Does Salt Obesity Exist?

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) obesity is defined as abnormal or excessive fat accumulation, caused by factors such as genetic inheritance; thebehavior of the nervous, endocrine system. Altogether, there are two main causes: Higher intake of calories than the body uses and/or less physical activity than the body needs. It has been established that men with more than 25% body fat and women with more than 35% body fat are obese. According to the aforementioned criterion it has been reported that around the world there are 300 million obese people.

Fat tissue produces bioactive proteins known as adipocytokines as epidermal growth factor that binds heparin (HB-EGF), leptin, Tumor Necrosis Factor Alpha (TNF-a), the inhibitor of Plasminogen Activator-1 (PAI-1), resistin and adiponectin. The expression of these adipocytokines (except adiponectin) increases with the accumulation of visceral fat and contribute to the development of chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, cerebrovascular events, kidney failure and some forms of cáncer.(Read more)

Proteomics Analysis for Therapeutic Options of Neurodegeneration: A Review

The characterization and identification of putative disease modifying pathways in neurodegenerative disorders has enormous potential for discovery of new therapeutic agents that target these pathways. There is an increasing evidence that a number ofpotentially informative Neurodegenerative Disease (NDD) biomarkers can improve the accuracy of diagnosing NDD, especially when they are used as a panel of diagnostic assays and interpreted in the context of neuroimaging and clinical data. The greatest contributing risk factor for NDDs is age. With an aging population, the inevitable result is a steep rise in the incidence of NDDs. The first publication that reported about Alzheimer disease (AD) was in 1907, which described a woman in her middle age that had lost her memory with a progressive loss of cognitive functions.

James Parkinson in 1817 was the first one who described medically a neurological syndrome and it was known as Parkinson's disease. In 1912, the lewy body that characterized the Parkinson’s disease was reported by Forman et al. Protein aggregation and inclusion body formation that was mostly associated with many forms of neurodegenerative diseases were detected using different techniques in the last century. These suggested that changes in physicochemical properties of the proteins in human brain were responsible for and lead to neurodegenerative diseases.(Read More)

Role of Autacoids in the Development of Vulnerability and Resilience in Patients with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

There are three monoamines in the family, including dopamine (DA), norepinephrine (NE) and serotonin (5HT). First two monoamines are catecholamines and serotonin is an indolamine. Role of DA inPTSD is not very clear even though there is evidence that exposure to stressinduces mesolimbic dopamine release that may play a major role in the modulation of HPA axis and often may result some of the psychosis and paranoid behavior associated with some PTSD patients. NE is one of the principal mediators.

Catecholamine neurons centrally seem to play a very important role in enhancing the levels of vigilance, alertness, selective attention, fear conditioning and cardiovascular stimuli as described elsewhere. This evidence of catecholamine dysregulation increases the vulnerability to PTSD through the mechanisms of increased heart rate and blood pressure when an individual is exposed to visual or auditory trauma. Preventing pre-synaptic NE release with alpha 2 adrenergic agonists (clonidine) or opioids, or blocking post-synaptic norepinephrine with beta adrenergic blockers (propranolol) may diminish the fear conditioning.(Read more)

Effect of Socio-Economic Status on Nutritional Status on Adolescent Girls of Paschim Medinipur, West Bengal, India.

Teenager, or teen, is a young person whose age falls within the range from 13–19. They are called teenagers because their age number ends with "teen". Usage by ordinary people varies, and also varies in different societies. Most societies traditionallyhad a formal ceremony to mark the change from childhood to adulthood. During puberty, rapid mental and physical development occurs. Adolescence is the name for this transition period from childhood to adulthood.

In the United States, teenagers from the ages 12-14 go to middle school while teenagers from the ages of 14-18 typically go to high school. In the United Kingdom (UK); teenagers and non-teens are mixed in secondary school. Teenagers attending secondary school (high school in the US) generally graduate at the age of 17 or 18. 

