RESUMEN
Suicide is a significant public health concern globally, with its varying rates influenced by numerous factors, including seasonal changes. Online search behaviors, particularly searches related to suicide and mental health, have been proposed as real-time indicators of suicidal ideation in populations. In this study, a cross-sectional time series analysis was conducted, utilizing data on suicide attempts from the Polish Police Headquarters and online search behavior from Google Trends over a decade. Suicide attempt data were analyzed alongside the frequency of Google searches for suicide-related keywords derived from the Polish Corpus of Suicide Notes. A total of 66 keywords were selected for analysis to identify seasonal trends and patterns in search behavior. The study employed linear regression, Seasonal Mann-Kendall tests, and TBATS models to analyze the data. Suicide rates show seasonal patterns, peaking in warmer months. However, keyword searches did not strongly correlate with peak suicide months. This study enhances our understanding of suicide-related search trends and their potential connection to suicide rates. It suggests avenues for more effective prevention efforts and the potential for future algorithms to predict suicide rates and identify at-risk groups.
RESUMEN
Precise spatio-temporal expression of genes in organogenesis is regulated by the coordinated interplay of DNA elements such as promoter and enhancers present in the regulatory region of a given locus. POU1F1 transcription factor plays a crucial role in the development of somatotrophs, lactotrophs and thyrotrophs in the anterior pituitary gland, and in maintaining high expression of growth hormone, prolactin and TSH. In mouse, expression of POU1F1 is controlled by a region fenced by two CTCF sites, containing 5 upstream enhancer elements, designated E-A (5' to 3'). Elements C, B and A correspond to elements shown previously to play a role in pituitary development and hormonal expression; functional roles for elements E and D have not been reported. We performed comparative sequence analysis of this regulatory region and discovered that three elements, B, C and E, are present in all vertebrate groups except Agnatha. One very long (>2 kb) element (A) is unique to mammals suggesting a specific change in regulation of the gene in this group. Using DNA accessibility assay (ATAC-seq) we showed that conserved elements in anterior pituitary of four non-mammals are open, suggesting functionality as regulatory elements. We showed that, in many non-mammalian vertebrates, an additional upstream exon closely follows element E, leading to alternatively spliced transcripts. Here, element E functions as an alternative promoter, but in mammals this feature is lost, suggesting conversion of alternative promoter to enhancer. Our work shows that regulation of POU1F1 changed markedly during the course of vertebrate evolution, use of a low number of enhancer elements combined with alternative promoters in non-mammalian vertebrates being replaced by use of a unique combination of regulatory units in mammals. Most importantly, our work suggests that evolutionary conversion of alternate promoter to enhancer could be one of the evolutionary mechanisms of enhancer birth.