Using a placebo-controlled, double-blinded, within-participants, randomized, cross-over design, we examined the neurocognitive effects of a: (a) caffeine-containing, adaptogenic herbal-rich natural energy shot (e+ shot), (b) a matched caffeine-containing shot (caffeine), and, (c) a placebo. Participants (n = 30) were low consumers of caffeine without elevated feelings of energy. Before and three times after beverage consumption, a 27-min battery was used to assess motivation to perform cognitive tasks, mood, attention ((serial subtractions of 3 (SS3) and 7 (SS7), the continuous performance task (CPT), and the rapid visual input processing tasks)), heart rate (HR), blood pressure (BP), and motor coordination (nine-hole peg test) with a 10-min break between each post-consumption battery. The procedure was repeated for each beverage for each participant at least 48 h apart and within 30 min the same time of day using a random group assignment with blinding of researchers and subjects. To evaluate for changes in outcomes, a Treatment × Time analysis of covariance controlling for hours of prior night’s sleep was used. Analysis of all outcomes and all treatment comparisons indicated that compared to placebo, both e+ shot ( Δ ¯   = 2.60; η2 = 0.098) and caffeine ( Δ ¯   = 5.30, η2 = 0.098) increased systolic BP 30 min post consumption (still within normal healthy ranges). The caffeine beverage also led to an improvement in most cognitive measures and moods 30-min post-consumption with improvements tapering at 69 and 108 min, while e+ shot noted more steady improvements with no significant differences between beverages on most cognitive and mood measures at 69 and 108 min. However, compared to caffeine, e+shots noted a significant decrease in reaction time at 108 min, while caffeine noted a small change in the opposite direction. No side-effects were reported by any intervention. These results suggest that the specific blend of adaptogens in e+ shot may modulate the neurocognitive effects of caffeine on mood, and cognition.

Multiple studies suggest that genetic polymorphisms influence the neurocognitive effects of caffeine. Using data collected from a double-blinded, within-participants, randomized, cross-over design, this study examined the effects of trait (long-standing pre-disposition) mental and physical energy and fatigue to changes in moods (Profile of Mood Survey-Short Form (POMS-SF), state mental and physical energy and fatigue survey), cognitive (serial subtractions of 3 (SS3) and 7 (SS7)), and fine-motor task (nine-hole peg test) performance after consuming a caffeinated beverage and a non-caffeinated placebo. Results indicate that trait mental and physical fatigue and mental energy modified the effects of caffeine on vigor, tension-anxiety, physical, and mental fatigue. Additionally, we report that those who were high trait physical and mental fatigue and low-trait mental energy reported the greatest benefit of caffeine on the SS3 and SS7, while those who were high trait mental and physical fatigue reported the greatest benefit of consuming caffeine on fine-motor task performance. The results of our study suggest that trait mental and physical fatigue and mental energy modify the acute effects of caffeine among a group of healthy, young adults and should be measured and controlled for by researchers who choose to study the effects of caffeine on acute moods and cognitive and fine-motor task performance.

Background: Psychological research considers traits as a long-standing pre-disposition to an individual’s mood, whereas short-term feelings are categorized as states. We previously reported similar overall acute mental performance benefits between an adaptogen-rich, caffeine-containing energy shot (e+Energy Shot–e+Shot; Isagenix International, LLC) and a caffeine-matched placebo Since the publication of that study, multiple studies have reported that trait mental and physical energy (TME/TPE), and trait mental and physical fatigue (TMF/TPF) status modify the effect of various interventions on neurocognitive performance. Therefore, we reevaluated our previously published work and accounted for the four traits. Methods: Participants (n = 30) completed a series of questionnaires to determine baseline trait energy and fatigue measures. Then, participants performed a 27 min battery of neurocognitive tasks before and three times after consuming the study beverages with 10 min breaks between each post-consumption battery of tests. Data from the previous study were re-analyzed using linear mixed-effects models. Results: We now report that the adaptogen product significantly improved mood and cognitive test responses in individuals stratified by initial TME, TPE, TMF, and TPF status. Moreover, this reevaluation also indicated that the caffeine placebo significantly increased heart rate and blood pressure in those subjects initially characterized by low physical and mental energy. Conclusions: In summary, a post-hoc re-analysis of our initial study suggests that consumption of the adaptogen-rich, caffeine-containing product preferentially benefited individuals with initial low TME/TPE and high TMF status when compared to caffeine alone. These findings also support our previous study suggesting that adaptogens may promote mental and physical performance benefits while modulating potentially negatively associated responses to caffeine.