On average, girls begin puberty at ages 10-11; boys at ages 11-12. Girls usually complete puberty by ages 15-17, while boys usually complete puberty by ages 16-17. The major landmark of puberty for females is menarche, the onset of menstruation, which occurs on average between ages 12-13; for males, it is the first ejaculation, which occurs on average at age 13. In the 21^st century, the average age at which children, especially girls, reach puberty is lower compared to the 19^th century, when it was 15 for girls and 16 for boys. This can be due to improved nutrition resulting in rapid body growth, increased weight and fat deposition, eating meat from animals which have been dosed up with oestrogen. Adolescence can be defined biologically, as the physical transition marked by the onset of puberty and the termination of physical growth; cognitively, as changes in the ability to think abstractly and multi-dimensionally; or socially, as a period of preparation for adult roles.(Read more) 

Flow Lectin Affinity Chromatography-A Model with Sambucus nigra Agglutinin.

Never like today have proteomic and glycoproteomic procedures been used as valuable tools to obtain information and characterize general or specific proteomes such in disease states and todiscover disease biomarkers that can help in the diagnosis, prognosis and treatment monitoring of several diseases, for instance in cancer.

Plasma and serum are the most informative samples for proteomic studies but they are also the most difficult versions of the human proteome, due to the high heterogeneity they present. The complexity of these samples is potentiated by plasma or serum proteolysis, the presence of protein and glycoprotein isoforms and post-translational modifications of proteins. Additionally, the dynamic range of protein abundance in these samples is very wide (in plasma the dynamic range comprises up to ten orders of magnitude) and cannot be covered by a single analytical technique without fractionation, depletion or concentration. Furthermore, disease biomarkers occur in very low concentrations, at least in early stages, and the analytical techniques must present adequate sensitivity to detect lowabundant proteins or glycoproteins.(Read More)

A Simple Kinetic Model to Estimate Ascorbyl Radical Steady State Concentration in Rat Central Nervous System. Effect of Subchronic Fe Overload .

There is an increasing interest in the use of ascorbyl radical content (A^•) in biological tissues as an informative, non-invasive and natural indicator of oxidative stress in the hydrophilic medium. It was also showed that A• steadystate concentration in tissues may be considered as an objective but not a universal indicator characterizing oxidative stress intensity, since ascorbate (AH¯) oxidation rate depends on AH¯ concentration, pH and non-disproportionation mechanisms of A^• decay. A basic kinetic approach was applied to calculate A^• steady state concentration in the rat brain under physiological conditions.

Ascorbic acid is an especially significant component, due to the fact that its low redox potential, allows it to donate one single electron to almost any free radical occurring in a biological system or to reduce oxidized biological radical scavengers, such as α-tocopherol. The A^• is the intermediate in the oxidation of AH¯ to dehydroascorbate (DHA). It has an unpaired electron in a highly delocalized π-system, giving stability to it as the terminal small-molecule antioxidant. The concentration of A^• is a dynamic value, which is determined by the rates of generation and decay of this species.(Read more)

The Toxicological Effect on the Liver Function caused by Fecal Coliform Bacteria.

Fecal coliform bacteria (FCB) are the most common microbiological contaminants of natural waters. Fecal coliform live in the digestive tracks of warm-blooded animals, including humans, and are excreted in the feces. Although most ofthese bacteria are not harmful and are part of the normal digestive system,some are pathogenic to humans. Those that are pathogenic can cause disease such as gastroenteritis, ear infections, typhoid, dysentery, hepatitis A, and cholera. The biological analysis of mice blood samples is used to investigate the significant variations in the levels of some important compounds in the blood which act as a laboratory indication to the presence of defects in the physiological activities of the liver which normally accompany administration of pathogenic substances to the animal. 

The liver normal function is to metabolize, synthesize and/or degrade both absorbed and circulating products, and this function places it in potentially direct contact with gut-driven bacteria. Scientists in their toxicity tests normally depend on the biochemical analysis of blood characters for observation of any significant variations in concentration of some important compounds which work as clinical indicators of disturbances that take place in the physiological functions of the liver. Studies by Lichtman et al. Suggested that intestinal bacterial overgrowth or infection with helicobacter alone contributed to hepatic pathological change including increased serum Alanine aminotransferase (ALT) release and inflammatory cell recruitment.(Read more)