Understanding The Lives Of Bipolar Women With Post-Secondary School Experience

101 leavesUnderstanding the Lives of Bipolar Women with Post-Secondary School Experience Problem: Bipolar disorder affects 2.6% of the population over age 18 and often presents for the first time during the college years (Lejeune, 2011). Students at this age already face challenges in adapting to a new lifestyle, and those with a mental illness face additional challenges amidst an environment that doesn’t necessarily provide stability for successful management of bipolar disorder. There is a dearth in the literature investigating personal life histories of bipolar adults that identify common themes in early years regarding bipolar disorder onset and later years in coping mechanisms during post-secondary school. Procedures: This qualitative phenomenological research study examined the lived experiences of six women with bipolar disorder who attended post-secondary school. This study was motivated by the research questions: (1) What are the experiences of one living with bipolar disorder? (2) What are successful coping strategies while navigating a post-secondary degree? Understanding and describing the essence of a lived phenomenon (Van Manen, 1990) was the foundation of my work. Narrative interviews (Seidman, 2006) were used to collect data to allow the participants to tell their stories and share the experiences of living with bipolar disorder. Findings: Emergent themes included home/family life, the onset of bipolar disorder, school involvement/achievement, and coping strategies, which produced the following findings: none of the participants shared their mental instability during post-secondary school with any educational professional, bipolar disorder for females is at its worst during hormonal cycles, childhood abuse is connected to adult onset bipolar disorder, participants who experienced childhood abuse later abused substances, low self-esteem and feelings of worthlessness were factors amongst participants, all participants were high-achievers as youngsters, coping strategies included pharmaceutical intervention, exercise, eating healthy foods, getting adequate sleep, having a strong support system, and cognitive reshaping through therapeutic counseling intervention. Conclusions: Many people with bipolar disorder lead productive, successful lives. Ongoing research in this field, along with support from family, friends, and educators is essential in helping these individuals find balance, happiness, connection to others, and successful coping strategies during post-secondary school and in life in general. Recommendations: Educating school personnel on bipolar disorder would lead to greater mental illness awareness, help identify at-risk students, and provide possible accommodations. The link between childhood abuse and bipolar disorder needs to be further explored. The fact that high-achieving youngsters are four times at greater risk for later bipolar disorder than students with average school performance (MacCabe et al., 2010) is worthy of further examination. Teachers and administrators should pay close attention to high-achieving youngsters who exhibit signs of low self-esteem and perfectionism. The link between bipolar disorder and the female hormone cycle should be further examined in order to provide support to women, especially after childbirth

AGuIX® from bench to bedside-Transfer of an ultrasmall theranostic gadolinium-based nanoparticle to clinical medicine

International audienceAGuIX® are sub-5 nm nanoparticles made of a polysiloxane matrix and gadolinium chelates. This nanoparticle has been recently accepted in clinical trials in association with radiotherapy. This review will summarize the principal preclinical results that have led to first in man administration. No evidence of toxicity has been observed during regulatory toxicity tests on two animal species (rodents and monkeys). Biodistributions on different animal models have shown passive uptake in tumours due to enhanced permeability and retention effect combined with renal elimination of the nanoparticles after intravenous administration. High radiosensitizing effect has been observed with different types of irradiations in vitro and in vivo on a large number of cancer types (brain, lung, melanoma, head and neck…). The review concludes with the second generation of AGuIX nanoparticles and the first preliminary results on human

Vascular-Targeted Photodynamic Therapy (VTP)

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Bcl-2/Bax protein ratio predicts 5-fluorouracil sensitivity independently of p53 status

p53 tumour-suppressor gene is involved in cell growth control, arrest and apoptosis. Nevertheless cell cycle arrest and apoptosis induction can be observed in p53-defective cells after exposure to DNA-damaging agents such as 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) suggesting the importance of alternative pathways via p53-independent mechanisms. In order to establish relationship between p53 status, cell cycle arrest, Bcl-2/Bax regulation and 5-FU sensitivity, we examined p53 mRNA and protein expression and p53 protein functionality in wild-type (wt) and mutant (mt) p53 cell lines. p53 mRNA and p53 protein expression were determined before and after exposure to equitoxic 5-FU concentration in six human carcinoma cell lines differing in p53 status and displaying marked differences in 5-FU sensitivity, with IC 50 values ranging from 0.2–22.6 mM. 5-FU induced a rise in p53 mRNA expression in mt p53 cell lines and in human papilloma virus positive wt p53 cell line, whereas significant decrease in p53 mRNA expression was found in wt p53 cell line. Whatever p53 status, 5-FU altered p53 transcriptional and translational regulation leading to up-regulation of p53 protein. In relation with p53 functionality, but independently of p53 mutational status, after exposure to 5-FU equitoxic concentration, all cell lines were able to arrest in G1. No relationship was evidenced between G1 accumulation ability and 5-FU sensitivity. Moreover, after 5-FU exposure, Bax and Bcl-2 proteins regulation was under p53 protein control and a statistically significant relationship (r= 0.880,P= 0.0097) was observed between Bcl-2/Bax ratio and 5-FU sensitivity. In conclusion, whatever p53 status, Bcl-2 or Bax induction and Bcl-2/Bax protein ratio were correlated to 5-FU sensitivity. © 2000 Cancer Research Campaig

Carbohydrate-based peptidomimetics targeting neuropilin-1: synthesis, molecular docking study and in vitro biological activities

International audienceNeuropilin-1 (NRP-1), a transmembrane glycoprotein acting as a co-receptor of VEGF-A, is expressed by cancer and angiogenic endothelial cells and is involved in the angiogenesis process. Taking advantage of functionalities and stereodiversities of sugar derivatives, the design and the synthesis of carbohydrate based peptidomimetics are here described. One of these compounds (56) demonstrated inhibition of VEGF-A165 binding to NRP-1 (IC50 = 39 μM) and specificity for NRP-1 over VEGF-R2. Biological evaluations were performed on human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) through activation of downstream proteins (AKT and ERK phosphorylation), viability/proliferation assays and in vitro measurements of anti-angiogenic abilities

Limits of variance-based sensitivity analysis for non- identifiability testing in high dimensional dynamic models

International audienceIn systems biology, a common approach to model biological processes is to use large systems of nonlinear differential equations. The associated parameter estimation problem then requires a prior handling of the global identifiability question in a realistic experimental framework. The lack of a method able to solve this issue has indirectly encouraged the use of global sensitivity analysis to select the subset of parameters to estimate. Nevertheless, the links between these two global analyses are not yet fully explored. The present work reveals new bridges between sensitivity analyses and global non-identifiability, through the use of functions derived from the Sobol' high dimensional representation of the model output. We particularly specify limits of variance-based sensitivity tools to completely conclude on global non-identifiability of parameters in a given experimental context

Parameter estimation of pharmacokinetics models in the presence of timing noise

International audienceWe consider a model of pharmacokinetics which takes into account the presence of timing nois

Identification of Pharmacokinetics Models in the presence of Timing Noise

International audienceThe problem addressed in this paper deals with the parameter estimation of in vitro uptake kinetics of drugs into living cells in presence of timing noise. Effects of the timing noise on the bias and variance of the output error are explicitly determined. A bounded-error parameter estimation approach is proposed as a suited solution to handle this problem. Application results are presented which emphasize the effectiveness of the methodology in such an experimental framework