Evaluación del efecto de la liposucción con o sin abdominoplastia sobre la resistencia a la insulina en pacientes normoglucémicas con sobrepeso: un estudio prospectivo de cohorte / The effect of liposuction versus liposuction with abdominoplasty on insulin resistance in normoglycemic non-obese females: A prospective cohort study

Introducción: Varios estudios han evaluado el efecto de la liposucción o de la abdominoplastia sobre la salud metabólica, incluyendo la resistencia a la insulina, con resultados mixtos. A varias pacientes con sobrepeso, sin obesidad marcada, se les recomienda el procedimiento de liposucción combinado con abdominoplastia, sin que exista publicada evidencia alguna sobre la efectividad de combinar ambos procedimientos en la salud metabólica. Métodos: El presente estudio prospectivo de cohorte evaluó el cambio en la resistencia a la insulina y otros parámetros metabólicos en dos grupos de mujeres hispanoamericanas normoglucémicas con sobrepeso. Las pacientes del primer grupo fueron sometidas a liposucción únicamente (LIPO), mientras que el segundo grupo fue sometido a liposucción con abdominoplastia (LIPO+ABDO). Resultados: Un total de 31 pacientes fueron evaluadas, incluyendo a 13 con LIPO y 18 con LIPO+ABDO; ambos grupos mostraron HOMA-IR prequirúrgicos similares (p>0,72). En las del grupo LIPO evaluadas 60días después del procedimiento, se observaron HOMA-IR similares a sus niveles prequirúrgicos (2.,98±0,4 vs. 2,70±0,3, p>0,20); las del grupo LIPO+ABDO, sin embargo, mostraron HOMA-IR significativamente reducidos en comparación de sus índices prequirúrgicos (2,37±0,2 vs. 1,73±0,1, p<0,001). También en este grupo, esta reducción se correlacionó positivamente con el valor prequirúrgico de HOMA-IR (p<0,001) y, de manera interesante, se observó una correlación negativa entre la edad de la paciente y el grado de disminución en el HOMA-IR tras la cirugía (Spearman r=−0,56, p<0,05). No se observaron cambios en los otros parámetros bioquímicos evaluados. Conclusiones: Los datos de este estudio sugieren que cuando es combinada con abdominoplastia, la liposucción mejora la resistencia a la insulina en pacientes hispanoamericanas. Se requieren de estudios adicionales para probar dicha posibilidad.(AU)

Introduction: Several studies have evaluated the effect of liposuction or abdominoplasty on metabolic health, including insulin resistance, with mixed results. Many overweight patients, with no marked obesity, are recommended to undergo liposuction combined with abdominoplasty, but no study has evaluated the effectiveness of combining the two procedures on metabolic health. Methods: The present prospective cohort study compares the metabolic parameters of two groups of normoglycemic Hispanic women without obesity. The first group underwent liposuction only (LIPO), while the second group had combined liposuction and abdominoplasty (LIPO+ABDO). Results: A total of 31 patients were evaluated, including 13 in the LIPO group and 18 in the LIPO+ABDO group. The two groups had similar HOMA-IR before surgery (P>.72). When tested 60days after surgery, women in the LIPO group had similar HOMA-IR compared to their preoperative levels (2.98±0.4 vs. 2.70±0.3; P>.20). However, the LIPO+ABDO group showed significantly reduced HOMA-IR values compared to their preoperative levels (2.37±0.2 vs. 1.73±0.1; P<.001). In this group, this decrease also positively correlated with their preoperative HOMA-IR (Spearman r=0.72; P<.001) and, interestingly, we observed a negative correlation between the age of the subjects and the drop in HOMA-IR after surgery (Spearman r=−0.56; P<.05). No changes were observed in the other biochemical parameters that were assessed. Conclusions: These data suggest that, when combined with abdominoplasty, liposuction does improve insulin resistance in healthy Hispanic females. More studies are warranted to address this possibility.(AU)

The effect of liposuction versus liposuction with abdominoplasty on insulin resistance in normoglycemic non-obese Mexican females: A prospective cohort study.

