Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia Virus Activates Integrated Stress Response Pathway and Induces Stress Granules to Regulate Virus Replication.

Virus infection activates integrated stress response (ISR) and stress granule (SG) formation and viruses counteract by interfering with SG assembly, suggesting an important role in antiviral defense. The infection of fish cells by Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia Virus (VHSV), activates the innate immune recognition pathway and the production of type I interferon (IFN). However, the mechanisms by which VHSV interacts with ISR pathway regulating SG formation is poorly understood. Here, we demonstrate that fish cells respond to heat shock, oxidative stress and VHSV infection by forming SG that localized key SG marker, Ras GTPase-activating protein (SH3 domain)-binding protein 1 (G3BP1). We show that PKR-like endoplasmic reticulum kinase (PERK), but not (dsRNA)-dependent protein kinase (PKR), is required for VHSV-induced SG formation. Furthermore, in VHSV Ia infected cells, PERK activity is required for IFN production, antiviral signaling and viral replication. SG formation required active virus replication as individual VHSV Ia proteins or inactive virus did not induce SG. Cells lacking G3BP1 produced increased IFN, antiviral genes and viral mRNA, however viral protein synthesis and viral titers were reduced. We show a critical role of the activation of ISR pathway and SG formation highlighting a novel role of G3BP1 in regulating VHSV protein translation and replication.

A Double-blind Multicenter Two-arm Randomized Placebo-controlled Phase-III Clinical Study to Evaluate the Effectiveness and Safety of Thymosin α1 as an Add-on Treatment to Existing Standard of Care Treatment in Moderate-to-severe COVID-19 Patients.

Background: From an epidemic outbreak, coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) has quickly developed. Thymosin α1 (Tα1) has the ability to boost the T-cell numbers, support T-cell differentiation, maturation, and reduce cell apoptosis. In this study, we have investigated the efficacy and safety of Tα1 in moderate-to-severe COVID-19 patients. Patients and methods: In this double-blind, multicenter, two-arm, randomized, placebo-controlled, phase III clinical study, patients were randomized to receive either Tα1 or placebo in combination with standard of care (SOC). The data on all-cause mortality, clinical progression/deterioration, duration of hospital/intensive care unit (ICU) stay, and safety data were collected. The patients were telephonically followed up on Day 28. Results: A total of (n = 105) COVID-19 patients were included in the study, of which 40 and 65 were severe and moderate, respectively. Thymosin arm (11.1%) had a statistically lower death rate in comparison to the placebo arm (38.5%). A total of 67 adverse events were reported in 42 patients among 105 dosed patients during the study. Among them, 43 adverse events were of mild in nature, 16 adverse events were of moderate in nature, and 8 serious adverse events (death) occurred during the study. Conclusion: This study provides evidence that Tα1 can lower death rate in severe COVID-19 patients, reduce the load on hospitals by shortening the required number of days of hospitalization and help in abbreviating the requirement of oxygen support by positively impacting the recovery rate and time taken for recovery. How to cite this article: Shetty A, Chandrakant NS, Darnule RA, Manjunath BG, Sathe P. A Double-blind Multicenter Two-arm Randomized Placebo-controlled Phase-III Clinical Study to Evaluate the Effectiveness and Safety of Thymosin α1 as an Add-on Treatment to Existing Standard of Care Treatment in Moderate-to-severe COVID-19 Patients. Indian J Crit Care Med 2022;26(8):913-919.

Real-Time Twitter Spam Detection and Sentiment Analysis using Machine Learning and Deep Learning Techniques.

In this modern world, we are accustomed to a constant stream of data. Major social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, or Quora face a huge dilemma as a lot of these sites fall victim to spam accounts. These accounts are made to trap unsuspecting genuine users by making them click on malicious links or keep posting redundant posts by using bots. This can greatly impact the experiences that users have on these sites. A lot of time and research has gone into effective ways to detect these forms of spam. Performing sentiment analysis on these posts can help us in solving this problem effectively. The main purpose of this proposed work is to develop a system that can determine whether a tweet is "spam" or "ham" and evaluate the emotion of the tweet. The extracted features after preprocessing the tweets are classified using various classifiers, namely, decision tree, logistic regression, multinomial naïve Bayes, support vector machine, random forest, and Bernoulli naïve Bayes for spam detection. The stochastic gradient descent, support vector machine, logistic regression, random forest, naïve Bayes, and deep learning methods, namely, simple recurrent neural network (RNN) model, long short-term memory (LSTM) model, bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) model, and 1D convolutional neural network (CNN) model are used for sentiment analysis. The performance of each classifier is analyzed. The classification results showed that the features extracted from the tweets can be satisfactorily used to identify if a certain tweet is spam or not and create a learning model that will associate tweets with a particular sentiment.

Incidence of Prosthetic Complications associated with Implant-borne Prosthesis in a Sleep Disorder Center.

