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Abstract. The present investigation was conducted to understand the influence of long-term exposure of rats to extremely low frequency magnetic fields (ELF-MF), focusing on oxidative stress (OS) on different regions of rat's brain. Male Wistar rats (21-day-old) were exposed to ELF-MF (50 Hz; 50 and 100 µT) for 90 days continuously; hippocampal, cerebellar and cortical regions from rats were analyzed for (i) reactive oxygen species (ROS), (ii) metabolites indicative of OS and (iii) antioxidant enzymes. In comparison to control group rats, the rats that were continuously exposed to ELF-MF caused OS and altered glutathione (GSH/GSSG) levels in dose-dependent manner in all the regions of the brain. Accumulation of ROS, lipid peroxidation end products and activity of superoxide dismutase in different regions was in the descending order of cerebellum > hippocampus > cortex. Decrement in GSH/GSSG levels and increment in glutathione peroxidase activity were in the descending order of hippocampus > cerebellum > cortex. The continuous exposure to ELF-MF caused OS in all the examined regions of brain more significantly at 100 µT than at 50 µT. Varied influences observed in different regions of the brain, as documented in this study, may contribute to altered metabolic patterns in its related regions of the central nervous system, leading to aberrant neuronal functions.

Background: There are several reports that indicate a linkage between exposure to power frequency (50 -60 Hz) magnetic fields with abnormalities in the early embryonic development of the chicken. The present study was designed to understand whether power frequency electromagnetic fields could act as an environmental insult and invoke any neurochemical or toxicological changes in developing chick embryo model.

The cell viability and DNA damage in unstimulated sheep primary lymphocytes subjected to different extremely low electromagnetic field intensities (5, 50 and 100 µT; 50 Hz) were studied with special emphasis on apoptosis. Sheep primary lymphocytes cultured in RPMI, supplemented with 10% FBS in the absence of mitogens, were exposed till 16 h. The cell viability assessment by 3-(4, 5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2, 5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay showed a dose dependent enhancement of viability at 16 h. Further, quantitative DNA laddering and flow cytometric analysis showed a significant decrease in apoptosis of the cells subjected to 100 (p<0.01) and 50 µT (p<0.05) for 16 h as compared to control group. There was a statistically significant decrease (p<0.01) in the specific activity of caspase 9 at 100 µT in cells exposed for 16 h. However, no enhancement of DNA damage was observed at 5, 50 and 100 µT as evidenced by comet assay. Comet assay also confirmed the decreased cell death of exposed cells (100 µT). Experimental data suggests decreased apoptosis at 100 µT (50 Hz), possibly by the suppression of caspase 9 activity leading to the enhanced cell viability. Effect of ELF-EMF on primary lymphocytesBioDiscovery | www.biodiscoveryjournal.co.uk

Background : Plasma omentin levels have been shown to be associated with circulating adiponectin concentrations and cardiometabolic disease-related outcomes. However, the findings have been inconsistent due to high level of confounding. In this study, we aim to examine the association of omentin gene polymorphism with plasma adiponectin levels and cardiometabolic health status using a genetic approach, which is less prone to confounding, and investigate whether these associations are modified by lifestyle factors such as diet and physical activity. Methods : The study included 945 normal glucose tolerant and 941 unrelated individuals with type 2 diabetes randomly selected from the Chennai Urban Rural Epidemiology Study (CURES), in southern India. Study participants were further classified into cardiometabolically healthy and unhealthy, where cardiometabolically healthy were those without hypertension, diabetes, and dyslipidemia. Fasting serum adiponectin levels were measured by radioimmunoassay. The A326T (rs2274907) single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the exon 4 of the omentin gene was screened by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism and direct sequencing. Results : The ‘A’ allele of the omentin SNP was significantly associated with lower adiponectin concentrations after adjusting for age, sex, body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC) and cardiometabolic health status (p=1.90 x 10 -47 ). There was also a significant association between circulating adiponectin concentrations and cardiometabolic health status after adjusting for age, sex, BMI, WC and Omentin SNP (p=7.47x10 -10 ). However, after adjusting for age, sex, BMI, WC and adiponectin levels, the association of ‘A’ allele with cardiometabolic health status disappeared (p=0.79) suggesting that adiponectin serves as a mediator of the association between omentin SNP and cardiometabolic health status. There were no significant interactions between the SNP and dietary factors on adiponectin levels and cardiometabolic health status (p>0.25, for all comparisons). Conclusions : Our findings show that adiponectin might function as a mechanistic link between omentin SNP and increased risk of cardiometabolic diseases independent of common and central obesity in this Asian Indian population. Further studies are required to confirm the molecular mechanisms involved in this triangular relationship between omentin gene, adiponectin and cardiometabolic diseases.

