Urethral function and failure: A review of current knowledge of urethral closure mechanisms, how they vary, and how they are affected by life events

Author(s):  
Fernanda Pipitone ◽  
Zhina Sadeghi ◽  
John O. L. DeLancey
PLoS ONE ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. e0253406
Author(s):  
Heike Schuler ◽  
Valeria Bonapersona ◽  
Marian Joëls ◽  
R. Angela Sarabdjitsingh

Early-life adversity (ELA) causes long-lasting structural and functional changes to the brain, rendering affected individuals vulnerable to the development of psychopathologies later in life. Immediate-early genes (IEGs) provide a potential marker for the observed alterations, bridging the gap between activity-regulated transcription and long-lasting effects on brain structure and function. Several heterogeneous studies have used IEGs to identify differences in cellular activity after ELA; systematically investigating the literature is therefore crucial for comprehensive conclusions. Here, we performed a systematic review on 39 pre-clinical studies in rodents to study the effects of ELA (alteration of maternal care) on IEG expression. Females and IEGs other than cFos were investigated in only a handful of publications. We meta-analyzed publications investigating specifically cFos expression. ELA increased cFos expression after an acute stressor only if the animals (control and ELA) had experienced additional hits. At rest, ELA increased cFos expression irrespective of other life events, suggesting that ELA creates a phenotype similar to naïve, acutely stressed animals. We present a conceptual theoretical framework to interpret the unexpected results. Overall, ELA likely alters IEG expression across the brain, especially in interaction with other negative life events. The present review highlights current knowledge gaps and provides guidance to aid the design of future studies.


2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (12) ◽  
pp. 1609-1615 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nete Munk Nielsen ◽  
Bo V Pedersen ◽  
Egon Stenager ◽  
Nils Koch-Henriksen ◽  
Morten Frisch

Background:Current knowledge concerning the association between exposure to stressful life-events (SFLEs) in childhood and later risk of multiple sclerosis (MS) is sparse.Objectives:We studied the associations between SFLEs in childhood and subsequent risk of MS in a nationwide cohort of 2.9 million Danes born from 1968 to 2011.Methods:A SFLE in childhood was defined as exposure before age 18 years to parental divorce, parental death, or death of a sibling, using information from the Danish Civil Registration System. MS cases in the cohort were identified in the Danish Multiple Sclerosis Registry. Associations of SFLE with MS risk were evaluated by incidence rate ratios (RR) of MS obtained in log-linear Poisson regression models.Results:Persons exposed to any SFLE in childhood were at 11% elevated risk of MS (RR = 1.11; 95% confidence interval: 1.03–1.20), compared to non-exposed persons. Stratification by subtype of SFLE showed that parental death and death of a sibling were not associated with MS risk. However, persons exposed to parental divorce were at 13% increased risk of developing MS compared to non-exposed (RR = 1.13; 1.04–1.23).Conclusions:Associations of SFLEs in childhood with risk of MS are weak. However, parental divorce is somehow associated with modestly increased risk of MS.


Author(s):  
Sarah Anderson ◽  
Fergus McNeill

This chapter reviews the state of current knowledge on cognitive transformations in the desistance process. It considers transformations in the content of cognitions: changing pro-criminal attitudes, changing meanings of and emotions surrounding criminal behavior, and the importance of motivation and hope. The chapter also considers transformations in cognitive skills that enable the person trying to desist to act upon the intentions they have formed. It argues that an integrated theory of the desistance process must include an understanding of all these cognitive transformations. In developing this argument, this chapter challenges narrowly psychological-criminological theories—more particularly their recent applications in offender treatment. Finally, we suggest that further and more methodologically robust empirical exploration of the chronological sequencing of a range of life events and cognitive changes will be critical to developing our understanding of desistance from crime.


