Fuel Poverty: Evidence from Housing Perspective
The literature has traditionally approached fuel poverty as a result of poverty. Fuel poor are those households who cannot pay fuel bill and have to live in cold ambient, with grave effects on their health. As fuel poverty is actually considered in poverty’s analysis, there is little discussion about whether homeowners (who own housing wealth and, theoretically, cannot be poor) could suffer this problem. This paper assesses fuel poverty amongst Spanish households. It deeps on how poverty situations triggers fuel poverty in the context of housing and discusses whether or not housing tenure causes fuel poverty due to housing characteristics, those usually evaluated as poverty component. The p…
sj-docx-1-uix-10.1177_01617346211029656 – Supplemental material for Diagnostic Performance of Muscle Echo Intensity and Fractal Dimension for the Detection of Frailty Phenotype
Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-uix-10.1177_01617346211029656 for Diagnostic Performance of Muscle Echo Intensity and Fractal Dimension for the Detection of Frailty Phenotype by Rebeca Mirón Mombiela, Jelena Vucetic, Paloma Monllor, Jenny S. Cárdenas-Herrán, Paloma Taltavull de La Paz and Consuelo Borrás in Ultrasonic Imaging
Oxidative Stress And Ubiquitin Ligases: Their Involvement In Alzheimer’s Disease Pathophysiology
Oxidative stress is a major hallmark in Alzheimer’s Disease. We showed that amyloid beta (Aβ 1-42 ), induces mitochondrial oxidative stress. We focused on dysregulations of ubiquitin ligases in Alzheimer’s and their relation to oxidative stress. The anaphase-promoting complex/cyclosome (APC/C)-Cdh1 ubiquitin ligase has a role as cell cycle regulator in proliferating cells and, recently another role in the regulation the degradation of key glycolytic enzyme 6-phosphofructo-2-kinase/fructose-2, 6-bisphosphatase-3 has been found (Almeida et al., 2012). Herrero-Mendez et al. observed in 2009 that inhibition of Cdh1 leads to an upregulation of Pfkfb3 in neurons and that this results in the activ…
Is Oxidative Stress the Link Between Cerebral Small Vessel Disease, Sleep Disruption, and Oligodendrocyte Dysfunction in the Onset of Alzheimer’s Disease?
Oxidative stress is an early occurrence in the development of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and one of its proposed etiologic hypotheses. There is sufficient experimental evidence supporting the theory that impaired antioxidant enzymatic activity and increased formation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) take place in this disease. However, the antioxidant treatments fail to stop its advancement. Its multifactorial condition and the diverse toxicological cascades that can be initiated by ROS could possibly explain this failure. Recently, it has been suggested that cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD) contributes to the onset of AD. Oxidative stress is a central hallmark of CSVD and is depicted as …
COVID-19 Infection Process in Italy and Spain: Are the Data Talking?
Background: COVID-19 has spread successfully worldwide in a matter of weeks. After the example of China, all the affected countries are taking hard-confinement measures to control the infection and to gain some time to diminish the big amount of cases that arrive to hospital. Although the measures in China reduced the percentages of new cases, this is not seen in other countries that have taken similar measures, such as Italy and Spain. Now we are in the middle of a battle trying to prevent the healthcare system from collapsing while it effectively responds to the needs of patients who are infected and require hospitalization. Methods: Using China as a mirror of what could happen in our cou…
Is Sleep Disruption a Cause or Consequence of Alzheimer’s Disease? Reviewing Its Possible Role as a Biomarker
In recent years, the idea that sleep is critical for cognitive processing has gained strength. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia worldwide and presents a high prevalence of sleep disturbances. However, it is difficult to establish causal relations, since a vicious circle emerges between different aspects of the disease. Nowadays, we know that sleep is crucial to consolidate memory and to remove the excess of beta-amyloid and hyperphosphorilated tau accumulated in AD patients’ brains. In this review, we discuss how sleep disturbances often precede in years some pathological traits, as well as cognitive decline, in AD. We describe the relevance of sleep to memory co…
sj-docx-1-uix-10.1177_01617346211029656 – Supplemental material for Diagnostic Performance of Muscle Echo Intensity and Fractal Dimension for the Detection of Frailty Phenotype
Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-uix-10.1177_01617346211029656 for Diagnostic Performance of Muscle Echo Intensity and Fractal Dimension for the Detection of Frailty Phenotype by Rebeca Mirón Mombiela, Jelena Vucetic, Paloma Monllor, Jenny S. Cárdenas-Herrán, Paloma Taltavull de La Paz and Consuelo Borrás in Ultrasonic Imaging
Obesity as a Risk Factor for Alzheimer’s Disease: Implication of Leptin and Glutamate
Obesity is known to induce leptin and insulin resistance. Leptin is a peptide hormone synthesized in adipose tissue that mainly regulates food intake. It has been shown that insulin stimulates the production of leptin when adipocytes are exposed to glucose to encourage satiety; while leptin, via a negative feedback, decreases the insulin release and enhances tissue sensitivity to it, leading to glucose uptake for energy utilization or storage. Therefore, resistance to insulin is closely related to leptin resistance. Obesity in middle age has also been related to Alzheimer’s disease (AD). In recent years, the relation between impaired leptin signaling pathway and the onset of AD has been stu…
Electroencephalography as a Non-Invasive Biomarker of Alzheimer’s Disease: A Forgotten Candidate to Substitute CSF Molecules?
