, with Nephroma plumbeum as sister to all other species. Four strongly supported clades were detected: the Nephroma helveticum, the N. bellum, the N. laevigatum and the N. parile clades. The latter two share a common ancestor and each includes a widespread Holarctic species (N. laevigatum and N. parile, respectively) and all species endemic to Macaronesia. The data suggest a neo‐endemic origin of Macaronesian taxa, a recent range expansion from Macaronesia of both widespread species, a range expansion limited to the Mediteranean Basin and south‐western Europe for another taxon, and a long dispersal event that resulted in a speciation event in the western parts of North America. Main conclusions The Macaronesian endemic species belong to two sister clades and originated from a most recent common ancestor (MRCA) shared with one widely distributed taxon, either N. parile or N. laevigatum. Estimates of the mean divergence dates suggest that the endemics originated in the archipelagos after the rise of the volcanic islands, along with the ancestor to the now widespread species, which probably expanded their range beyond Macaronesia via long‐distance dispersal. This study provides the first phylogenetic evidence of Macaronesian neo‐endemism in lichenized fungi and provides support for the hypothesis that oceanic islands may serve as a source for the colonization of continents. However, further data are needed to properly assess the alternative hypothesis, namely colonization from western North America.     

The Relationship between Economic Status,Knowledge on Dengue,Risk Perceptions and Practices

The reemergence of dengue as an important public health problem reflects the difficulties in sustaining vertically organized, effective, control programs and the need for community-based strategies for Aedes aegypti control that result in behavioral change. We aimed to disentangle the relationships between underlying determinants of dengue related practices. We conducted a cross-sectional study in 780 households in La Lisa, Havana, Cuba. A questionnaire and an observation guide were administrated to collect information on variables related to economic status, knowledge on dengue, risk perception and practices associated with Aedes aegypti breading sites. To test a conceptual model that hypothesized direct relationships among all these constructs, we first used Exploratory Factor Analysis with Principal Component Analysis to establish the relationship between observed variables and the underlying latent variables. Subsequently, we tested whether the observed data supported the conceptual model through Confirmatory Factor Analysis. Exploratory Factor Analysis indicated that the items measured could be reduced into five factors with an eigenvalue >1.0: Knowledge on dengue, Intradomiciliar risk practices, Peridomiciliar risk practices, Risk perception and Economic status. The proportion of the total variance in the data explained by these five factors was 74.3%. The Confirmatory Factor Analysis model differed from our hypothesized conceptual model. Only Knowledge on dengue had a significant, direct, positive, effect on Practices. There was also a direct association of Economic status with Knowledge on dengue, but not with Risk perception and Practices. Clarifying the relationship between direct and indirect determinants of dengue related practices contributes to a better understanding of the potential effect of Information Education and Communication on practices and on the reduction of Aedes aegypti breeding sites and provides inputs for designing a community based strategy for dengue control.