2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-66

This study aims to identify the moderator role of resilience in the relationship between exposure to stressful life events and health state. The study included 238 participants from the general Romanian population, aged between 23 and 68 years, M = 44.16, SD = 11.03, 188 women and 50 men. The instruments used were Stressful Life Event Questionnaire, Resilience Scale, RS-14, and General Health Questionnaire, GHQ-12. The results revealed that resilience moderates the relationship between stressful life events and health state, but contrary to our expectations, in a negative direction. The negative relationship between exposure to stressful life events and mental health became non-significant at lower levels of resilience and higher levels of resilience failed to buffer the effects of stressful life events on mental health of the individual. These results extend the current knowledge about resilience’s role in individual’s health state after confronting with stressful life events. The implications of the findings, the limitations, and future research directions were discussed.


2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 151-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Keesler

Purpose – With an expansion of trauma knowledge in the field of intellectual disabilities (ID) there is a responsibility among service providers to be trauma-informed. Among those providers are service coordinators (SCs) who are involved in the lives of individuals through the assessment of needs and linkage with necessary supports. The purpose of this paper is to explore SCs’ understanding of individuals’ experiences of adverse life events, trauma, and related services. Design/methodology/approach – Semi-structured interviews were conducted among 15 SCs, encompassing the experiences of 29 individuals with mild ID. Data were analyzed using a grounded theory approach. Findings – From SCs’ perspective, individuals’ experiences were comprised of three major categories – experiencing adversity, responding to adversity and adapting to adversity – influenced by precipitating and perpetuating conditions. Despite a lack of familiarity with the term “trauma,” in general, SCs possessed a rich understanding of individuals’ comprehensive experiences including types of events, responses to events, environmental factors, and implications of respective services. Originality/value – This is an original approach to understanding the awareness of trauma among an integral group of providers for individuals with ID. This paper shows that, although there is a need to reframe current knowledge, SCs can be an asset to facilitate organizational endeavors to become trauma-informed thus having a potential impact on individuals’ quality of life.


2003 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Bosanac ◽  
Anne Buist ◽  
Graham Burrows

Objective: To provide an overview of the current knowledge on the impact of motherhood on women with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder. Method: The published literature was selectively reviewed and assessed, based on a complete MEDLINE and PsychLIT (1971 to current) search, including English and non-English journals and books. Results: Research to date into motherhood and schizophrenic illnesses has been limited by a number of methodological constraints, limiting the ability to draw conclusions and the prevention of relapses and mother-infant difficulties. These constraints have included: a paucity of prospective studies with initial, antenatal recruitment; variable definitions of the length of the puerperium; significant changes in psychiatric classification; the heterogeneity of postpartum psychotic disorders, with the majority being mood or schizoaffective disorder rather than schizophrenia; selection biases inherent in studying mother-baby unit inpatients; difficulties in life events research in general, such as its retrospective nature and confounding, illness factors; and the specificity versus non-specificity of childbirth as a unique or discrete life event. Conclusions: Further study is required to explore: the impact of child care, parenting and having a partner on the course of women with schizophrenic and schizoaffective disorders during the first postpartum year; whether women with postpartum relapses of these mental illnesses are likely to have slower recoveries than those women with the same diagnoses but without young children; and protective factors against postpartum relapse.


2019 ◽  
Vol 476 (20) ◽  
pp. 2981-3018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petar H. Lambrev ◽  
Parveen Akhtar

Abstract The light reactions of photosynthesis are hosted and regulated by the chloroplast thylakoid membrane (TM) — the central structural component of the photosynthetic apparatus of plants and algae. The two-dimensional and three-dimensional arrangement of the lipid–protein assemblies, aka macroorganisation, and its dynamic responses to the fluctuating physiological environment, aka flexibility, are the subject of this review. An emphasis is given on the information obtainable by spectroscopic approaches, especially circular dichroism (CD). We briefly summarise the current knowledge of the composition and three-dimensional architecture of the granal TMs in plants and the supramolecular organisation of Photosystem II and light-harvesting complex II therein. We next acquaint the non-specialist reader with the fundamentals of CD spectroscopy, recent advances such as anisotropic CD, and applications for studying the structure and macroorganisation of photosynthetic complexes and membranes. Special attention is given to the structural and functional flexibility of light-harvesting complex II in vitro as revealed by CD and fluorescence spectroscopy. We give an account of the dynamic changes in membrane macroorganisation associated with the light-adaptation of the photosynthetic apparatus and the regulation of the excitation energy flow by state transitions and non-photochemical quenching.


