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Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews Dec 2023Wakefulness, non-rapid eye-movement (NREM) and rapid eye-movement (REM) sleep differ from each other along three dimensions: behavioral, phenomenological, physiological.... (Review)
Review
Wakefulness, non-rapid eye-movement (NREM) and rapid eye-movement (REM) sleep differ from each other along three dimensions: behavioral, phenomenological, physiological. Although these dimensions often fluctuate in step, they can also dissociate. The current paradigm that views sleep as made of global NREM and REM states fail to account for these dissociations. This conundrum can be dissolved by stressing the existence and significance of the local regulation of sleep. We will review the evidence in animals and humans, healthy and pathological brains, showing different forms of local sleep and the consequences on behavior, cognition, and subjective experience. Altogether, we argue that the notion of local sleep provides a unified account for a host of phenomena: dreaming in REM and NREM sleep, NREM and REM parasomnias, intrasleep responsiveness, inattention and mind wandering in wakefulness. Yet, the physiological origins of local sleep or its putative functions remain unclear. Exploring further local sleep could provide a unique and novel perspective on how and why we sleep.
Topics: Animals; Humans; Sleep; Sleep, REM; Brain; Wakefulness; Cognition; Electroencephalography
PubMed: 37972882
DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2023.105465 -
Natural Product Reports Jul 2023Many researchers in the natural product sciences dream of discovering a successful drug. For almost all of us, this dream will never be realized. Among the heroes of our... (Review)
Review
Many researchers in the natural product sciences dream of discovering a successful drug. For almost all of us, this dream will never be realized. Among the heroes of our past, though, there is a team whose efforts led to the discovery of not one but two new drugs. Dr Monroe Wall and Dr Mansukh Wani isolated and solved the structures for taxol and camptothecin, plant-based compounds that continue to play a critical role in cancer therapy today. Since the 1960s and 1970s when Wall, Wani and collaborators did their seminal work, there have been tremendous technological advances in the natural product sciences. With access to most sophisticated technology, it might be expected that the rate of discovery of new drugs from plants and other sources would have sped up. However, this has not come to pass. Why is this? Is it that the promise of new drug candidates from plant-based sources has been exhausted? Has our fascination with new technologies and with the promise of the genomics revolution caused us to stop investing effort and resources in the practices that are proven to yield success? With this Viewpoint, we share the story of taxol's discovery, highlighting critical challenges that were overcome and considering their relevance to botanical natural products drug discovery today. We hope that consideration of lessons learned from the past will help fuel success by researchers currently studying plants with the goal of discovering promising therapeutic leads.
Topics: Humans; Antineoplastic Agents; Antineoplastic Agents, Phytogenic; Biological Products; Neoplasms; Paclitaxel; Plants; Population Health
PubMed: 37449327
DOI: 10.1039/d3np00017f -
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews Jun 2024Changes in sleep and dreams are often observed during pregnancy. Dreaming may represent privileged access to the inner world of individuals, providing relevant... (Review)
Review
Changes in sleep and dreams are often observed during pregnancy. Dreaming may represent privileged access to the inner world of individuals, providing relevant information about their well-being. For this reason, a growing but heterogeneous literature has investigated dream experiences of pregnant women. The present paper aimed to systematically review the available evidence on the relationship between pregnancy and oneric activity, focusing on dream and nightmare frequency, dream contents, and emotional features. Moreover, dream changes between pre-partum and post-partum periods and the impact of previous pregnancy-related adverse events on dreaming have been summarized. Overall, 17 studies have been examined. The reviewed evidence suggests that women tend to have an abundant production of dreams and nightmares during pregnancy, and some results support the view that a high rate of dream recall is associated with poor sleep quality. Most studies have shown a high presence of pregnancy-related dream content, likely reflecting waking experiences and concerns. Additionally, dreaming may promote psychological preparation and activation of functional coping strategies to face life changes after childbirth.
PubMed: 38852848
DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2024.105763 -
Experimental and Clinical... Jan 2024The dream of any organ procurement organization is to achieve self-sufficiency, where the number of organs needed is met by an equal number of organs available. In 2023,... (Review)
Review
The dream of any organ procurement organization is to achieve self-sufficiency, where the number of organs needed is met by an equal number of organs available. In 2023, we can hope to reach selfsufficiency by providing kidneys to most patients in terminal renal failure. This can be achieved by decreasing the demand since SGL2 inhibitors have shown promising results in delaying renal failure. On the other hand, progress in the development of the bioartificial kidney and advances in xenotransplantation will significantly increase the number of organs offered.
Topics: Humans; Tissue and Organ Procurement; Transplantation, Heterologous; Kidney Transplantation; Kidney Failure, Chronic; Tissue Donors
PubMed: 38385368
DOI: 10.6002/ect.MESOT2023.L7 -
Sleep Medicine Reviews Apr 2024Rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder is a parasomnia characterized by excessive muscle activity during rapid eye movement sleep (rapid eye movement sleep without... (Review)
Review
Rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder is a parasomnia characterized by excessive muscle activity during rapid eye movement sleep (rapid eye movement sleep without atonia), along with dream enactment behavior. Isolated rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder tends to occur in older males and is of concern due to the known link to Parkinson's disease and other synucleinopathies. When rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder occurs in association with other neurological or general medical conditions, or resulting from the use of various substances, it is called secondary rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder; the most common cause is neurodegenerative illness, specifically the synucleinopathies. Here, the focus will be on the subset of secondary rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder in which there is no neurodegenerative disease.