INTRODUCTION: Several studies have evaluated the effect of liposuction or abdominoplasty on metabolic health, including insulin resistance, with mixed results. Many overweight patients, with no marked obesity, are recommended to undergo liposuction combined with abdominoplasty, but no study has evaluated the effectiveness of combining the two procedures on metabolic health. METHODS: The present prospective cohort study compares the metabolic parameters of 2 groups of normoglycemic Hispanic women without obesity. The first group underwent liposuction only (LIPO), while the second group had combined liposuction and abdominoplasty (LIPO + ABDO). RESULTS: A total of 31 patients were evaluated, including 13 in the LIPO group and 18 in the LIPO + ABDO group. The 2 groups had similar HOMA-IR before surgery (P > 0.72). When tested 60 days after surgery, women in the LIPO group had similar HOMA-IR compared to their preoperative levels (2.98 ± 0.4 vs 2.70 ± 0.3; P > .20). However, the LIPO+ABDO group showed significantly reduced HOMA-IR values compared to their preoperative levels (2.37 ± 0.2 vs 1.73 ± 0.1; P < .001). In this group, this decrease also positively correlated with their preoperative HOMA-IR (Spearman r = 0.72; P < .001) and, interestingly, we observed a negative correlation between the age of the subjects and the drop in HOMA-IR after surgery (Spearman r = -0.56; P < .05). No changes were observed in the other biochemical parameters that were assessed. CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that, when combined with abdominoplasty, liposuction does improve insulin resistance in healthy Hispanic females. More studies are warranted to address this possibility.

Long live the host! Proteomic analysis reveals possible strategies for parasitic manipulation of its social host.

Parasites with complex life cycles often manipulate the phenotype of their intermediate hosts to increase the probability of transmission to their definitive hosts. Infection with Anomotaenia brevis, a cestode that uses Temnothorax nylanderi ants as intermediate hosts, leads to a multiple-fold extension of host lifespan and to changes in behaviour, morphology and colouration. The mechanisms behind these changes are unknown, as is whether the increased longevity is achieved through parasite manipulation. Here, we demonstrate that the parasite releases proteins into its host with functions that might explain the observed changes. These parasitic proteins make up a substantial portion of the proteome of the hosts' haemolymph, and thioredoxin peroxidase and superoxide dismutase, two antioxidants, exhibited the highest abundances among them. The largest part of the secreted proteins could not be annotated, indicating they are either novel or severely altered during recent coevolution to function in host manipulation. We also detected shifts in the hosts' proteome with infection, in particular an overabundance of vitellogenin-like A in infected ants, a protein that regulates division of labour in Temnothorax ants, which could explain the observed behavioural changes. Our results thus suggest two different strategies that might be employed by this parasite to manipulate its host: secreting proteins with immediate influence on the host's phenotype and altering the host's translational activity. Our findings highlight the intricate molecular interplay required to influence the phenotype of a host and point to potential signalling pathways and genes involved in parasite-host communication.

AlexandrusPS: A User-Friendly Pipeline for the Automated Detection of Orthologous Gene Clusters and Subsequent Positive Selection Analysis.

The detection of adaptive selection in a system approach considering all protein-coding genes allows for the identification of mechanisms and pathways that enabled adaptation to different environments. Currently, available programs for the estimation of positive selection signals can be divided into two groups. They are either easy to apply but can analyze only one gene family at a time, restricting system analysis; or they can handle larger cohorts of gene families, but require considerable prerequisite data such as orthology associations, codon alignments, phylogenetic trees, and proper configuration files. All these steps require extensive computational expertise, restricting this endeavor to specialists. Here, we introduce AlexandrusPS, a high-throughput pipeline that overcomes technical challenges when conducting transcriptome-wide positive selection analyses on large sets of nucleotide and protein sequences. The pipeline streamlines 1) the execution of an accurate orthology prediction as a precondition for positive selection analysis, 2) preparing and organizing configuration files for CodeML, 3) performing positive selection analysis using CodeML, and 4) generating an output that is easy to interpret, including all maximum likelihood and log-likelihood test results. The only input needed from the user is the CDS and peptide FASTA files of proteins of interest. The pipeline is provided in a Docker image, requiring no program or module installation, enabling the application of the pipeline in any computing environment. AlexandrusPS and its documentation are available via GitHub (https://github.com/alejocn5/AlexandrusPS).

Nematode gene annotation by machine-learning-assisted proteotranscriptomics enables proteome-wide evolutionary analysis.

