7,708 research outputs found
Biomarkers and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: a systematic review and meta-analyses.
No full textOBJECTIVE:
To determine whether peripheral biochemical markers (biomarkers) might differentiate patients with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) from non-ADHD individuals.
METHOD:
We conducted a systematic search and a series of meta-analyses of case-control studies comprising studies from 1969 to 2011.
RESULTS:
We identified 210 studies in the following categories: 71 studies of the main metabolites and metabolism enzymes of monoaminergic neurotransmission pathway; 87 studies of environmental risk factors divided into heavy metals (18 studies), substance/chemical exposures (16 studies), and nutritional factors (trace elements: 29 studies; essential fatty acids: 24 studies); 22 studies of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) pathway; 31 studies indicated with "other." After screening for the availability for meta-analyses of drug naïve/free case-control studies and Bonferroni correction, five comparisons were statistically significant (Norepinephrine [NE], 3-Methoxy-4-hydroxyphenylethylene glycol [MHPG], monoamine oxidase [MAO], Zinc [Zn], cortisol), five of the significant findings found support in studies of response to ADHD medications (NE, MHPG, MAO, b-phenylethylamine [PEA], cortisol), six in studies of symptoms severity (NE, MHPG, MAO, ferritin, Zn, cortisol) and three in studies of neurophysiological or cognitive functioning (lead-ferritin-Zn). No evidence of publication bias was found, whereas significant heterogeneity of effect sizes across studies was found for three of the five biomarkers that differentiated ADHD from control subjects. Suggestive associations were evidenced for neuropeptide Y (NPY), manganese, and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA).
CONCLUSIONS:
This study provides evidence for several peripheral biomarkers as being associated with ADHD both in diagnosis and in treatment efficacy. Further studies are warranted to replicate these findings, to assess their specificity for ADHD, and to quantify the degree to which they are sufficiently precise to be useful in clinical settings
Genomewide linkage scan of schizophrenia in a large multicenter pedigree sample using single nucleotide polymorphisms
No full textA genomewide linkage scan was carried out in eight clinical samples of informative schizophrenia families. After all quality control checks, the analysis of 707 European-ancestry families included 1615 affected and 1602 unaffected genotyped individuals, and the analysis of all 807 families included 1900 affected and 1839 unaffected individuals. Multipoint linkage analysis with correction for marker-marker linkage disequilibrium was carried out with 5861 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs; Illumina version 4.0 linkage map). Suggestive evidence for linkage ( European families) was observed on chromosomes 8p21, 8q24.1, 9q34 and 12q24.1 in nonparametric and/or parametric analyses. In a logistic regression allele-sharing analysis of linkage allowing for intersite heterogeneity, genomewide significant evidence for linkage was observed on chromosome 10p12. Significant heterogeneity was also observed on chromosome 22q11.1. Evidence for linkage across family sets and analyses was most consistent on chromosome 8p21, with a one-LOD support interval that does not include the candidate gene NRG1, suggesting that one or more other susceptibility loci might exist in the region. In this era of genomewide association and deep resequencing studies, consensus linkage regions deserve continued attention, given that linkage signals can be produced by many types of genomic variation, including any combination of multiple common or rare SNPs or copy number variants in a region. Molecular Psychiatry (2009) 14, 786-795; doi:10.1038/mp.2009.11; published online 17 February 2009</p
Poor attention rather than hyperactivity/impulsivity predicts academic achievement in very preterm and full-term adolescents
No full textBackground: Very preterm (VP) children are at particular risk for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) of the inattentive subtype. It is unknown whether the neurodevelopmental pathways to academic underachievement are the same as in the general population. This study investigated whether middle childhood attention or hyperactivity/impulsivity problems are better predictors of VP adolescents' academic achievement.
Method: In a geographically defined prospective whole-population sample of VP (<32 weeks gestation) and/or very low birth weight (<1500 g birth weight) (VLBW/VP; n = 281) and full-term control children (n = 286) in South Germany, ADHD subtypes were assessed at 6 years 3 months and 8 years 5 months using multiple data sources. Academic achievement was assessed at 13 years of age.