PubMed: 38657360
DOI: 10.1016/j.smrv.2024.101938 -
European Radiology Oct 2023
PubMed: 37099177
DOI: 10.1007/s00330-023-09671-4 -
Sleep Medicine Reviews Oct 2023The purpose of this narrative review was to describe prevalence rates of nightmares and nightmare disorder in school-aged youth according to sample characteristics and... (Review)
Review
The purpose of this narrative review was to describe prevalence rates of nightmares and nightmare disorder in school-aged youth according to sample characteristics and methods used to assess nightmares. We searched PsychINFO, PubMed, and CINAHL databases to identify empirical peer-reviewed articles and grey literature published between 2001 and 2021. Sixty-nine studies from 23 countries were included. The prevalence of nightmares was between 1% and 11% in the past week and 25% to 35% in the past month in pediatric developmental samples and between 27% and 57% in the past week and 18%-22% in the past month in psychiatric samples. The prevalence of nightmare disorder was approximately between 3% and 6% in pediatric developmental samples and 10%-12% in psychiatric samples. Nightmare prevalence peaks between ages 10 and 14 then decreases with older age. Generally, prevalence was higher in girls than boys, and one study suggested gender divergence started around age 14. Children's self-reports were higher than parent reports, except in samples with comorbid psychiatric problems where there was more parent-child agreement. Inconsistencies in nightmare definitions and measurement were observed across the literature and indicate a need for standardized measurement of nightmares.
Topics: Humans; Dreams; Child; Prevalence; Adolescent; Female; Male
PubMed: 37651893
DOI: 10.1016/j.smrv.2023.101834 -
Cells Jul 2023K channel-interacting proteins (KChIP1-4) belong to a family of Ca-binding EF-hand proteins that are able to bind to the N-terminus of the K4 channel α-subunits. KChIPs... (Review)
Review
K channel-interacting proteins (KChIP1-4) belong to a family of Ca-binding EF-hand proteins that are able to bind to the N-terminus of the K4 channel α-subunits. KChIPs are predominantly expressed in the brain and heart, where they contribute to the maintenance of the excitability of neurons and cardiomyocytes by modulating the fast inactivating-K4 currents. As the auxiliary subunit, KChIPs are critically involved in regulating the surface protein expression and gating properties of K4 channels. Mechanistically, KChIP1, KChIP2, and KChIP3 promote the translocation of K4 channels to the cell membrane, accelerate voltage-dependent activation, and slow the recovery rate of inactivation, which increases K4 currents. By contrast, KChIP4 suppresses K4 trafficking and eliminates the fast inactivation of K4 currents. In the heart, , , and can also be regulated by KChIPs. and are positively regulated by KChIP2, whereas is negatively regulated by KChIP2. Interestingly, KChIP3 is also known as downstream regulatory element antagonist modulator (DREAM) because it can bind directly to the downstream regulatory element (DRE) on the promoters of target genes that are implicated in the regulation of pain, memory, endocrine, immune, and inflammatory reactions. In addition, all the KChIPs can act as transcription factors to repress the expression of genes involved in circadian regulation. Altered expression of KChIPs has been implicated in the pathogenesis of several neurological and cardiovascular diseases. For example, KChIP2 is decreased in failing hearts, while loss of KChIP2 leads to increased susceptibility to arrhythmias. KChIP3 is increased in Alzheimer's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, but decreased in epilepsy and Huntington's disease. In the present review, we summarize the progress of recent studies regarding the structural properties, physiological functions, and pathological roles of KChIPs in both health and disease. We also summarize the small-molecule compounds that regulate the function of KChIPs. This review will provide an overview and update of the regulatory mechanism of the KChIP family and the progress of targeted drug research as a reference for researchers in related fields.
Topics: Neurons; Carrier Proteins; Kv Channel-Interacting Proteins; Cell Membrane; Cardiovascular System
PubMed: 37508558
DOI: 10.3390/cells12141894 -
Cell Reports. Medicine Jan 2024Every year, 11% of infants are born preterm with significant health consequences, with the vaginal microbiome a risk factor for preterm birth. We crowdsource models to...
Every year, 11% of infants are born preterm with significant health consequences, with the vaginal microbiome a risk factor for preterm birth. We crowdsource models to predict (1) preterm birth (PTB; <37 weeks) or (2) early preterm birth (ePTB; <32 weeks) from 9 vaginal microbiome studies representing 3,578 samples from 1,268 pregnant individuals, aggregated from public raw data via phylogenetic harmonization. The predictive models are validated on two independent unpublished datasets representing 331 samples from 148 pregnant individuals. The top-performing models (among 148 and 121 submissions from 318 teams) achieve area under the receiver operator characteristic (AUROC) curve scores of 0.69 and 0.87 predicting PTB and ePTB, respectively. Alpha diversity, VALENCIA community state types, and composition are important features in the top-performing models, most of which are tree-based methods. This work is a model for translation of microbiome data into clinically relevant predictive models and to better understand preterm birth.
Topics: Pregnancy; Female; Infant, Newborn; Humans; Premature Birth; Crowdsourcing; Phylogeny; Vagina; Microbiota
PubMed: 38134931
DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrm.2023.101350 -
Bulletin Du Cancer Jun 2024
PubMed: 38851993
DOI: 10.1016/j.bulcan.2024.04.008