Development of Korean Social Affective Visual Stimuli / 수면정신생리

OBJECTIVES: The current study aims to develop Korean Social Affective Visual Stimuli (K-SAVS) to arouse social affect. METHODS: K-SAVS is composed of pictures of social situations among East Asians. Each picture contains a negative, positive, or neutral affect. Positive and negative stimuli were presented to one group of subjects. Negative and neutral stimuli were presented to another group of subjects. All subjects were required to fill out Affective Valence and Arousal Manikin. RESULTS: In the initial test, 18 positive affective stimuli pictures (1 set) and 36 negative affective stimuli pictures (2 sets) were chosen from 95 stimuli pictures. Positive affective stimuli pictures showed higher valence (p < 0.001) and lower arousal (p < 0.001) than negative affective stimuli pictures. In the confirmatory test, 18 neutral stimuli pictures (1 set) were additionally selected out of the total of 79 pictures of neutral stimuli pictures and the pictures used in the former experiment. Neutral stimuli pictures showed higher valence (p < 0.001) and lower arousal (p < 0.001) than negative affective stimuli pictures. CONCLUSION: K-SAVS can be a valid and useful tool for inducing specific social affects of Koreans.

MicroRNA-143 and -145 modulate the phenotype of synovial fibroblasts in rheumatoid arthritis

Fibroblast-like synoviocytes (FLSs) constitute a major cell subset of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) synovia. Dysregulation of microRNAs (miRNAs) has been implicated in activation and proliferation of RA-FLSs. However, the functional association of various miRNAs with their targets that are characteristic of the RA-FLS phenotype has not been globally elucidated. In this study, we performed microarray analyses of miRNAs and mRNAs in RA-FLSs and osteoarthritis FLSs (OA-FLSs), simultaneously, to validate how dysregulated miRNAs may be associated with the RA-FLS phenotype. Global miRNA profiling revealed that miR-143 and miR-145 were differentially upregulated in RA-FLSs compared to OA-FLSs. miR-143 and miR-145 were highly expressed in independent RA-FLSs. The miRNA-target prediction and network model of the predicted targets identified insulin-like growth factor binding protein 5 (IGFBP5) and semaphorin 3A (SEMA3A) as potential target genes downregulated by miR-143 and miR-145, respectively. IGFBP5 level was inversely correlated with miR-143 expression, and its deficiency rendered RA-FLSs more sensitive to TNFα stimulation, promoting IL-6 production and NF-κB activity. Moreover, SEMA3A was a direct target of miR-145, as determined by a luciferase reporter assay, antagonizing VEGF165-induced increases in the survival, migration and invasion of RA-FLSs. Taken together, our data suggest that enhanced expression of miR-143 and miR-145 renders RA-FLSs susceptible to TNFα and VEGF165 stimuli by downregulating IGFBP5 and SEMA3A, respectively, and that these miRNAs could be therapeutic targets.