The tale of a belly button: Rieger syndrome.
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Abnormalities, Multiple↗
Biomedical subjects
Elena Lopez
Publications and source records attributed to Elena Lopez.
Adapting smoking relapse-prevention materials for pregnant and postpartum women: formative research.
OBJECTIVE: To decrease smoking relapse among pregnant and postpartum women by adapting existing, validated relapse-prevention materials to meet the unique needs of pregnant and postpartum women. METHODS: A series of semi-structured interviews and learner verification activities were conducted with pregnant abstinent, postpartum abstinent, and postpartum relapsed women. Results were used to create new relapse-prevention materials, specific to the needs of pregnant and postpartum women, which are currently being used in a randomized clinical trial. RESULTS: Findings are consistent with the recurrent themes in the literature regarding smoking cessation among pregnant and postpartum women and revealed exceptional needs for coping and stress reduction strategies related to remaining abstinent postpartum. Conflict levels were also high in areas of identity, social support, and reasons for quitting. CONCLUSION: By interviewing women about their cessation related needs, the current study was able to produce smoking relapse-prevention materials specific to this population. Having pregnant and postpartum women review the modified program materials before starting the clinical trial enhanced the quality, dependability, and validity of the materials. We await the results of the clinical trial to determine if this intervention is indeed more efficacious than previous attempts to intervene with this population.
Female↗
Specific killing of BRCA2-deficient tumours with inhibitors of poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase.
Poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP1) facilitates DNA repair by binding to DNA breaks and attracting DNA repair proteins to the site of damage. Nevertheless, PARP1-/- mice are viable, fertile and do not develop early onset tumours. Here, we show that PARP inhibitors trigger gamma-H2AX and RAD51 foci formation. We propose that, in the absence of PARP1, spontaneous single-strand breaks collapse replication forks and trigger homologous recombination for repair. Furthermore, we show that BRCA2-deficient cells, as a result of their deficiency in homologous recombination, are acutely sensitive to PARP inhibitors, presumably because resultant collapsed replication forks are no longer repaired. Thus, PARP1 activity is essential in homologous recombination-deficient BRCA2 mutant cells. We exploit this requirement in order to kill BRCA2-deficient tumours by PARP inhibition alone. Treatment with PARP inhibitors is likely to be highly tumour specific, because only the tumours (which are BRCA2-/-) in BRCA2+/- patients are defective in homologous recombination. The use of an inhibitor of a DNA repair enzyme alone to selectively kill a tumour, in the absence of an exogenous DNA-damaging agent, represents a new concept in cancer treatment.
Animals↗
Are fathers involved in pediatric psychology research and treatment?
BACKGROUND: Recently, there has been a growing awareness of the importance of the roles of fathers in understanding normative developmental processes. Increased attention has been given to the roles of fathers in the area of clinical child research and therapy. However, the presence of fathers in research and treatment in pediatric psychology has not been fully examined. OBJECTIVE: To explore the status of including fathers in both research and treatment in the area of pediatric psychology. METHOD: An extensive review of published research. RESULTS: The findings suggest that pediatric psychology research lags even farther behind clinical child research in including fathers in research designs and analyzing for maternal and paternal effects separately. There is also a concomitant lack of inclusion of fathers in family-based interventions in pediatric psychology. CONCLUSION: These patterns are discussed, with an emphasis on strategies to increase the inclusion of fathers in research and treatment of pediatric psychology issues. Future directions for researchers and clinicians are also included.
Child↗
Still looking for Poppa.
In 1992, V. Phares published an article titled "Where's Poppa?: The Relative Lack of Attention to the Role of Fathers in Child and Adolescent Psychopathology". Since that time, there have been modest gains in the research literature on clinical child issues, but there remains a wide gap between the inclusion of mothers and fathers in clinical child and family research. To provide an update of this issue for the field of developmental psychopathology, the authors of this comment conducted an updated review and analysis of the research on fathers and developmental psychopathology. These current data were compared with the data from the Phares and Compas (1992) study. It was found that there continues to be a dearth of research on fathers and developmental psychopathology.
Adolescent↗
Poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP-1) has a controlling role in homologous recombination.
Cells with non-functional poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP-1) show increased levels of sister chromatid exchange, suggesting a hyper recombination phenotype in these cells. To further investigate the involvement of PARP-1 in homologous recombination (HR) we investigated how PARP-1 affects nuclear HR sites (Rad51 foci) and HR repair of an endonuclease-induced DNA double-strand break (DSB). Several proteins involved in HR localise to Rad51 foci and HR-deficient cells fail to form Rad51 foci in response to DNA damage. Here, we show that PARP-1 mainly does not localise to Rad51 foci and that Rad51 foci form in PARP-1-/- cells, also in response to hydroxyurea. Furthermore, we show that homology directed repair following induction of a site-specific DSB is normal in PARP-1-inhibited cells. In contrast, inhibition or loss of PARP-1 increases spontaneous Rad51 foci formation, confirming a hyper recombination phenotype in these cells. Our data suggest that PARP-1 controls DNA damage recognised by HR and that it is not involved in executing HR as such.
Animals↗