Interactive Brazilian program to prevent eating disorders behaviors: a pilot study.

During a four month scholarly leave in United States of America, researchers designed a culturally appropriate prevention program for eating disorders (ED) for Brazilian adolescent girls. The program "Se Liga na Nutrição" was modeled on other effective programs identified in a research literature review and was carried out over eleven interactive sessions. It was positively received by the adolescents who suggested that it be part of school curricula. The girls reported that it helped them to develop critical thinking skills with regards to sociocultural norms about body image, food and eating practices.

Expression and regulation of non-classical HLA-G in renal cell carcinoma.

Under physiological conditions, the non-classical major histocompatibility complex class Ib molecule human leukocyte antigen G (HLA-G) is selectively expressed in placental trophoblasts, thymus and cornea. In pathological situations, HLA-G expression was frequently found in tumour cells of distinct origin, thereby allowing these tumour cells to escape immune surveillance. Although HLA-G expression occurs at a relatively high frequency in renal cell carcinoma (RCC) of the clear cell subtype, the molecular mechanisms of its aberrant expression in RCC has not yet been determined. Therefore, the constitutive and cytokine-mediated HLA-G expression as well as its mode of regulation was investigated. In addition to HLA-G-specific mRNA expression, membrane-bound and soluble/shed HLA-G protein was determined. Eight of 14 RCC cell lines analysed (57%) exhibited HLA-G-specific transcripts, whereas only 6 of 14 RCC cell lines (43%) expressed HLA-G protein, suggesting a post-transcriptional control of HLA-G in some cases. Treatment of RCC cell lines with either interferon-gamma or interleukin-10, respectively, increased HLA-G-specific mRNA and protein in six of eight HLA-G(+) RCC lines (75%), but not in HLA-G(-) RCC cells. A 5'-aza-2-deoxycytidine (5-Aza-dC)-mediated demethylation of the HLA-G promoter DNA resulted in an enhanced HLA-G expression in four of six RCC cell lines, whereas a de novo induction of HLA-G was only observed in one HLA-G(-) RCC cell line on treatment with 5-Aza-dC. Thus, there exist multiple mechanisms controlling HLA-G expression in RCC, which might also have an impact on the development of RCC-specific immunotherapies.

Differences in diet composition of Brazilian adolescent girls with positive or negative score in the Eating Attitudes Test.

Dieting, a behavioral phenomenon which is becoming more frequent among adolescents, is certainly involved in the pathogenesis of eating disorders, especially anorexia nervosa (AN), and may result in an unbalanced nutrition. Our study aimed at identifying girls with symptoms of AN and describing their diets. We assessed girls with symptoms by using the Eating Attitudes Test and considered girls with a score > or = 20 as having symptoms of AN. To evaluate their diets, a "modified" 24-hour recall was applied on three alternate days. Twenty-one percent of the 279 girls studied showed symptoms of AN. Analysis of the food intake showed that calories, calcium and iron were below the recommendations of the Standing Committee on the Specific Evaluation of Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI Committee) and the National Research Council, while protein and carbohydrate were within the recommended range and fat was above the percentage of recommended total energy intake. Compared to girls without symptoms, they had a significantly smaller intake of calories and iron, and a higher intake of protein. Findings shown in this paper point out the need for intervention in adolescents because their dieting behavior can predispose to an eating disorder.

Protein structure prediction in biology and medicine

Protein structure prediction from sequence has made rapid advances in the last few years, gaining increased attention after the success of the CASP meetings. Specifically, threading predictions were shown to work for many cases previously thought to be outside of the scope of prediction methods. The papers in this session address a wide scope of topics, ranging from techniques for validation of prediction methods and further improvements of threading algorithms, to specific applications of protein structure predictions in biology.

Sequence Data Analysis for Long Disordered Regions Prediction in the Calcineurin Family.

Our recently reported results (PSB 3:471-482, 1998; Proc. IEEE Intnl. Conf. Neural Networks 1:90-95, 1997; PSB 3:435-446, 1998) provide strong support for a hypothesis that some amino acid sequences code for disordered regions rather than structured ones and that such disordered regions are commonly involved in function. General and family-specific neural network predictors developed in those previous studies suggest that different classes of disordered regions exist. Here, family-specific data preprocessing for disorder prediction in the calcineurin (CaN) family is explored. The results show that prediction of order and disorder on CaN sequence data benefits significantly from the use of family-specific preprocessing, with feature extraction through principal components analysis (PCA) outperforming feature selection techniques, although all methods do a good job of discriminating CaN-specific disordered regions from CaN-specific ordered regions. On the other hand, for the discrimination of CaN-specific disordered regions from general (unrelated to CaN) ordered regions, feature selection approaches proved to be more appropriate than PCA. The results further support a hypothesis that different kinds of disordered regions exist, as all family-specific disorder predictors developed in this study significantly outperformed a previously reported general multi-family disorder predictor.

Atomic force microscopy of DNA and bacteriophage in air, water and propanol: the role of adhesion forces.

We have developed a chemical treatment for the mica surface which allows biopolymers to be held in place for atomic force microscopy, even under water, using conventional, untreated force sensing tips. We illustrate the procedure with images of lambda DNA and fd phage. The phage adheres well enough to permit in situ imaging of the adsorption process in water. These experiments yield a mean length for the phage of 883 +/- 72 nm. This compares with a measured length of 883 +/- 33 nm when the phage are imaged after drying following adsorption from water, showing that the effect of dehydration is quite small. Adhesion forces between the force sensing tip and the substrate and the sensing tip and the biomolecules are very different in the three media (air, water and propanol). The apparent height of the phage and the width and height of the DNA depends upon these adhesion forces quite strongly. In contrast, changing the Hookean spring force exerted by the scanning tip makes little difference. These results suggest that the chemical factors involved in adhesion can dominate atomic force images and that the composition of the scanning tip is at least as important a factor as its geometry.

Feeding the Hispanic hospital patient: cultural considerations.

As service-oriented professionals in a multicultural society, dietitians must be aware of cultural influences on food consumption patterns, population demographics, and health care usage by ethnic groups. The United States has one of the largest Hispanic populations in the world. The major health problems in the Hispanic population are cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus, and obesity. The use of health care services by Hispanic subgroups is dependent upon their residence in a rural or an urban area. This article summarizes national trends in food consumption, health care usage, prevalent health problems, and eating habits of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, the most populous of the Hispanic subgroups. We provide diet modifications for energy-, fat- and sodium-restricted diets, which are part of the treatment for problems prevalent in this ethnic population. Dietitians must consider cultural and demographic influences to help Hispanic hospital patients modify their diet in ways that are both healthful and culturally acceptable.