Ketone Supplementation: Meeting the Needs of the Brain in an Energy Crisis.

Diverse neurological disorders are associated with a deficit in brain energy metabolism, often characterized by acute or chronic glucose hypometabolism. Ketones serve as the brain's only significant alternative fuel and can even become the primary fuel in conditions of limited glucose availability. Thus, dietary supplementation with exogenous ketones represents a promising novel therapeutic strategy to help meet the energetic needs of the brain in an energy crisis. Preliminary evidence suggests ketosis induced by exogenous ketones may attenuate damage or improve cognitive and motor performance in neurological conditions such as seizure disorders, mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's disease, and neurotrauma.

Human Adaptations to Multiday Saturation on NASA NEEMO.

Human adaptation to extreme environments has been explored for over a century to understand human psychology, integrated physiology, comparative pathologies, and exploratory potential. It has been demonstrated that these environments can provide multiple external stimuli and stressors, which are sufficient to disrupt internal homeostasis and induce adaptation processes. Multiday hyperbaric and/or saturated (HBS) environments represent the most understudied of environmental extremes due to inherent experimental, analytical, technical, temporal, and safety limitations. National Aeronautic Space Agency (NASA) Extreme Environment Mission Operation (NEEMO) is a space-flight analog mission conducted within Florida International University's Aquarius Undersea Research Laboratory (AURL), the only existing operational and habitable undersea saturated environment. To investigate human objective and subjective adaptations to multiday HBS, we evaluated aquanauts living at saturation for 9-10 days via NASA NEEMO 22 and 23, across psychologic, cardiac, respiratory, autonomic, thermic, hemodynamic, sleep, and body composition parameters. We found that aquanauts exposed to saturation over 9-10 days experienced intrapersonal physical and mental burden, sustained good mood and work satisfaction, decreased heart and respiratory rates, increased parasympathetic and reduced sympathetic modulation, lower cerebral blood flow velocity, intact cerebral autoregulation and maintenance of baroreflex functionality, as well as losses in systemic bodyweight and adipose tissue. Together, these findings illustrate novel insights into human adaptation across multiple body systems in response to multiday hyperbaric saturation.

Flexible, yet firm: A model of healthy emotion regulation.

We propose a model of healthy intentional emotion regulation that includes (1) a large repertoire of (2) adaptive strategies that (3) one persists with despite initial negative feedback. One hundred forty-four undergraduates (average age = 19.20 years; 68% female, 79% Caucasian) completed a novel performance task indicating what they would think or do to feel better in response to eleven stressful vignettes. After their initial response, participants indicated four more times how they would respond if their previous strategy was not working. Raters categorized each response as an emotion regulation strategy and coded the adaptiveness of each strategy. Participants self-reported Neuroticism, Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) symptoms, and depressive symptoms. We regressed each personality dimension and psychopathology symptom on our model of healthy emotion regulation. Neuroticism was negatively associated with adaptiveness and persistence. Extraversion was positively associated with adaptiveness. Conscientiousness was positively associated with repertoire, adaptiveness, and persistence, while BPD symptoms were negatively associated with all three variables. Depressive symptoms were negatively associated with persistence. These preliminary findings suggest that people with larger repertoires of more adaptive emotion regulation strategies who persist with these strategies despite initial negative feedback report less personality pathology and psychological distress.

Drug metabolites and their effects on the development of adverse reactions: Revisiting Lipinski's Rule of Five.

Many studies have shown that toxicities of anticancer drugs and their adverse effects are related to their chemical structure and high molecular weight that may result in a number of metabolites interacting with drug off-target networks. These factors require further attention for advancing cancer treatment and decreasing toxicities caused by the molecular complexity of antineoplastic agents. Providing more target-selective and tolerable cancer therapy with fewer side effects would not only improve patients' compliance, but also would decrease cancer-remission rates. This review presents several antineoplastic agents and their metabolites with molecular weights greater than 500 g/mol, which reportedly cause more than fifteen types of adverse reactions during breast cancer therapy.

Functionalized single-walled carbon nanotubes: cellular uptake, biodistribution and applications in drug delivery.

The unique properties of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) enable them to play important roles in many fields. One of their functional roles is to transport cargo into cell. SWNTs are able to traverse amphipathic cell membranes due to their large surface area, flexible interactions with cargo, customizable dimensions, and surface chemistry. The cargoes delivered by SWNTs include peptides, proteins, nucleic acids, as well as drug molecules for therapeutic purpose. The drug delivery functions of SWNTs have been explored over the past decade. Many breakthrough studies have shown the high specificity and potency of functionalized SWNT-based drug delivery systems for the treatment of cancers and other diseases. In this review, we discuss different aspects of drug delivery by functionalized SWNT carriers, diving into the cellular uptake mechanisms, biodistribution of the delivery system, and safety concerns on degradation of the carriers. We emphasize the delivery of several common drugs to highlight the recent achievements of SWNT-based drug delivery.

Self-Help And Recovery guide for Eating Disorders (SHARED): study protocol for a randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: We describe the theoretical rationale and protocol for Self-Help And Recovery guide for Eating Disorders (SHARED), a trial investigating whether a guided self-care intervention (Recovery MANTRA) is a useful addition to treatment as usual for individuals with anorexia nervosa. Recovery MANTRA, a 6-week self-care intervention supplemented by peer mentorship, is a module extension of the Maudsley Model of Treatment for Adults with Anorexia Nervosa and targets the maintenance factors identified by the cognitive-interpersonal model of the illness. METHODS: Patients accessing outpatient services for anorexia nervosa are randomized to either treatment as usual or treatment as usual plus Recovery MANTRA. Outcome variables include change in body weight at the end of the intervention (primary) and changes in body weight and eating disorder symptoms at immediate and extended follow-up (6-months; secondary). Change is also assessed for the domains identified by the theoretical model, including motivation, hope, confidence to change, positive mood, cognitive flexibility, therapeutic alliance and social adjustment. Feedback from peer mentors is gathered to understand the impact on their own well-being of providing guidance. DISCUSSION: Results from this exploratory investigation will determine whether a larger clinical trial is justifiable and feasible for this affordable intervention, which has potential for high reach and scalability. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02336841 .

Obesity stigmatization as the status quo: structural considerations and prevalence among young adults in the U.S.

OBJECTIVE: Although obesity stigmatization contributes to significant health, economic, and quality-of-life challenges for U.S. adults, the prevalence and nature of stigmatizing attitudes requires an update and clarification. The present study sought to examine the prevalence and major dimensions of negative attitudes toward obesity through assessment of young U.S. adults' responses to the Attitudes Toward Obese Persons Scale. METHOD: Participants were women (n=578) and men (n=233) who completed self-report questionnaires assessing obesity stigmatization and eating disorder features. RESULTS: Results indicate that at least one stigmatizing attitude was endorsed by 92.5% of respondents, with an average endorsement rate of 32.8% across items. Eating disorder features, body size, and gender were not related to one's likelihood of endorsing negative attitudes toward obesity. Distinct clusters of negative attitudes were identified involving beliefs that "obese people suffer" and "obese people are inferior." DISCUSSION: Data suggest that large proportions of young U.S. adults harbor negative attitudes toward obese persons and these attitudes are pervasive across individuals with different characteristics. Although such negative attitudes have traditionally been conceptualized as relatively unidimensional, results suggest that future research would benefit from deconstructing negative attitudes into those related to pitying the obese and those related to perceiving the obese with harsh judgment.