FASH

INTRODUCTION: Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP) are rising in prevalence, and increase risk of adverse maternal and fetal outcomes. Physiologic changes occur during pregnancy that alter drug pharmacokinetics. However, antihypertensive drugs lack pregnancy-specific dosing recommendations due to critical knowledge gaps surrounding the extent of gestational changes in antihypertensive drug pharmacokinetics and underlying mechanisms. AREAS COVERED: This review (1) summarizes currently recommended medications and dosing strategies for non-emergent HDP treatment, (2) reviews and synthesizes existing literature identified via a comprehensive PubMed search evaluating gestational changes in the maternal pharmacokinetics of commonly prescribed HDP drugs (notably labetalol and nifedipine), and (3) offers insight into the metabolism and clearance mechanisms underlying altered HDP drug pharmacokinetics during pregnancy...

Iodine value (IV) is an indicator to evaluate the degree of unsaturation (DU) of biodiesel. It reflects the biodiesel degradation and oxidation stability (OS) and also has an effect on viscosity, low-temperature flow properties (LTFP), and the combustion performance. To construct a theoretical system for the simultaneous optimization of LTFP and OS of biodiesel using IV, 52 measured experimental data are used to investigate the qualitative and quantitative relationship between IV and biodiesel composition. The relationships between biodiesel physicochemical properties and IV are investigated in this work...

Circulating estrogens levels significantly decrease in menopause and levels off in postmenopausal women. Accordingly, the liver represses levels of enzymes and membrane transporters, thereby decreasing capability of inactivating and excreting estrogens. Women increasingly develop type 2 diabetes during or after menopause. Estrogens are known to promote liver diseases in these women. Here, we have found that the estrogen inactivating sulfotransferase (SULT1E1) and an ATP-binding cassette subfamily G member 2 (ABCG2), a gene encoding breast cancer resistance protein that exports sulfated estrogens, increased their expression levels in diabetic women but not men...

In California, the whitefly-transmitted yellowing viruses, cucurbit yellow stunting disorder virus (CYSDV) and cucurbit chlorotic yellows virus (CCYV), both genus Crinivirus , fam. Closteroviridae , have been limited to the Sonoran Desert production regions of Imperial and Riverside counties since their emergence in 2006 and 2014, respectively (Kuo et al., 2007; Wintermantel et al., 2009, 2019) where losses to these viruses have nearly eliminated fall melon production. CYSDV and CCYV have never been identified in the Central Valley, but the aphid-transmitted cucurbit aphid-borne yellows virus (CABYV; genus Polerovirus , fam...

OBJECTIVES: Although fermented food use is ubiquitous in humans, the ecological and evolutionary factors contributing to its emergence are unclear. Here we investigated the ecological contexts surrounding the consumption of fruits in the late stages of fermentation by wild primates to provide insight into its adaptive function. We hypothesized that climate, socioecological traits, and habitat patch size would influence the occurrence of this behavior due to effects on the environmental prevalence of late-stage fermented foods, the ability of primates to detect them, and potential nutritional benefits...

Head pose estimation (HPE) represents a topic central to many relevant research fields and characterized by a wide application range. In particular, HPE performed using a singular RGB frame is particular suitable to be applied at best-frame-selection problems. This explains a growing interest witnessed by a large number of contributions, most of which exploit deep learning architectures and require extensive training sessions to achieve accuracy and robustness in estimating head rotations on three axes. However, methods alternative to machine learning approaches could be capable of similar if not better performance...

BACKGROUND: Hamstring diseases are one of the most widespread diseases in athletes, especially in runners, sprinters, and endurance athletes. Notwithstanding the importance of the problem, risk factors are still marginally known. This transversal study analyzes the correlation between Hamstring tendinopathy and hamstring strains and age, gender, weight, height, number of marathons, and impact profile in athletes who took part in the 2019 Rome Marathon. METHODS: At the 2019 Marathon of Rome, 700 runners (484 males and 216 females; mean age: 43...

Orally disintegrating tablets are a solid dosage form that will disintegrate rapidly within 3 minutes upon contact with saliva. Fillers or diluents are excipients that are used to make up the volume of orally disintegrating tablets, and some might act as a disintegrant or binder that will affect the physical properties of orally disintegrating tablets. The objective of this study was to formulate and evaluate physical properties of orally disintegrating tablets containing Annona muricata leaves extract by a freeze-drying method using different fillers at different concentrations...

INTRODUCTION: Glaucoma outcomes are closely associated with patients' awareness of the disease. However, little is known about glaucoma awareness and knowledge in Addis Ababa, a densely populated and ethnolinguistically diverse capital city in Ethiopia, the second largest country in Africa. METHODS: We performed a cross-sectional survey in the ophthalmology waiting room at St. Paul's Hospital, a tertiary care center in Addis Ababa. Respondents included patients, patient family members, and non-clinical staff...

PURPOSE: Periocular and orbital anthropometric values vary among races. No studies have established normative exophthalmometry values for Ethiopians or the many Ethiopian ethnic groups. This study established a set of normative anthropometric values for exophthalmometry, and further evaluated whether these measurements differed based on sex or ethnic group. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was performed in the ophthalmology department at St. Paul's Hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia...