Results: Compared with full-term controls, VLBW/VP children were at higher risk for ADHD inattentive subtype [6 years 3 months: odds ratio (OR) 2.8, p < 0.001; 8 years 5 months: OR 1.7, p = 0.020] but not for ADHD hyperactive-impulsive subtype (6 years 3 months: OR 1.4, p = 0.396; 8 years 5 months: OR 0.9, p = 0.820). Childhood attention measures predicted academic achievement in VLBW/VP and also full-term adolescents, whereas hyperactive/impulsive behaviour did not.
Conclusions: Attention is an important prerequisite for learning and predicts long-term academic underachievement. As ADHD inattentive subtype and cognitive impairments are frequent in VLBW/VP children, their study may help to identify the neurofunctional pathways from early brain development and dysfunction to attention problems and academic underachievement
Family-based association testing strongly implicates DRD2 as a risk gene for schizophrenia in Han Chinese from Taiwan
No full textVerbal and visual-spatial memory impairment in youth at familial high risk for schizophrenia or affective psychosis: A pilot study
No full textBACKGROUND:
Schizophrenia and affective psychoses share several common biological origins, particularly genetic susceptibility. Kraepelin posited that differing clinical expressions in these disorders reflect different etiopathologies. We tested a neuropsychological component of this hypothesis by evaluating verbal memory and visual memory performance in nonpsychotic youth at familial risk for psychosis, taking into account contributions to memory dysfunction including executive processing and psychopathology.
METHODS:
Teenage and young adults (ages 13-25) at familial high-risk (FHR) for schizophrenia (HR-SCZ, n=41) or affective psychosis (HR-AFF, n=24) were compared to community controls (CC, n=54) on verbal (Miller-Selfridge Context Memory) and visual (Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure) memory tests in which the roles of strategy and contextual processing on distinct recall domains could be assessed. Effects of psychopathology, vigilance and working memory were investigated to determine their influence on memory performance.
RESULTS:
HR-AFF and HR-SCZ exhibited similarly impaired memory profiles and elevated levels of psychopathology compared to CC. HR-SCZ were significantly impaired on both verbal memory and visual-spatial memory, while HR-AFF in verbal memory only. However, effect sizes, in the medium range, were largely comparable between the two HR groups. Deficits in verbal recall and in visual memory organization remained significant after adjustment for confounders.
CONCLUSIONS:
Youth at FHR for psychosis present relatively common memory deficits across both visual-spatial and verbal modalities that are not explained by current psychopathology, vigilance or working memory deficits. Deficits in organizing information to be recalled represent a promising trait of psychosis vulnerability
Bounded model checking of multi-threaded c programs via lazy sequentialization
No full textBounded model checking (BMC) has successfully been used for many practical program verification problems, but concurrency still poses a challenge. Here we describe a new approach to BMC of sequentially consistent C programs using POSIX threads. Our approach first translates a multi-threaded C program into a nondeterministic sequential C program that preserves reachability for all round-robin schedules with a given bound on the number of rounds. It then re-uses existing high-performance BMC tools as backends for the sequential verification problem. Our translation is carefully designed to introduce very small memory overheads and very few sources of nondeterminism, so that it produces tight SAT/SMT formulae, and is thus very effective in practice: our prototype won the concurrency category of SV-COMP14. It solved all verification tasks successfully and was 30x faster than the best tool with native concurrency handling.<br/
Scattering of harmonic P1 and SV waves by a shallow lined circular tunnel in a poroelastic half-plane
No full textAn analytical solution for the scattering of harmonic P1 and SV waves in a poroelastic half-plane with a shallow lined tunnel is obtained using the plane complex theory in elastodynamics. In light of the wave function expansions, the wave fields of the poroelastic medium and the liner with unknown coefficients are obtained based on Biot's theory and Helmholtz decomposition. Complex-valued expressions of the effective stresses, the fluid stress, and the displacements of the poroelastic medium and the liner are expressed by the complex variable function method and the conformal transformation technique. With the boundary conditions and the continuity of the medium-liner interface, the boundary value problem results in a series of algebraic equations. The unknown coefficients in the infinite set of algebraic equations can be solved numerically by truncating the series number. A parametric study for the incident SV waves is performed to investigate dynamic stress concentrations and fluid stress of the medium and the liner. Numerical results show that the embedment depth of the tunnel, the incident angle of the excitations, and the porosity of the medium have considerable influence on the dynamic responses of the medium and the liner. The shielding effect of the tunnel on the incident SV waves is obvious. For the big embedment depth of the tunnel, the scattered waves contribute little to the displacements and dynamic stress concentration of the medium and the liner. For a high porosity close to the critical value, the response of the medium-liner system to the incident waves is great.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Dynamics of Structure
