Inventory of plants used in traditional medicine in Somalia. III. Plants of the families Lauraceae-Papilionaceae.

Thirty-five plants are listed, which are used by traditional healers in the central and southern parts of Somalia. For each species are listed: the botanical name with synonyms, collection number, vernacular name, medicinal use, preparation of remedy and dosage. Results of a literature survey are also reported including medicinal use, substances isolated and pharmacological effects.     

维吾尔族mtDNA及Y-STR遗传多样性研究进展

维吾尔族是新疆主要少数民族,人类历史上诸多民族及部落对现代维吾尔族的生成都有贡献,甚至可以说他们已经融合入现代的维吾尔族人群中。现有的历史记载和考古学资料难于解释历史较近的人群动态,故需要运用其他方法手段。以PCR扩增为基础的分子遗传学方法已成为探讨人群、种族迁演乃至人类的起源和进化的主导技术。本文主要对维吾尔族mtDNA及Y-STR遗传多样性研究进展做一综述。     

Myocardial perfusion imaging in humans by contrast echocardiography using polygelin colloid solution

This study evaluated the myocardial contrast effect and safety of polygelin colloid solution selectively injected into the coronary arteries in 25 patients during two-dimensional echocardiography. Six patients (group I) had selective intracoronary injections of nonagitated and 19 (group II) of hand-agitated polygelin colloid solution. Myocardial contrast was seen on two-dimensional echocardiographic cross sections in three patients of group I and in all patients of group II; in 16 patients it was also seen on M-mode echocardiograms. The contrast effect lasted for 15 to 60 seconds. The intensity of myocardial opacification was not significantly influenced by the amount of polygelin colloid solution injected, heart rate or cardiac size. The total number of contrast-enhanced segments after right and left coronary artery injections delineated the entire cross-sectional area in any given view. None of the patients developed symptoms during or immediately after the injections. One patient had transient second degree atrioventricular block after a right coronary wedge injection, one patient showed a QRS axis shift and two others had transient T wave changes. There were no aortic blood pressure changes and no significant serum enzyme (creatine kinase [CK], CK-MB fraction, glutamic oxaloacetic transaminase) elevation or alterations of left ventricular function assessed echocardiographically. It is concluded that hand-agitated polygelin colloid solution is a useful and safe intracoronary contrast agent for delineating myocardial perfusion areas on two-dimensional echocardiography in humans.     

Model-free decision making is prioritized when learning to avoid harming others

Moral behavior requires learning how our actions help or harm others. Theoretical accounts of learning propose a key division between “model-free” algorithms that cache outcome values in actions and “model-based” algorithms that map actions to outcomes. Here, we tested the engagement of these mechanisms and their neural basis as participants learned to avoid painful electric shocks for themselves and a stranger. We found that model-free decision making was prioritized when learning to avoid harming others compared to oneself. Model-free prediction errors for others relative to self were tracked in the thalamus/caudate. At the time of choice, neural activity consistent with model-free moral learning was observed in subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC), and switching after harming others was associated with stronger connectivity between sgACC and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Finally, model-free moral learning varied with individual differences in moral judgment. Our findings suggest moral learning favors efficiency over flexibility and is underpinned by specific neural mechanisms.