MXenes are emerging two-dimensional (2D) materials for energy-storage applications and supercapacitors. Their surface chemistry, which determines critical properties, varies due to different synthesis conditions. In this work, we synthesized TiVC solid-solution MXenes by two different synthesis methods and investigated their surface functional groups. We performed etching of the TiVAlC MAX phase using two different solutions, a highly concentrated HF (50 wt % ≈ 29 M) and a mixture of LiF and HCl (1.9 M LiF/12 M HCl)...

Orodispersible tablets disintegrate rapidly (within 3 minutes) in the oral cavity and release the medicament before swallowing. The mode of disintegrant addition might affect the properties of orodispersible tablets. The objective of this study was to formulate and evaluate orodispersible tablets by studying different modes of disintegration addition with varying concentrations of disintegrants. The wet granulation method was used to produce the orodispersible tablets. Two methods of disintegration addition were compared (i...

Estrogen sulfotransferase (SULT1E1) inactivates estrogen and regulates its metabolic homeostats. Whereas SULT1E1 is expressed low in the liver of adult mice, it is induced by phenobarbital (PB) treatment or spontaneously in diabetic livers via nuclear receptors. Utilizing constitutive active/androstane receptor (CAR) KO, estrogen receptor α (ERα KO, phosphorylation-blocked ERα S216A KI mice, it is now demonstrated that, after being activated by PB, CAR binds and recruits ERα onto the Sulte1 promoter for subsequent phosphorylation at Ser216...

With 60% of all primate species now threatened with extinction and many species only persisting in small populations in forest fragments, conservation action is urgently needed. But what type of action? Here we argue that restoration of primate habitat will be an essential component of strategies aimed at conserving primates and preventing the extinctions that may occur before the end of the century and propose that primates can act as flagship species for restoration efforts. To do this we gathered a team of academics from around the world with experience in restoration so that we could provide examples of why primate restoration ecology is needed, outline how primates can act as flagship species for restoration efforts of tropical forest, review what little is known about how primate populations respond to restoration efforts, and make specific recommendations of the next steps needed to make restoration of primate populations successful...

BACKGROUND: The focused assessment with sonography for HIV-associated tuberculosis (TB) (FASH) ultrasound protocol has been increasingly used to help clinicians diagnose TB. We sought to quantify the diagnostic utility of FASH for TB among individuals with HIV in Malawi. METHODS: Between March 2016 and August 2017, 210 adults with HIV who had 2 or more signs and symptoms that were concerning for TB (fever, cough, night sweats, weight loss) were enrolled from a public HIV clinic in Lilongwe, Malawi...

Predation is widely believed to exert strong selective pressure on primate behavior and ecology but is difficult to study and rarely observed. In this study, we describe seven encounters between lone wild leopards (Panthera pardus) and herds of geladas (Theropithecus gelada) over a 6-year period in an intact Afroalpine grassland ecosystem at the Guassa Community Conservation Area, Ethiopia. Three encounters consisted of attempted predation on geladas by leopards, one of which was successful. All three attacks occurred in low-visibility microhabitats (dominated by tussock graminoids, mima mounds, or tall shrubs) that provided leopards with hidden viewsheds from which to ambush geladas...

We have previously shown that the RORα phosphorylation plays a pivotal role in Sult1e1 gene regulation within mouse liver. Here, we found serine 100 phosphorylated RORα orchestrates CAR and HNF4α to induce CYP2B6 by phenobarbital (PB) in human primary hepatocytes (HPH). RORα knockdown using small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) suppressed CYP2B6 mRNAs in HPH, while transient expression of RORα in COS-1 cells activated CYP2B6 promoter activity in reporter assays. Through chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) and gel shift assays, we found that RORα in the form of phosphorylated S100 (p-Ser100 RORα) directly bound to a newly identified RORα response element (2B6-RORE, -660/-649) within the CYP2B6 promoter in untreated or treated HPH...

BACKGROUND: The performance of point-of-care ultrasound (PoCUS) to diagnose HIV-associated tuberculosis has not been evaluated in large prospective studies. We determined the diagnostic accuracy of individual PoCUS features, performed an external validation of the focused assessment with sonography for HIV/TB (FASH) protocol, and determined independent PoCUS predictors of HIV-associated tuberculosis appropriate for use by emergency center practitioners. SETTING: A cross-sectional diagnostic study was performed at the emergency center of Khayelitsha Hospital (Cape Town, South Africa)...

1. Sulfonation is an important high affinity elimination pathway for phenolic compounds.2. In this study sulfonation of 7-hydroxycoumarin and 13 its derivatives were evaluated in liver cytosols of human and six animal species. 7-hydroxycoumarin and its derivatives are strongly fluorescent, and their sulfate conjugates are nonfluorescent at excitation 405 nm and emission 460 nm. A convenient fluorescence based kinetic assay of sulfonation was established.3. The sulfonation rate of most of the 7-hydroxycoumarin derivatives was low in liver cytosol of human and pig, whereas it was high with most compounds in dog and intermediate in rat, mouse, rabbit, and sheep...

BACKGROUND: Population aging raises questions about extending treatment indications in elderly patients with aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH). We therefore assessed functional status 1 year after treatment. METHODS: This study involved 310 patients, aged over 70 years, with ruptured brain aneurysm, enrolled between 2008 and 2014 in a prospective multicenter trial (FASHE study: NCT00692744) but considered unsuitable for randomization and therefore analyzed in the observational arms of the study: endovascular occlusion (EV), microsurgical exclusion (MS) and conservative treatment...