Childhood adverse life events and parental psychopathology as risk factors for bipolar disorder.

Childhood adverse events are risk factors for later bipolar disorder. We quantified the risks for a later diagnosis of bipolar disorder after exposure to adverse life events in children with and without parental psychopathology. This register-based population cohort study included all persons born in Denmark from 1980 to 1998 (980 554 persons). Adversities before age 15 years were: familial disruption; parental somatic illness; any parental psychopathology; parental labour market exclusion; parental imprisonment; placement in out-of-home care; and parental natural and unnatural death. We calculated risk estimates of each of these eight life events as single exposure and risk estimates for exposure to multiple life events. Main outcome variable was a diagnosis of bipolar disorder after the age of 15 years, analysed with Cox proportional hazard regression. Single exposure to most of the investigated adversities were associated with increased risk for bipolar disorder, exceptions were parental somatic illness and parental natural death. By far the strongest risk factor for bipolar disorder in our study was any mental disorder in the parent (hazard ratio 3.53; 95% confidence interval 2.73-4.53) and the additional effects of life events on bipolar risk were limited. An effect of early adverse life events on bipolar risk later in life was mainly observed in children without parental psychopathology. Our findings do not exclude early-life events as possible risk factors, but challenge the concept of adversities as important independent determinants of bipolar disorder in genetically vulnerable individuals.

FSI simulation of asymmetric mitral valve dynamics during diastolic filling.

In this article, we present a fluid-structure interaction algorithm accounting for the mutual interaction between two rigid bodies. The algorithm was used to perform a numerical simulation of mitral valve (MV) dynamics during diastolic filling. In numerical simulations of intraventricular flow and MV motion, the asymmetry of the leaflets is often neglected. In this study the MV was rendered as two rigid, asymmetric leaflets. The 2D simulations incorporated the dynamic interaction of blood flow and leaflet motion and an imposed subject-specific, transient left ventricular wall movement obtained from ultrasound recordings. By including the full Jacobian matrix in the algorithm, the speed of the simulation was enhanced by more than 20% compared to using a diagonal Jacobian matrix. Furthermore, our results indicate that important features of the flow field may not be predicted by the use of symmetric leaflets or in the absence of an adequate model for the left atrium.

Isolation and characterization of a cDNA encoding for preprosomatostatin containing [Tyr7, Gly10]-somatostatin-14 from the endocrine pancreas of rainbow trout, Oncorhynchus mykiss.

Somatostatins are a diverse group of peptides known to influence various aspects of growth and metabolism of vertebrates. In order to further our understanding of the physiological roles of somatostatins in fish, we initiated an analysis of somatostatin gene structure and expression in rainbow trout pancreas. Using rapid amplification of cDNA ends polymerase chain reaction, we have isolated, cloned, and sequenced a novel cDNA derived from pancreatic total RNA. Sequence analysis revealed a 624-bp cDNA containing the complete 5'-untranslated region with a single initiation site 107 bases from the most 5' end and a single putative polyadenylation site 13 bases from the most 3' end that was terminated with a polyadenylated tail. The deduced protein is a 115-amino-acid preprosomatostatin molecule with [Tyr7,Gly10]-somatostatin-14 at the C-terminus of the coding region, making the rainbow trout precursor a member of the preprosomatostatin II family. Based on the location of putative cleavage sites, we propose that rainbow trout pancreatic preprosomastatin II is processed to yield a 28-amino-acid and/or, possibly, a 14-amino-acid somatostatin II molecule. The results also suggest that there has been limited conservation of the preprosomatostatin II gene family among teleosts.