Diabetes und Krebs

Die Diabetologie - Die Ergebnisse experimenteller und epidemiologischer Studien deuten darauf hin, dass Diabetes die Risiken für bestimmte gastrointestinale und gynäkologische Tumoren...     

The association between weight stigma and mental health: A meta‐analysis

In recent years, there has been considerable research on the relation between weight stigma and mental health, but no quantitative synthesis of the empirical evidence is available to date. This meta‐analysis (105 studies, 59 172 participants, and 497 effect sizes) fills this gap by quantifying the association between weight stigma and mental health. Age, gender, and factors presumed to exert a protective role (i.e., adaptive coping strategies and perceived social support) were tested as potential moderators. The three‐level meta‐analytic model estimated under a random effects assumption revealed a medium to large negative association between weight stigma and mental health (r = ?0.35). The overall association remained significant when controlling for publication year, education, and body weight. There was substantial heterogeneity in effect sizes between studies (I² = 43%) and within studies (I² = 56%). Surprisingly, all moderator hypotheses had to be rejected. Body weight was a significant moderator, indicating a stronger association between weight stigma and diminished mental health with increasing body mass index. Future research might focus on explaining the heterogeneity of findings and on testing causality as well as potential underlying mechanisms.     

Protection against malaria by immunization with non-attenuated sporozoites under single-dose piperaquine-tetraphosphate chemoprophylaxis

Experimental whole-parasite immunization through concurrent administration of infectious Plasmodium sporozoites with drugs that prevent pathogenic blood-stage infection represents the current benchmark in malaria vaccine development. Key questions concerning translation remain, including the requirement for single-dose drug regimens that can reliably prevent breakthrough infections. We assessed the feasibility and efficacy of immunization with single-dose piperaquine chemoprophylaxis and concurrent sporozoite administration (PPQ-CPS) in the murine P. berghei ANKA/C57BL/6 infection model. We demonstrate that PPQ-CPS is protective with an efficacy comparable to previous findings using whole-parasite immunization under chloroquine chemoprophylaxis. PPQ-CPS immunization resulted in an expansion of intrahepatic and intrasplenic effector memory CD8⁺ T cells. In summary, PPQ-CPS appears to be a safe and efficacious immunization regimen in the rodent malaria model and may thus become an important improvement regarding the translation of whole-parasite immunization toward a human malaria vaccine.     

The use of ketogenic diets in cancer patients: a systematic review

Clinical and Experimental Medicine - Ketogenic diets are a widely known, yet controversial treatment for cancer patients. In this review, we summarize the clinical evidence for anti-tumor effects,...     

Targeted sensitization of tumor cells for radiation through monocarboxylate transporters 1 and 4 inhibition in vitro

Clinical Oral Investigations - Monocarboxylate transporters (MCT) 1, 2 and 4 play an important role in tumor metabolism. The amount of lactate transported by MCT’s highly correlates with...     

Common neural substrates for visual working memory and attention

Humans are severely limited in their ability to memorize visual information over short periods of time. Selective attention has been implicated as a limiting factor. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to test the hypothesis that this limitation is due to common neural resources shared by visual working memory (WM) and selective attention. We combined visual search and delayed discrimination of complex objects and independently modulated the demands on selective attention and WM encoding. Participants were presented with a search array and performed easy or difficult visual search in order to encode one or three complex objects into visual WM. Overlapping activation for attention-demanding visual search and WM encoding was observed in distributed posterior and frontal regions. In the right prefrontal cortex and bilateral insula blood oxygen-level-dependent activation additively increased with increased WM load and attentional demand. Conversely, several visual, parietal and premotor areas showed overlapping activation for the two task components and were severely reduced in their WM load response under the condition with high attentional demand. Regions in the left prefrontal cortex were selectively responsive to WM load. Areas selectively responsive to high attentional demand were found within the right prefrontal and bilateral occipital cortex. These results indicate that encoding into visual WM and visual selective attention require to a high degree access to common neural resources. We propose that competition for resources shared by visual attention and WM encoding can limit processing capabilities in distributed posterior brain regions.     

