When the bough breaks: rethinking treatment strategies for perinatal depression.

Awareness of depression among OB-GYN physicians has increased with the result that more than 13% of pregnant women in the United States receive prescriptions for antidepressant medications. But the safety and effectiveness of these compounds has been exaggerated while the effectiveness of psychotherapy has been overlooked and distorted and various medical guidelines for treatment of perinatal depression have been downplayed or ignored. This article addresses the common fears and misconceptions surrounding treatment of depression during pregnancy and after childbirth. The effectiveness of strategic cognitive-behavioral therapy enhanced with hypnosis offers excellent results without the risks associated with these medications. Targets for focused intervention are identified and discussed.

Is oral sex really a dangerous carcinogen? Let's take a closer look.

INTRODUCTION: Questions have recently arisen in the popular press about the association between specific sexual behaviors, namely, fellatio and cunnilingus, with head and neck cancers. Although there has been an overall decline in the incidence of head and neck cancers over the past 25 years, there has been a shift in the distribution of these cancers toward a particular type known as oral squamous cell carcinomas (OSCCs), and a younger demographic. These particular cancers, OSCCs, have been shown to be associated with the human papillomavirus (HPV). Several researchers have suggested that this shift in the epidemiology of head and neck cancers might be attributable to changing sexual practices. While this speculation has caught on in the popular press, there are several interesting contradictions in the existing evidence that suggest this conclusion might be premature and overreached. AIM: The intent of this article is to help clarify the issues so that sexual medicine professionals can give accurate and up-to-date information to their patients. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: This is a review article; no outcome data are reported. This is a review article; no measures were collected. METHODS: Pubmed search on HPV, oral sex, oral cancers, and OSCCs. RESULTS: One hundred ninety-six articles on HPV were found; 63 articles on oral sex, 55 on oral cancer, and 5 articles on OSCCs were identified as relevant. CONCLUSIONS: HPV infections occur commonly and are usually cleared within 18 months, thus HPV infection should not be a cause for concern among monogamous couples with a rich and varied sex life as long as the sexual system remains closed and other immune compromising factors are not present. HPV becomes a concern in the context of immune system compromise and infection persistence. Factors contributing to immune system compromise, HPV persistence, and oncogenesis are reviewed.

A Dual-Promoter Gene Orchestrates the Sucrose-Coordinated Synthesis of Starch and Fructan in Barley.

Sequential carbohydrate synthesis is important for plant survival because it guarantees energy supplies for growth and development during plant ontogeny and reproduction. Starch and fructan are two important carbohydrates in many flowering plants and in human diets. Understanding this coordinated starch and fructan synthesis and unraveling how plants allocate photosynthates and prioritize different carbohydrate synthesis for survival could lead to improvements to cereals in agriculture for the purposes of greater food security and production quality. Here, we report a system from a single gene in barley employing two alternative promoters, one intronic/exonic, to generate two sequence-overlapping but functionally opposing transcription factors, in sensing sucrose, potentially via sucrose/glucose/fructose/trehalose 6-phosphate signaling. The system employs an autoregulatory mechanism in perceiving a sucrose-controlled trans activity on one promoter and orchestrating the coordinated starch and fructan synthesis by competitive transcription factor binding on the other promoter. As a case in point for the physiological roles of the system, we have demonstrated that this multitasking system can be exploited in breeding barley with tailored amounts of fructan to produce healthy food ingredients. The identification of an intron/exon-spanning promoter in a hosting gene, resulting in proteins with distinct functions, adds to the complexity of plant genomes.

Diurnal oscillation of SBE expression in sorghum endosperm.

Spatial and temporal expression patterns of the sorghum SBEI, SBEIIA and SBEIIB genes, encoding, respectively, starch branching enzyme (SBE) I, IIA and IIB, in the developing endosperm of sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) were studied. Full-length genomic and cDNA clones for sorghum were cloned, and the SBEIIA cDNA was used together with gene-specific probes for sorghum SBEIIB and SBEI. In contrast to sorghum SBEIIB, which was expressed primarily in endosperm and embryo, SBEIIA was also expressed in vegetative tissues. All three genes shared a similar temporal expression profile during endosperm development, with a maximum activity at 15-24 d after pollination. This differed from barley and maize, in which SBEI gene activity showed a significantly later onset compared to that of SBEIIA and SBEIIB. Expression of the three SBE genes in the sorghum endosperm exhibited a diurnal rhythm during a 24-h cycle.

A novel connection between nucleotide and carbohydrate metabolism in mitochondria: sugar regulation of the Arabidopsis nucleoside diphosphate kinase 3a gene.

Sugar metabolism is intricately connected with mitochondria through the conversion of sugars to ATP, and through the production of carbon skeletons that can be used in anabolic processes. Sugar molecules also take part in signalling cascades. In this study we investigated the impact of sucrose on the expression of the Arabidopsis thaliana Nucleoside Diphosphate Kinase gene family (NDPK, EC 2.7.4.6), focusing on NDPK3a, the product of which is located predominantly in mitochondria. Using quantitative PCR we show that the NDPK3a gene is subject to sucrose and glucose induction, while no other Arabidopsis NDPK gene are sucrose-inducible. The induction reaches a half-maximum after about 6 hours and is stable for at least 48 h. Sucrose and glucose inductions were found not to be affected by the presence of a hexokinase inhibitor, N-acetyl-glucosamine. Furthermore, turanose, a sucrose analogue that is not metabolised in plant cells, did not induce NDPK3a gene expression. An analysis of the NDPK3a gene revealed two WBOXHWISO1 boxes in the promoter region, elements that have previously been reported to be involved in sugar signalling in barley via the SUSIBA2 protein. SUSIBA2 belongs to the WRKY group of transcription factors. In this study we used two mutants containing T-DNA insertions in WRKY-genes, AtWrky4 and AtWrky34, to investigate the possible involvement of WRKY transcription factors in the sugar induction of NDPK3a.

Plants express a lipid transfer protein with high similarity to mammalian sterol carrier protein-2.

This is the first report describing the cloning and characterization of sterol carrier protein-2 (SCP-2) from plants. Arabidopsis thaliana SCP-2 (AtSCP-2) consists of 123 amino acids with a molecular mass of 13.6 kDa. AtSCP-2 shows 35% identity and 56% similarity to the human SCP-2-like domain present in the human D-bifunctional protein (DBP) and 30% identity and 54% similarity to the human SCP-2 encoded by SCP-X. The presented structural models of apo-AtSCP-2 and the ligand-bound conformation of AtSCP-2 reveal remarkable similarity with two of the structurally known SCP-2s, the SCP-2-like domain of human DBP and the rabbit SCP-2, correspondingly. The AtSCP-2 models in both forms have a similar hydrophobic ligand-binding tunnel, which is extremely suitable for lipid binding. AtSCP-2 showed in vitro transfer activity of BODIPY-phosphatidylcholine (BODIPY-PC) from donor membranes to acceptor membranes. The transfer of BODIPY-PC was almost completely inhibited after addition of 1-palmitoyl 2-oleoyl phosphatidylcholine or ergosterol. Dimyristoyl phosphatidic acid, stigmasterol, steryl glucoside, and cholesterol showed a moderate to marginal ability to lower the BODIPY-PC transfer rate, and the single chain palmitic acid and stearoyl-coenzyme A did not affect transfer at all. Expression analysis showed that AtSCP-2 mRNA is accumulating in most plant tissues. Plasmids carrying fusion genes between green fluorescent protein and AtSCP-2 were transformed with particle bombardment to onion epidermal cells. The results from analyzing the transformants indicate that AtSCP-2 is localized to peroxisomes.