A central component of human morality is a prohibition against harming others (1, 2). People readily avoid actions that might harm another person (3–7), and this basic harm aversion is so strong that many people even find it distressing to perform pretend harmful actions, such as shooting someone with a fake gun (8). Harm aversion is disrupted in clinical disorders such as psychopathy that have a strong developmental component (9), and although harm aversion is robust in healthy adults, anyone who has watched young children fighting over a coveted toy knows that such an aversion is not present from birth. Indeed, a large literature documents the emergence of moral conduct over the course of development (7, 10, 11). Cross-cultural differences in morality suggest moral behavior is fine-tuned to local environmental demands (12), and laboratory experiments demonstrate how individuals can quickly adapt moral behavior to changing norms (13, 14). All this evidence highlights a critical role for learning in the development of harm aversion and moral behavior more broadly (6). Once having learned as children that harming others is morally wrong, adults still need to learn which actions to take to avoid harm in novel contexts.Recent work in computational neuroscience has advanced our knowledge of how organisms learn the value of actions and outcomes via reward and punishment (15, 16). An important theoretical distinction has been made between “model-based” and “model-free” learning systems (17, 18). Model-based learning is often described as deliberative learning, whereas model-free learning is thought to be habitual. The model-based system builds a “world model” of the environment and selects actions by prospectively searching the model for the best course of action (19, 20). In contrast, the computationally efficient model-free system assigns values to actions simply through trial and error. The distinction between these systems can be illustrated by giving the example of how we navigate home from work. The model-based system could easily replan if a particular route home was unexpectedly blocked, whereas a purely model-free learner can only plan a route home by directly experiencing each of the different routes (21). These two systems are also somewhat neurally dissociable, with model-based learning preferentially engaging lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC), posterior parietal cortex, and caudate (20, 22, 23) and model-free learning preferentially engaging putamen (24, 25), although both systems update their representations via prediction errors encoded in overlapping regions of ventral striatum (20). Model-based and model-free systems often make similar recommendations about which actions are more valuable, but when they conflict an arbitration process allocates control between them (12, 13, 23, 26, 27). However, despite extensive theorizing that the model-based/model-free distinction may help to characterize puzzling features of moral learning and decision making (3, 28–30), it remains unknown whether the moral consequences of actions affect the balance between model-based and model-free control, and whether common or distinct neural processes are engaged when learning to avoid harmful outcomes to self and others.Past work on the neural basis of moral decision making provides support for competing hypotheses. On the one hand, the sophistication of human morality seems to demand the kinds of complex representations afforded by model-based learning, suggesting learning to avoid harming others may preferentially engage the model-based system. Supporting this view, people are easily able to learn to avoid harmful actions without directly experiencing their outcomes, in line with a model-based learning strategy when avoiding harm to others (3, 28, 31). Moreover, moral decision making in healthy adults consistently engages brain regions most strongly associated with the model-based system, including LPFC, caudate, and temporoparietal junction (TPJ) (24, 26, 32). Deciding to follow moral norms like fairness and honesty, and enforcing those norms on others via costly punishment, engages LPFC (33–38), and disrupting LPFC function reduces moral norm compliance and enforcement (39, 40). During decisions to avoid harming others, LPFC encodes the blameworthiness of harmful choices and modulates action values in caudate and thalamus (4), two subcortical areas shown to play a critical role in associative learning and pain processing as well as moral decision making (41–46).On the other hand, one principal function of model-free learning is to cache value in actions that are reliably adaptive, sacrificing flexibility for efficiency. Given that harming others is typically prohibited, actions that harm others may represent a special class of actions that are prioritized for model-free learning, similar to how certain classes of stimuli, like snakes and spiders, are “prepared” for aversive classical conditioning (47). In other words, since avoiding harm to others is hugely important for social life, learning processes that fast-track harm-avoidant action selection to a habitual, automatic process may be socially adaptive. Supporting this view, recent work suggests that morality constrains mental representations of what actions are considered possible; harmful actions are removed from choice sets as a default (48), and choices that harm others are slower than helpful choices, suggesting an automatic tendency to avoid harm (5, 49–51). Furthermore, recent studies of model-free learning to gain rewards for oneself and others have highlighted a distinct encoding of prediction errors concerning others’ outcomes in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) (52, 53), a region that has been implicated in social and moral decision making more broadly (53–57). Model-free processes that distinguish learning about how one’s actions affect others could provide a neural mechanism for prioritizing model-free learning in moral contexts.To test these competing hypotheses, we used computational modeling and functional MRI (fMRI) to probe the relative balance between model-based vs. model-free processes, and their neural bases, when people learn to avoid moderately painful electric shocks for themselves and a stranger. Forty-one participants attended a 3.5-h experimental session. After undergoing an extensive pain thresholding procedure (Methods), they completed a hybrid version of two paradigms previously proposed to reliably dissociate model-free vs. model-based learning (Fig. 1) (20, 23, 32). We optimized the task in a way that allowed us to address the specific hypotheses examined in the present study (see SI Appendix, Supplementary Text for details) and included as many as 272 trials per participant to accurately sample decisions for both self and other. Our final analysis included 36 participants who made a total of 9,792 choices.Open in a separate windowFig. 1.Model-free and model-based aversive learning task. Participants completed a two-stage decision-making task to assess the tendency to engage in model-free and model-based learning. The task was a hybrid of two tasks previously shown to assess model-free and model-based learning processes (20, 27). We used this task to probe learning to avoid aversive (shock) outcomes for either oneself or another person (the “receiver,” referred to as “other” hereafter). At the beginning of each block, an instruction cue signaled the recipient of the outcome (self or other). At the first stage, two images were displayed that probabilistically led to one of two states (common [∼70% of the time] or uncommon [rare] transition [∼30% of the time]), depicted by different colors surrounding the boxes. In this example, to “blue zone” or “yellow zone” for the other participant and “turquoise zone” or “purple zone” for self. Participants then made a second choice between two pictures in the colored zone which was followed by an outcome of shock or no shock. The probability with which the boxes at the second stage delivered a shock or no-shock outcome drifted throughout the experiment (bounded between 0 and 1 with a drift rate of 0.2) and participants were instructed to keep learning throughout. Ten percent of the total electric shocks accumulated in the “self” condition were delivered to the participant themselves at the end of the experiment, while 10% of the electric shocks accumulated in the “other” condition were delivered to the partner participant.     

