Creatine as an antioxidant

Creatine monohydrate (Cr), the most diffuse supplement in the sports industry, is receiving greater attention because of its beneficial effects in a wide number of human degenerative diseases and conditions. These effects can be barely explained on the basis of the sole ergogenic role of the Cr/CrP system. Indeed, a wide number of research articles indicate that Cr is capable of exerting multiple, non-energy related, effects on diverse and relevant cellular targets. Among these effects, the antioxidant activity of Cr emerges as an additional mechanism which is likely to play a supportive role in the Cr-cytoprotection paradigm.     

Functional Network Overlap as Revealed by fMRI Using sICA and Its Potential Relationships with Functional Heterogeneity,Balanced Excitation and Inhibition,and Sparseness of Neuron Activity

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies traditionally use general linear model-based analysis (GLM-BA) and regularly report task-related activation, deactivation, or no change in activation in separate brain regions. However, several recent fMRI studies using spatial independent component analysis (sICA) find extensive overlap of functional networks (FNs), each exhibiting different task-related modulation (e.g., activation vs. deactivation), different from the dominant findings of GLM-BA. This study used sICA to assess overlap of FNs extracted from four datasets, each related to a different cognitive task. FNs extracted from each dataset overlapped with each other extensively across most or all brain regions and showed task-related concurrent increases, decreases, or no changes in activity. These findings indicate that neural substrates showing task-related concurrent but different modulations in activity intermix with each other and distribute across most of the brain. Furthermore, spatial correlation analyses found that most FNs were highly consistent in spatial patterns across different datasets. This finding indicates that these FNs probably reflect large-scale patterns of task-related brain activity. We hypothesize that FN overlaps as revealed by sICA might relate to functional heterogeneity, balanced excitation and inhibition, and population sparseness of neuron activity, three fundamental properties of the brain. These possibilities deserve further investigation.     

Cardiac autonomic impairment and chronotropic incompetence in fibromyalgia

Introduction  

We aimed to gather knowledge on the cardiac autonomic modulation in patients with fibromyalgia (FM) in response to exercise and to investigate whether this population suffers from chronotropic incompetence (CI).     

Homo- and heterodimeric Smac mimetics/IAP inhibitors as in vivo-active pro-apoptotic agents. Part I: Synthesis

Novel pro-apoptotic, homo- and heterodimeric Smac mimetics/IAPs inhibitors based on the N-AVPI-like 4-substituted 1-aza-2-oxobicyclo[5.3.0]decane scaffold were prepared from monomeric structures connected through a head–head (8), tail–tail (9) or head–tail (10) linker. The selection of appropriate decorating functions for the scaffolds, and of rigid and flexible linkers connecting them, is described. The synthesis, purification and analytical characterization of each prepared dimer 8–10 is thoroughly described.