Nematodes encompass more than 24,000 described species, which were discovered in almost every ecological habitat, and make up >80% of metazoan taxonomic diversity in soils. The last common ancestor of nematodes is believed to date back to ∼650-750 million years, generating a large and phylogenetically diverse group to be explored. However, for most species high-quality gene annotations are incomprehensive or missing. Combining short-read RNA sequencing with mass spectrometry-based proteomics and machine-learning quality control in an approach called proteotranscriptomics, we improve gene annotations for nine genome-sequenced nematode species and provide new gene annotations for three additional species without genome assemblies. Emphasizing the sensitivity of our methodology, we provide evidence for two hitherto undescribed genes in the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans Extensive phylogenetic systems analysis using this comprehensive proteome annotation provides new insights into evolutionary processes of this metazoan group.

Screening Diabetic Retinopathy Using an Automated Retinal Image Analysis System in Independent and Assistive Use Cases in Mexico: Randomized Controlled Trial.

BACKGROUND: The automated screening of patients at risk of developing diabetic retinopathy represents an opportunity to improve their midterm outcome and lower the public expenditure associated with direct and indirect costs of common sight-threatening complications of diabetes. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to develop and evaluate the performance of an automated deep learning-based system to classify retinal fundus images as referable and nonreferable diabetic retinopathy cases, from international and Mexican patients. In particular, we aimed to evaluate the performance of the automated retina image analysis (ARIA) system under an independent scheme (ie, only ARIA screening) and 2 assistive schemes (ie, hybrid ARIA plus ophthalmologist screening), using a web-based platform for remote image analysis to determine and compare the sensibility and specificity of the 3 schemes. METHODS: A randomized controlled experiment was performed where 17 ophthalmologists were asked to classify a series of retinal fundus images under 3 different conditions. The conditions were to (1) screen the fundus image by themselves (solo); (2) screen the fundus image after exposure to the retina image classification of the ARIA system (ARIA answer); and (3) screen the fundus image after exposure to the classification of the ARIA system, as well as its level of confidence and an attention map highlighting the most important areas of interest in the image according to the ARIA system (ARIA explanation). The ophthalmologists' classification in each condition and the result from the ARIA system were compared against a gold standard generated by consulting and aggregating the opinion of 3 retina specialists for each fundus image. RESULTS: The ARIA system was able to classify referable vs nonreferable cases with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 98%, a sensitivity of 95.1%, and a specificity of 91.5% for international patient cases. There was an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 98.3%, a sensitivity of 95.2%, and a specificity of 90% for Mexican patient cases. The ARIA system performance was more successful than the average performance of the 17 ophthalmologists enrolled in the study. Additionally, the results suggest that the ARIA system can be useful as an assistive tool, as sensitivity was significantly higher in the experimental condition where ophthalmologists were exposed to the ARIA system's answer prior to their own classification (93.3%), compared with the sensitivity of the condition where participants assessed the images independently (87.3%; P=.05). CONCLUSIONS: These results demonstrate that both independent and assistive use cases of the ARIA system present, for Latin American countries such as Mexico, a substantial opportunity toward expanding the monitoring capacity for the early detection of diabetes-related blindness.

The double-stranded DNA-binding proteins TEBP-1 and TEBP-2 form a telomeric complex with POT-1.

Telomeres are bound by dedicated proteins, which protect them from DNA damage and regulate telomere length homeostasis. In the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, a comprehensive understanding of the proteins interacting with the telomere sequence is lacking. Here, we harnessed a quantitative proteomics approach to identify TEBP-1 and TEBP-2, two paralogs expressed in the germline and embryogenesis that associate to telomeres in vitro and in vivo. tebp-1 and tebp-2 mutants display strikingly distinct phenotypes: tebp-1 mutants have longer telomeres than wild-type animals, while tebp-2 mutants display shorter telomeres and a Mortal Germline. Notably, tebp-1;tebp-2 double mutant animals have synthetic sterility, with germlines showing signs of severe mitotic and meiotic arrest. Furthermore, we show that POT-1 forms a telomeric complex with TEBP-1 and TEBP-2, which bridges TEBP-1/-2 with POT-2/MRT-1. These results provide insights into the composition and organization of a telomeric protein complex in C. elegans.