Biomarkers for disease diagnosis and prognosis are crucial in clinical practice. They should be objective and quantifiable and respond to specific therapeutic interventions. Optimal biomarkers should reflect the underlying process (pathological or not), be reproducible, widely available, and allow measurements repeatedly over time. Ideally, biomarkers should also be non-invasive and cost-effective. This review aims to focus on the usefulness and limitations of electroencephalography (EEG) in the search for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) biomarkers. The main aim of this article is to review the evolution of the most used biomarkers in AD and the need for new peripheral and, ideally, non-invasive b…
Diagnostic Performance of Muscle Echo Intensity and Fractal Dimension for the Detection of Frailty Phenotype
To determine the relationship between muscle echo intensity (EI) and fractal dimension (FD), and the diagnostic performance of both ultrasound parameters for the identification of frailty phenotype. A retrospective interpretation of ultrasound scans from a previous cohort (November 2014–February 2015) was performed. The sample included healthy participants <60 years old, and participants ≥60 divided into robust, pre-frail, and frail groups according to Fried frailty criteria. A region of interest of the rectus femoris from the ultrasound scan was segmented, and histogram function was applied to obtain EI. For fractal analysis, images were processed using two-dimensional box-counting techniq…
When Does Alzheimer′s Disease Really Start? The Role of Biomarkers
While Alzheimer’s disease (AD) classical diagnostic criteria rely on clinical data from a stablished symptomatic disease, newer criteria aim to identify the disease in its earlier stages. For that, they incorporated the use of AD’s specific biomarkers to reach a diagnosis, including the identification of Aβ and tau depositions, glucose hypometabolism, and cerebral atrophy. These biomarkers created a new concept of the disease, in which AD’s main pathological processes have already taken place decades before we can clinically diagnose the first symptoms. Therefore, AD is now considered a dynamic disease with a gradual progression, and dementia is its final stage. With …
Increased basal antioxidant levels in RCAN1 - deficient mice lowers oxidative injury after acute paraquat insult.
RCAN1 is an inhibitor of the phosphatase calcineurin, which is involved in the regulation of oxidative stress and apoptosis, among other important cell processes. Here we have used RCAN1 deficient mice (RCAN1-/-) to elucidate its role after an acute oxidative insult such as paraquat injection. We have observed that RCAN1-/- mice show less oxidative damage than wildtype (WT) mice after treatment. Under basal conditions, RCAN1-/- animals express more calcineurin, heme oxygenase-1, Nrf2, and catalase compared to WT mice (controls). This may explain the less severe effect of paraquat treatment on RCAN1-/- mice compared to WT. We showed that oxidative stress is involved in the early stages of ap…
Serum Levels of Clusterin, PKR, and RAGE Correlate with Amyloid Burden in Alzheimer's Disease.
Background: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia and biomarkers are essential to help in the diagnosis of this disease. Image techniques and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers are limited in their use because they are expensive or invasive. Thus, the search for blood-borne biomarkers is becoming central to the medical community. Objective: The main objective of this study is the evaluation of three serum proteins as potential biomarkers in AD patients. Methods: We recruited 27 healthy controls, 19 mild cognitive impairment patients, and 17 AD patients. Using the recent A/T/N classification we split our population into two groups (AD and control). We used ELISA kits…
Oxidative signature of cerebrospinal fluid from mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer disease patients
Abstract Background Several studies suggest that pathological changes in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) brain begin around 10–20 years before the onset of cognitive impairment. Biomarkers that can support early diagnosis and predict development of dementia would, therefore, be crucial for patient care and evaluation of drug efficacy. Although cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) levels of Aβ42, tau, and p-tau are well-established diagnostic biomarkers of AD, there is an urgent need to identify additional molecular alterations of neuronal function that can be evaluated at the systemic level. Objectives This study was focused on the analysis of oxidative stress-related modifications of the CSF proteome, from …
COVID-19 Infection Process in Italy and Spain: Are Data Talking? Evidence From ARMA and Vector Autoregression Models
COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) has spread successfully worldwide in a matter of weeks. After the example of China, all the affected countries are taking hard-confinement measures to control the infection and to gain some time to reduce the significant amount of cases that arrive at the hospital. Although the measures in China reduced the percentages of new cases, this is not seen in other countries that have taken similar measures, such as Italy and Spain. After the first weeks, the worry was whether or not the healthcare system would collapse rather than its response to the patient's needs who are infected and require hospitalization. Using China as a mirror of what could happen in ou…
The Effectiveness of Vitamin E Treatment in Alzheimer’s Disease
Vitamin E was proposed as treatment for Alzheimer’s disease many years ago. However, the effectiveness of the drug is not clear. Vitamin E is an antioxidant and neuroprotector and it has anti-inflammatory and hypocholesterolemic properties, driving to its importance for brain health. Moreover, the levels of vitamin E in Alzheimer’s disease patients are lower than in non-demented controls. Thus, vitamin E could be a good candidate to have beneficial effects against Alzheimer’s. However, evidence is consistent with a limited effectiveness of vitamin E in slowing progression of dementia; the information is mixed and inconclusive. The question is why does vitamin E fail to tre…