Impact of antimigraine compounds on cognitive processing: a placebo-controlled crossover study

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate potential cognitive impairment caused by acute antimigraine drugs. METHODS: We conducted a placebo-controlled, double-blind, crossover study to detect the short-term impact of sumatriptan, zolmitriptan, and ergotamine tartrate on cognitive processing as measured by event-related potentials and a d2 test. Sixteen healthy subjects were enrolled in the study and given placebo, sumatriptan 100 mg, zolmitriptan 2.5 mg, and ergotamine tartrate 2 mg on different days and in random order. Before and 2 hours after drug administration, visually evoked event-related potentials and a d2 test were measured. RESULTS: The N2 latency was significantly increased after ergotamine intake. No other significant differences could be observed in all other event-related potential parameters. In the d2 test, the GZ value was unchanged after ingestion of zolmitriptan and ergotamine, but improved significantly after taking placebo and sumatriptan. The number of relative errors and the concentration value did not change significantly. All results fell within the reference values for the d2 test in all examinations. CONCLUSION: Our data suggest that there may be a slight cognitive decline 2 hours after ingestion of ergotamine tartrate and, to an even lesser extent, zolmitriptan, but not after ingestion of sumatriptan or placebo. All changes recorded were very mild and unlikely to be clinically relevant.     

Updating of Visual Space Across Horizontal Saccades in Cerebellar and Thalamic Lesion Patients

Efference copies of motor commands are used to update visual space across saccades, ultimately ensuring transsaccadic constancy of space. Thalamic lesions have been shown to impair efference copy-based saccadic updating in an oculomotor context, i.e., when two successive saccades are required. Moreover, the cerebellum has also been discussed as one possible source of saccade-related efference copy signals. The present study aimed to investigate the effects of thalamic and cerebellar lesions on saccadic updating in a perceptual context. To this end, seven patients with focal cerebellar lesions, seven patients with focal thalamic lesions and 11 healthy controls completed a perceptual localisation task in which the position of a target had to be updated across a single horizontal saccade, while saccade-related event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Contrary to the expectations, localisation precision in both patient groups did not differ from the respective controls. A positive ERP component with centroparietal distribution occurring from about 300 to 500 ms after saccade onset in the updating condition was observed equally pronounced in controls and thalamic lesion patients. In cerebellar lesion patients, there was evidence of a reduction of this relative positivity in the updating condition, particularly for leftward saccades. This finding suggests that cerebellar damage altered the neural processes underlying saccadic updating in a perceptual context without causing overt behavioural deficits.     

Consumption of soy isoflavones does not affect plasma total homocysteine or asymmetric dimethylarginine concentrations in healthy postmenopausal women

Postmenopausal women are at increased risk for cardiovascular disease because many risk factors are aggravated by menopause. Phytoestrogens may modulate risk factors favorably, involving mechanisms similar to estrogen. The effect of phytoestrogens on the atherogenic amino acids homocysteine and asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) was investigated in a controlled intervention study in healthy postmenopausal women. A multicenter, double-blind, crossover intervention trial in 89 postmenopausal women from Denmark, Germany, and the UK was performed. Subjects consumed fruit cereal bars with or without soy isoflavones (50 mg/d) for 8 wk each with an 8-wk washout period in between. Urinary phytoestrogens increased significantly after isoflavone intervention (P < 0.001). Isoflavone supplementation did not affect plasma total homocysteine or ADMA. For homocysteine, changes from baseline were 0.32 micromol/L (range: -0.31-0.92; 95% CI 0.13-0.72), and 0.29 micromol/L (range: -0.45-1.09; 95% CI 0.01-0.63, P = 0.286) for isoflavone treatment and placebo, respectively. For ADMA concentrations, changes from baseline were -0.02 micromol/L (range: -0.08-0.03; 95% CI -0.04-0.01, and 0.00 micromol/L (range: -0.05-0.03; 95% CI -0.03-0.01, P = 0.397) for isoflavone treatment and placebo, respectively. There was no association between plasma total homocysteine and ADMA. Changes from baseline in plasma ADMA and folate were negatively correlated (r = -0.18, P = 0.017). These results challenge the overall health effect of isoflavone supplementation in healthy postmenopausal women.