Pattern of microbial translocation in patients living with HIV-1 from Vietnam,Ethiopia and Sweden

Introduction

The role of microbial translocation (MT) in HIV patients living with HIV from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is not fully known. The aim of this study is to investigate and compare the patterns of MT in patients from Vietnam, Ethiopia and Sweden.

Methods

Cross-sectional samples were obtained from treatment-naïve patients living with HIV-1 and healthy controls from Vietnam (n=83; n=46), Ethiopia (n=9492; n=50) and Sweden (n=51; n=19). Longitudinal samples were obtained from a subset of the Vietnamese (n=24) in whom antiretroviral therapy (ART) and tuberculostatics were given. Plasma lipopolysaccharide (LPS), sCD14 and anti-flagellin IgG were determined by the endpoint chromogenic Limulus Amebocyte Assay and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay.

Results

All three biomarkers were significantly increased in patients living with HIV-1 from all countries as compared to controls. No differences were found between males and females. Vietnamese and Ethiopian patients had significantly higher levels of anti-flagellin IgG and LPS, as compared to Swedes. ART reduced these levels for the Vietnamese. Vietnamese patients given tuberculostatics at initiation of ART had significantly lower levels of anti-flagellin IgG and higher sCD14. The biomarkers were lower in Vietnamese who did not develop opportunistic infection.

Conclusions

Higher MT is common in patients living with HIV compared to healthy individuals, and in patients from LMICs compared to patients from a high-income country. Treatment with tuberculostatics decreased MT while higher levels of MT are associated with a poorer clinical outcome.     

A case report of Tubulo-Interstitial Nephritis with Uveitis (TINU syndrome) and follow-up for one year

International Urology and Nephrology -     

In vitro snake venom detoxifying action of the leaf extract of Guiera senegalensis

The extract of the leaves of Guiera senegalensis was found to detoxify (in vitro) venom from two common northern Nigerian snake species, Echis carinatus and Naja nigricollis, in separate experiments. There was a remarkable reduction in the mortality of albino mice after intra-peritoneal (i.p.) administration of reconstituted venom incubated with the extract, when compared to those challenged with the venom only. The survival of the animals exposed to the venom incubated with the different concentrations of the extract was used as the in vitro detoxification parameter.     

Thrombolytic therapy in acute pulmonary embolism due to heparin-induced thrombocytopenia type II

Hospitalized patients are in danger of deep venous thrombosis either due to a genetic tendency, immobilization or the underlying medical condition. Paradoxically heparin, the substance used to prevent this complication, can lead to thrombo-embolic phenomena, which can be life threatening. We report a case of heparin-induced thrombocytopenia, which caused a massive pulmonary embolism, and its management by administering a thrombolytic agent in a situation where bleeding seems inevitable.     

Inventory of plants used in traditional medicine in Somalia. I. Plants of the families Acanthaceae-Chenopodiaceae.

Thirty-eight plants are listed, which are used by traditional healers in the central and southern parts of Somalia. For each species are listed: the botanical name with synonyms, collection number, vernacular name, medicinal use, preparation of remedy and dosage. Results of a literature survey are also reported including medicinal use, substances isolated and pharmacological effects.