BACKGROUND: Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is one of the common prevalent conditions present worldwide. The process of abnormal habits related to clenching and grinding of teeth is referred to as bruxism and is characterized under the heading of parafunctional activity of the masticatory system. Osseointegrated dental implants represent advancements in the field of odontology. Despite its high success rate, failure and complications are often associated with dental implant treatment due to a number of factors. Hence, we aimed for the present study to assess the incidence of prosthetic complications in patients rehabilitated with implant-borne prosthesis in a sleep disorder unit. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The present study included the assessment of all the patients who underwent prosthetic rehabilitation by dental implants. An experienced registered prosthodontist was given duty for examination of all the cases from the record file data. Prosthetic complications in the patients were identified using photographs, radiographs, and all other relevant data of the patients obtained from the record files. All types of complications and other factors were recorded separately and analyzed. RESULTS: While correlating the prosthetic complications in OSA patients grouped based on number of dental implants, nonsignificant results were obtained. Significant correlation was observed while comparing the prosthetic complications divided based on type of prosthesis. Fracture of the porcelain was observed in four and eight cases respectively, of screwed and cemented dental implant cases. CONCLUSION: Some amount of significant correlation existed between the incidences of prosthetic complications and OSA. CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE: Proper history of the patients undergoing dental implant procedures should be taken to avoid failure.

Understanding the advances in biology of orthodontic tooth movement for improved ortho-perio interdisciplinary approach.

This article provides an insight on detailed current advances in molecular understandings of periodontal ligament cells and the influence of orthodontic force on them in the light of recent advances in molecular and genetic sciences. It sequentially unfolds the cellular events beginning from the mechanical force initiated events of cellular responses to bone remodeling. It also highlights the risks and limitations of orthodontic treatment in certain periodontal conditions, the important areas of team work, orthodontic expectations from periodontal treatment and the possibility of much more future combined research to improve the best possible periodontal health and esthetic outcome of the patient.

Evaluation of the inclination of maxillary occlusal plane on mounted casts using a fixed value and customized nasion indicator in artex articulator: Facebow system - An in-vivo comparative study.

AIM: To evaluate and compare the variations in the inclination of occlusal plane of casts mounted on Artex articulator using a facebow with a fixed value and customized nasion indicator. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Twenty two subjects were selected for this investigation. Two maxillary impressions were made, and casts poured. For each of the twenty two subjects, the facebow records were made with, Artex face-bow using a fixed value nasion indicator and customized nasion indicator and mounted. The angle between the occlusal plane of upper cast and the upper articulator arm was measured with a Universal bevel protractor and compared with the gold standard cephalometric value. RESULTS: It shows that, when angle was measured between maxillary occlusal plane and upper member of the articulator, on the mounted cast using a customized nasion indicator and fixed value nasion indicator against the gold standard cephalometric value as a whole, it was found to be not significant. But, if each patient were evaluated individually, there found to be the difference in the angle. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: Variation in occlusal plane was very minimal and close to the cephalometric value when using customized nasion indicator compared to fixed value nasion indicator on the Artex.

Sources of parental burden in a UK sample of first-generation North Indian Punjabi Sikhs and their white British counterparts.

OBJECTIVE: The correlates of parental burden in schizophrenia may differ between ethnic groups, but few studies have examined this in a UK setting. Our aim was to identify the correlates of burden in a UK sample of first-generation North Indian Punjabi Sikh parents and their white British counterparts. METHOD: Test the association of burden with a series of clinical, social and service use variables and control for potential confounding factors in a model predicting drivers of burden in a combined sample of the above. RESULTS: The strongest correlates of burden were patient symptoms and parental distress. Differences in correlates of burden between the groups emerged when individual components of service use and parental social network were tested. The group comparisons also revealed differences in expressed emotion (EE) and social networks. CONCLUSION: The similarities in sources of burden between the groups could be explained by a commonality of sociocultural and economic experience, resulting from the successful acculturation and affluence of this British Sikh group. The differences between the groups may be related to enduring cultural factors such as kin support, since larger family groups were associated with low burden in the British Sikh group. The nature of EE in this British Sikh group may explain why it was not associated with burden in this sample.

A comparison of levels of burden in Indian and white parents with a son or daughter with schizophrenia.

BACKGROUND: Caregiver burden in mental illness is believed to differ between ethnic groups, but few studies have examined this in schizophrenia in the UK. AIM: To measure burden in British North Indian Sikh and white British parents with a son or daughter with established schizophrenia managed in outpatient care. METHOD: A cross-cultural cohort study measuring family factors, patient psychopathology and levels of burden and distress. RESULTS: Overall levels of burden were low with no significant differences between the groups. Burden subscale scores showed Indian parents were more affected by psychotic behaviours than white parents. The groups also differed on several sociodemographic variables. CONCLUSION: In stabilized community patients, the overall extent of burden experienced by both Indian and white parents is low and comparable. However, Indian parents were more burdened by psychotic behaviours. This may be a result of co-residence as Indian patients are more likely to live with their families. Social and economic factors in the country of residence and levels of acculturation may also influence levels of burden and the illness behaviours found most bothersome by parents.