Seismic Responses of a Hemispherical Alluvial Valley to SV Waves: A Three-Dimensional Analytical Approximation
No full textAn analytical solution to the three-dimensional scattering and diffraction of plane SV-waves by a saturated hemispherical alluvial valley in elastic half-space is obtained by using Fourier-Bessel series expansion technique. The hemispherical alluvial valley with saturated soil deposits is simulated with Biot's dynamic theory for saturated porous media. The following conclusions based on numerical results can be drawn: (1) there are a significant differences in the seismic response simulation between the previous single-phase models and the present two-phase model; (2) the normalized displacements on the free surface of the alluvial valley depend mainly on the incident wave angles, the dimensionless frequency of the incident SV waves and the porosity of sediments; (3) with the increase of the incident angle, the displacement distributions become more complicated; and the displacements on the free surface of the alluvial valley increase as the porosity of sediments increases
Analysis of 2D homogeneous space solutions of the seismoelectric P-SV-TM mode for interferometric purposes
No full textSeismic and electromagnetic imaging methods both provide the geophysicist with different types of medium parameters. Seismic methods are sensitive to the elastic properties of the medium, while electromagnetic methods are sensitive to the electric properties. In porous-saturated media, these two wave fields occur as a coupled system, which is known as 'seismoelectrics'. This coupling is caused by physical interactions at the grain surface boundary and is a function of several medium parameters, such as dynamic permeability. This medium parameter is valuable to the oil and gas industry, as well to the field of hydrology. By conducting a seismoelectric survey it would theoretically be possible to provide an extra control on this medium parameter. However, both practice and theory have shown that this coupling mechanism also results in a low signal-to-noise ratio. A possible solution to this problem would be to apply interferometric Green's retrieval, which is a technique based on stacking of cross-correlated data. This approach has been proved successful for the SH-TE mode in 1D. The SH-TE mode forms together with the P-SV-TM mode, the total seismoelectric system. In this thesis the first steps are taken towards the proof that this technique could also work for the P-SV-TM mode of the system. This is supported by a modelling experiment of 2D homogeneous space solutions of the seismoelectric P-SV-TM mode for different configurations. This analysis turned out that the unwanted artefacts observed in the interferometric retrieval are generated by cross-correlations between P-waves and SV-waves.IDEA League Joint Master's in Applied GeophysicsGeoscience & EngineeringCivil Engineering and Geoscience
The response of SV-HFO cells to Ti6Al7Nb surfaces modified by Plasma Electrolytic Oxidation
No full textThe aim of this study was to assess the response of preosteoblasts (SV-HFO), from adhesion to matrix mineralization, on Ti6Al7Nb surfaces modified by plasma electrolytic oxidation (PEO). Two different surfaces have been generated by changing the oxidation duration from 1 to 5 minutes. The resultant (PEO1 and PEO5) surfaces showed uniform porous topographies with pores mostly in the submicron range and a mixture of anatase and rutile TiO2 phases. However, the average surface roughness, maximum peak-to-valley height, pore size and Ca/P ratio increased with oxidation time whereas pore density and surface porosity decreased. On the PEO1 surface SV-HFO cells attached and spread easily using the pores as anchoring sites for their extensions and showing cell-cell contact after 48 hours. The larger pores protruding from the PEO5 surface suppressed cell adhesion. Deposition of extracellular matrix started earlier on the PEO1 surface and after 21 incubation days a net-like structure well integrated with the porous surface was visible. Matrix mineralization was evidenced on both surfaces after 21 days. However, more uniform mineralized areas were observed on the PEO1 surface whereas an accelerated mineralization was noticed after 14 days on the PEO5 surface. In conclusion, by varying only one PEO process condition, significant changes occurred on the surface of Ti6Al7Nb alloy, which influenced both the early and late response of SV-HFO cells. The observed surface-induced effects indicated that surfaces produced at shorter oxidation time may be more beneficial for early osteogenesis.BMEBioMechanical EngineeringMechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineerin
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