No abstract

These findings confirm that only selective 5-HT1A receptor antagonists have favourable effects on the bladder, inducing an increase in bladder capacity with no derangement of bladder contractility.

Background/Objectives: The prevalence of malnutrition in hospitals is high. No nutritional screening tool is considered the gold standard for identifying nutritional risk. The aims of this study were to evaluate nutritional risk in hospitalized patients using four nutritional screening tools. Subjects/Methods: Four nutritional screening tools were evaluated: nutritional risk screening (NRS-2002), the malnutrition universal screening tool (MUST), the subjective global assessment (SGA) and the mini nutritional assessment (MNA). Patients were assessed within the first 36 h after hospital admission. Date of admission, diagnosis, complications and date of discharge were collected. To compare the tools, the results were reorganized into: patients at risk and patients with a good nutritional status. The statistical analysis included the w 2 -test to assess differences between the tests and the k statistic to assess agreement between the tests.

To assess the hypothesis of central amino acid-sensing systems involved in the control of food intake in fish, we carried out two experiments in rainbow trout. In the first one, we injected intracerebroventricularly two different branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs), leucine and valine, and assessed food intake up to 48 h later. Leucine decreased and valine increased food intake. In a second experiment, 6 h after similar intracerebroventricular treatment we determined changes in parameters related to putative amino acid-sensing systems. Different areas of rainbow trout brain present amino acid-sensing systems responding to leucine (hypothalamus and telencephalon) and valine (telencephalon), while other areas (midbrain and hindbrain) do not respond to these treatments. The decreased food intake observed in fish treated intracerebroventricularly with leucine could relate to changes in mRNA abundance of hypothalamic neuropeptides [proopiomelanocortin (POMC), cocaine- and amphetamine-related transcript (CART), neuropeptide Y (NPY), and agouti-related peptide (AgRP)]. These in turn could relate to amino acid-sensing systems present in the same area, related to BCAA and glutamine metabolism, as well as mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR), taste receptors, and general control nonderepressible 2 (GCN2) kinase signaling. The treatment with valine did not affect amino acid-sensing parameters in the hypothalamus. These responses are comparable to those characterized in mammals. However, clear differences arise when comparing rainbow trout and mammals, in particular with respect to the clear orexigenic effect of valine, which could relate to the finding that valine partially stimulated two amino acid-sensing systems in the telencephalon. Another novel result is the clear effect of leucine on telencephalon, in which amino acid-sensing systems, but not neuropeptides, were activated as in the hypothalamus.

Prebiotics can improve the consistency of stools in gynecologic cancer patients on RT. This finding could have important implications in the quality-of-life of these patients during treatment.

No abstract

Endocrine factors regulate food intake and growth, two interlinked physiological processes critical for the proper development of organisms. Somatic growth is mainly regulated by growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factors I and II (IGF-I and IGF-II) that act on target tissues, including muscle, and bones. Peptidyl hormones produced from the brain and peripheral tissues regulate feeding to meet metabolic demands. The GH-IGF system and hormones regulating appetite are regulated by both internal (indicating the metabolic status of the organism) and external (environmental) signals. Among the external signals, the most notable are diet availability and diet composition. Macronutrients and micronutrients act on several hormone-producing tissues to regulate the synthesis and secretion of appetite-regulating hormones and hormones of the GH-IGF system, eventually modulating growth and food intake. A comprehensive understanding of how nutrients regulate hormones is essential to design diet formulations that better modulate endogenous factors for the benefit of aquaculture to increase yield. This review will discuss the current knowledge on nutritional regulation of hormones modulating growth and food intake in fish.

There is no information available on fish as far as the possible effects of ghrelin on hypothalamic fatty acid metabolism and the response of fatty acid-sensing systems, which are involved in the control of food intake. Therefore, we assessed in rainbow trout the response of food intake, hypothalamic fatty acid-sensing mechanisms and expression of neuropeptides involved in the control of food intake to the central treatment of ghrelin in the presence or absence of a long-chain fatty acid such as oleate. We observed that the orexigenic actions of ghrelin in rainbow trout are associated with changes in fatty acid metabolism in the hypothalamus and an inhibition of fatty acid-sensing mechanisms, which ultimately lead to changes in the expression of anorexigenic and orexigenic peptides resulting in increased orexigenic potential and food intake. Moreover, the response to increased levels of oleate of hypothalamic fatty acid-sensing systems (activation), expression of neuropeptides (enhanced anorexigenic potential) and food intake (decrease) were counteracted by the simultaneous treatment with ghrelin. These changes provide evidence for the first time in fish of a possible modulatory role of ghrelin on the metabolic regulation by fatty acid of food intake occurring in the hypothalamus.