2002 ◽  
Vol 69 ◽  
pp. 117-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart M. Haslam ◽  
David Gems ◽  
Howard R. Morris ◽  
Anne Dell

There is no doubt that the immense amount of information that is being generated by the initial sequencing and secondary interrogation of various genomes will change the face of glycobiological research. However, a major area of concern is that detailed structural knowledge of the ultimate products of genes that are identified as being involved in glycoconjugate biosynthesis is still limited. This is illustrated clearly by the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, which was the first multicellular organism to have its entire genome sequenced. To date, only limited structural data on the glycosylated molecules of this organism have been reported. Our laboratory is addressing this problem by performing detailed MS structural characterization of the N-linked glycans of C. elegans; high-mannose structures dominate, with only minor amounts of complex-type structures. Novel, highly fucosylated truncated structures are also present which are difucosylated on the proximal N-acetylglucosamine of the chitobiose core as well as containing unusual Fucα1–2Gal1–2Man as peripheral structures. The implications of these results in terms of the identification of ligands for genomically predicted lectins and potential glycosyltransferases are discussed in this chapter. Current knowledge on the glycomes of other model organisms such as Dictyostelium discoideum, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Drosophila melanogaster is also discussed briefly.


2006 ◽  
Vol 73 ◽  
pp. 109-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Stockdale ◽  
Michael Bruno ◽  
Helder Ferreira ◽  
Elisa Garcia-Wilson ◽  
Nicola Wiechens ◽  
...  

In the 30 years since the discovery of the nucleosome, our picture of it has come into sharp focus. The recent high-resolution structures have provided a wealth of insight into the function of the nucleosome, but they are inherently static. Our current knowledge of how nucleosomes can be reconfigured dynamically is at a much earlier stage. Here, recent advances in the understanding of chromatin structure and dynamics are highlighted. The ways in which different modes of nucleosome reconfiguration are likely to influence each other are discussed, and some of the factors likely to regulate the dynamic properties of nucleosomes are considered.


2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 429-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Gago ◽  
Danilo M. Daloso ◽  
Marc Carriquí ◽  
Miquel Nadal ◽  
Melanie Morales ◽  
...  

Besides stomata, the photosynthetic CO2 pathway also involves the transport of CO2 from the sub-stomatal air spaces inside to the carboxylation sites in the chloroplast stroma, where Rubisco is located. This pathway is far to be a simple and direct way, formed by series of consecutive barriers that the CO2 should cross to be finally assimilated in photosynthesis, known as the mesophyll conductance (gm). Therefore, the gm reflects the pathway through different air, water and biophysical barriers within the leaf tissues and cell structures. Currently, it is known that gm can impose the same level of limitation (or even higher depending of the conditions) to photosynthesis than the wider known stomata or biochemistry. In this mini-review, we are focused on each of the gm determinants to summarize the current knowledge on the mechanisms driving gm from anatomical to metabolic and biochemical perspectives. Special attention deserve the latest studies demonstrating the importance of the molecular mechanisms driving anatomical traits as cell wall and the chloroplast surface exposed to the mesophyll airspaces (Sc/S) that significantly constrain gm. However, even considering these recent discoveries, still is poorly understood the mechanisms about signaling pathways linking the environment a/biotic stressors with gm responses. Thus, considering the main role of gm as a major driver of the CO2 availability at the carboxylation sites, future studies into these aspects will help us to understand photosynthesis responses in a global change framework.


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