Perception of the relationship between TMD and orthodontic treatment among orthodontists

INTRODUCTION: The consensus about the relationship between TMD and orthodontic treatment has gone from a cause and effect association between TMD and orthodontic treatment to the idea that there is no reliable evidence supporting this statement. OBJECTIVE: To assess the beliefs, despite scientific evidence, of Brazilian orthodontists about the relationship between TMD and orthodontic treatment with regards to treatment, prevention and etiology of TMD. METHODS: A survey about the relationship between TMD and orthodontic treatment was prepared and sent to Brazilian orthodontists by e-mail and social networks. Answers were treated by means of descriptive statistics and strong associations between variables were assessed by qui-square test. RESULTS: The majority of orthodontists believe that orthodontic treatment not only is not the best treatment option for TMD, but also is not able to prevent TMD. Nevertheless, the majority of orthodontists believe that orthodontic treatment can cause TMD symptoms. CONCLUSION: This study suggests that orthodontists' beliefs about the relationship between orthodontic treatment and TMD are in accordance with scientific evidence only when referring to treatment and prevention of TMD. The majority of orthodontists believe that, despite scientific evidence, orthodontic treatment can cause TMD. .

INTRODUÇÃO: o consenso sobre a relação entre DTM e tratamento ortodôntico foi de uma associação de causa e efeito à ideia de que não há evidências confiáveis que suportem essa afirmação. OBJETIVO: avaliar as crenças, sem considerar as evidências, de ortodontistas brasileiros sobre a relação entre DTM e tratamento ortodôntico com relação ao tratamento, prevenção e etiologia da DTM. MÉTODOS: um questionário sobre a relação entre DTM e tratamento ortodôntico foi preparado e enviado a ortodontistas brasileiros por meio de e-mail e mídias sociais. As respostas foram analisadas por estatística descritiva, e fortes associações entre as variáveis foram verificadas pelo teste χ2. RESULTADOS: a maioria dos ortodontistas acredita que o tratamento ortodôntico não é o melhor tratamento para DTM. Além disso, acreditam que não é a melhor forma para sua prevenção. Também, a maioria dos ortodontistas acredita que o tratamento ortodôntico pode causar sintomas de DTM. CONCLUSÃO: este estudo sugere que as crenças dos ortodontistas sobre a relação entre tratamento ortodôntico e DTM estão de acordo com as evidências científicas apenas quando se trata do tratamento e da prevenção de DTM. A maioria dos ortodontistas acredita que, apesar das evidências científicas, o tratamento ortodôntico pode causar DTM. .

Neutral space analysis for a Boolean network model of the fission yeast cell cycle network

BACKGROUND: Interactions between genes and their products give rise to complex circuits known as gene regulatory networks (GRN) that enable cells to process information and respond to external stimuli. Several important processes for life, depend of an accurate and context-specific regulation of gene expression, such as the cell cycle, which can be analyzed through its GRN, where deregulation can lead to cancer in animals or a directed regulation could be applied for biotechnological processes using yeast. An approach to study the robustness of GRN is through the neutral space. In this paper, we explore the neutral space of a Schizosaccharomyces pombe (fission yeast) cell cycle network through an evolution strategy to generate a neutral graph, composed of Boolean regulatory networks that share the same state sequences of the fission yeast cell cycle. RESULTS: Through simulations it was found that in the generated neutral graph, the functional networks that are not in the wildtype connected component have in general a Hamming distance more than 3 with the wildtype, and more than 10 between the other disconnected functional networks. Significant differences were found between the functional networks in the connected component of the wildtype network and the rest of the network, not only at a topological level, but also at the state space level, where significant differences in the distribution of the basin of attraction for the G1 fixed point was found for deterministic updating schemes. CONCLUSIONS: In general, functional networks in the wildtype network connected component, can mutate up to no more than 3 times, then they reach a point of no return where the networks leave the connected component of the wildtype. The proposed method to construct a neutral graph is general and can be used to explore the neutral space of other biologically interesting networks, and also formulate new biological hypotheses studying the functional networks in the wildtype network connected component.

Protein-energy malnutrition halts hemopoietic progenitor cells in the G0/G1 cell cycle stage, thereby altering cell production rates

Protein energy malnutrition (PEM) is a syndrome that often results in immunodeficiency coupled with pancytopenia. Hemopoietic tissue requires a high nutrient supply and the proliferation, differentiation and maturation of cells occur in a constant and balanced manner, sensitive to the demands of specific cell lineages and dependent on the stem cell population. In the present study, we evaluated the effect of PEM on some aspects of hemopoiesis, analyzing the cell cycle of bone marrow cells and the percentage of progenitor cells in the bone marrow. Two-month-old male Swiss mice (N = 7-9 per group) were submitted to PEM with a low-protein diet (4 percent) or were fed a control diet (20 percent protein) ad libitum. When the experimental group had lost about 20 percent of their original body weight after 14 days, we collected blood and bone marrow cells to determine the percentage of progenitor cells and the number of cells in each phase of the cell cycle. Animals of both groups were stimulated with 5-fluorouracil. Blood analysis, bone marrow cell composition and cell cycle evaluation was performed after 10 days. Malnourished animals presented anemia, reticulocytopenia and leukopenia. Their bone marrow was hypocellular and depleted of progenitor cells. Malnourished animals also presented more cells than normal in phases G0 and G1 of the cell cycle. Thus, we conclude that PEM leads to the depletion of progenitor hemopoietic populations and changes in cellular development. We suggest that these changes are some of the primary causes of pancytopenia in cases of PEM.