Large volumes of biomedical data are being produced every day. Leveraging such voluminous amount of patient data using data science approaches help to uncover hidden patterns, unknown correlations, and other insights of the disease. Integration of diverse genomic data with comprehensive electronic health records (EHRs) exhibit challenges, but essentially, they provide a feasible opportunity to better understand the underlying diseases, treatment patterns and develop an efficient and effective approach to identify biomarkers for diagnosis and improve therapy. Here, we describe a big data solution for diabetes, providing an efficient and responsive scientific discovery platform for researchers. Clinical phenotype data was collected from EHR of a tertiary care diabetes centre across 20 locations in India. It encompasses >20 million data points on 323,145 patients registered over 25 years. The biomedical data includes diverse collection of information such as well characterized clinical phenotypes, biochemical investigations, drug prescriptions, genotype mapping, micro-macrovascular complications of diabetes, pedigree charts. Additionally, more than 3 million genomic variants from high-throughput next generation sequencing (NGS) were analyzed, annotated and integrated into the respective patient phenotype data. Statistical methods such as t-test, ANOVA were used to describe the significance of clinical variables between subject groups. Time based visualization methods for showing temporal patterns in key clinical variables such fasting glucose, HbA1c, Albuminuria, etc. are provided. It provides a novel clinical database of information on 323,145 patients with type 2 diabetes (n=294,371), type 1 diabetes (n=1,945), gestational diabetes (n=645), prediabetes (n=7,363), patients with miscellaneous forms of diabetes including monogenic forms of diabetes (n=4,601) and normal glucose tolerance (n=12,579). It has about 144,926 diabetes patients (44.8% of total) with microvascular complications and 15,008 (4.6%) patients with macrovascular complications. It offers analytical tools to compute descriptive statistics of clinical variables for cohorts as well as visualizations to understand the disease progression of diabetes, uncover key event patterns such as episodes of high glucose levels, or drug treatments and their association with progression of disease over time. Thus, the database portal promotes practice of precision medicine and therefore useful to researchers, clinicians and pharmaceutical industry.

Background: International Association for Diabetes in Pregnancy Study Group (IADPSG) criteria recommends single step OGTT for diagnosis of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). The main concerns with IADPSG criteria are i) only one abnormal value is required and ii) fasting plasma glucose (FPG) cut point is too low. We report on association between number of abnormal glucose values and levels of FPG with pregnancy outcomes. Methods: Pregnant women (n=1,044) were screened for GDM using IADPSG criteria. OGTT’s were classified based on the number of abnormal glucose values (any one value vs. more than one value), and FPG values (&lt;92mg/dl,92-100mg/dl,&gt;100mg/dl) and correlated with pregnancy outcomes. Odds Ratios were adjusted for age, BMI, family history of diabetes, history of GDM, birth weight, gestational week at diagnosis and delivery. For macrosomia, birth weight was not included. Results: For caesarean sections, risk was higher in women with any one abnormal glucose value (OR:1.53;95%CI:1.08-2.16) and it increased further in those with more than one abnormal value (OR:1.58;95%CI:0.99-2.52), compared to women with normal glucose tolerance (NGT). Risk of caesarean section was also higher in women with FPG (92-100mg/dl) (OR:1.36;95%CI:0.86-2.15) and even higher in women with FPG &gt;100mg/dl (OR:1.88;95%CI:1.08-3.29) when compared to FPG &lt;92mg/dl. For macrosomia, women with any one abnormal value (OR:1.49;95%CI:0.96-2.33) and with more than one abnormal value (OR:1.07;95%CI:0.57-2.03) had higher risk compared to women with NGT. Risk of macrosomia was also higher in women who had FPG 92-100mg/dl (OR:1.04;95%CI:0.56-1.95) and FPG &gt;100mg/dl (OR:1.61;95%CI:0.83-3.10) compared to FPG&lt;92mg/dl. Conclusion: The risk for poor pregnancy outcomes starts in those with one abnormal value in the OGTT or with FPG &gt;92mg/dl and the risk further increases with higher abnormal values. Disclosure B. Balaji: None. R. Anjana: None. M. Deepa: None. P. Rajendra: None. U. Ram: None. P. Saravanan: None. V. Mohan: None.