Background Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a systemic autoimmune disease with multiple known comorbidities and risk factors. The rate and severity of different comorbidities among RA patients are influenced by various demographic, behavioral, and socioeconomic factors, which can vary widely between urban and rural areas. However, limited information is currently available regarding the association of comorbidities with RA in rural settings. In this study, we investigated the prevalence of common comorbidities and risk factors of RA among RA patients from a rural hospital located in rural northern New York and compared them against national patient records obtained from the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS). Methodology We compared de-identified patient records of 153 RA patients obtained from St. Lawrence Health (SLH) to 198 RA patients from the NHAMCS. After performing the descriptive analyses and removing outliers, two-sample tests of proportions were used for comparing the binary categories of sex, age, obesity, hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and congestive heart failure (CHF) between the two datasets. These analyses were applied to both weighted and unweighted sets of national data, and a p-value of <0.05 was considered statistically significant. The differences were then explored at a greater resolution by binning body mass index, blood pressure (BP), COPD prevalence, and tobacco usage data across different age groups. Results A significantly higher rate of diastolic hypertension (χ 2 = 17.942, w = 0.232, p < 0.001) and over two times higher prevalence of COPD (χ 2 = 7.635, w = 0.147, p = 0.006) were observed among RA patients in the rural group. The rates of CHF were significantly different only when sample weighting was applied. When categorized by age groups, diastolic BP showed a peak at 40-49 years, coinciding with the age group for high tobacco smoking and peak disease activity in rural RA patients. Conclusions A higher prevalence of comorbidities of RA such as hypertension (diastolic) and COPD are observed in patients from northern rural New York compared to the national average. Our findings indicate that rural RA patients might have a distinct comorbidity burden, suggesting the need for larger-scale studies.

Background. Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disorder characterized by chronic and systemic inflammation. Recent research underscores the role of chronic inflammation in multiple common RA comorbidities such as depression, obesity, and cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), suggesting a potential overlap of the pathogenic mechanisms for RA. However, it is not well understood how the coexistence of these comorbid conditions impacts the risk of RA and whether any such association relates to the inflammatory status of the body. Methods. We used data from the 2007-2010 United States National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) database and compared RA prevalence between subsamples with the presence of any two conditions among depression, obesity, and hypertriglyceridemia (HTG). Each subsample was further divided into three categories based on the serum level of the inflammatory marker C-reactive protein (CRP) and analyzed for statistically significant differences using three-way χ2 tests of independence. Results. The study was conducted on 4,136 patients who fulfilled the inclusion criteria (representing 163,540,241 individuals after adjustment for sampling weights). Rates of depression, obesity, and HTG were found to be significantly higher (P < 0.001) among the subjects with RA compared with the control population with no arthritis. The presence of depression along with obesity or HTG showed a noticeably higher RA prevalence but such an association was not observed for the combination of obesity and HTG. The synergistic effect of HTG with depression was found to be most prominent at a medium CRP level (1-3 mg/L), while for obesity, the effect was observed across all CRP levels examined. These findings were further confirmed by the three-way χ2 test for independence. Conclusions. The presence of obesity or HTG in subjects suffering from depression might pose an increased risk of RA. Inflammatory mechanisms potentially play an important underlying role as suggested by the strong dependency of the association to CRP level. Identification of synergistic associations between RA risk conditions could provide useful information to predict the development and progress of RA.

Culture based detection remains to be one of the most reliable and acceptable techniques to detect extremely low quantity pathogens present in a sample. The process typically involves inoculating the sample on an agar plate to allow growth of the microorganisms to form colonies, followed by the identification of the individual colonies, commonly by DNA sequencing of a PCR-amplified targeted gene. Sanger method is often the default choice of sequencing as it offers affordable and accurate results for a single species. However, the technique could pose limitations in certain situations such as identification of multi-species microbial colonies. In this work, we compared the performance of Sanger sequencing with MinION nanopore sequencing in identifying bacterial colonies derived from bioaerosol samples. We conducted Sanger and nanopore sequencing of full-length 16S rRNA genes from seven bacterial colonies derived from bioaerosol samples and compared the outcome by alignment against NCBI 16S reference database. We found that for five out of seven colonies both techniques indicated the presence of the same bacterial genus. For one of the remaining colonies, a noisy Sanger electropherogram failed to generate a meaningful sequence, but nanopore sequencing identified it to be a mix of two bacterial genera Alkalihalobacillus and Kocuria. For the other remaining colony, the Sanger sequencing suggested Micrococcus with a clean electropherogram, however, the nanopore sequencing suggested the presence of an additional genus Paraburkholderia. Further corroborating these findings with mock multispecies colonies from pure bacterial DNA samples, we confirm that nanopore sequencing is comparable to the Sanger method in identifying colonies with single bacterial species but is the superior method in classifying individual bacterial components with their relative abundances in multispecies colonies. Our results suggest that nanopore sequencing could be advantageous over Sanger sequencing for colony identification in culture-based analysis of environmental samples such as bioaerosol where direct inoculation of the sample to culture plate might lead to formation of multispecies colonies.