BMC Research Notes

OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to examine whether a high score on the euthymia scale (ES) predicts a low incidence of depressive symptoms one year later. METHODS: The baseline online survey was conducted in February 2020, and a follow-up survey was done in February 2021. Japanese over 20 years old were enrolled. Respondents who answered both baseline and follow-up, and without depressive symptoms at baseline were included in the analysis. The euthymia scores at baseline was measured by the 10 items of the Japanese version of the ES...

MOTIVATION: Since the advent of ColabFold, numerous software packages have been provided with Google Colaboratory-compatible ipynb files, allowing users to effortlessly test and reproduce results without the need for local installation or configuration. MEGADOCK, a protein-protein docking tool, is particularly well-suited for Google Colaboratory due to its lightweight computations and GPU acceleration capabilities. To increase accessibility and promote widespread use, it is crucial to provide a computing environment compatible with Google Colaboratory...

BACKGROUND: COVID-19 is a respiratory illness caused by SARS-CoV-2. Pharmaceutical companies aim to control virus spread through effective drugs. This study investigates chromone compound derivatives' ability to inhibit viral entry and prevent replication. METHOD: This study investigated the inhibitory effect of chromone-embedded peptidomimetics and furopyrimidines on 7BZ5 from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome CoV-2, Homo sapiens, and 6LU7 from Bat SARS-like CoV using molecular docking...

Cockroach microbiome studies generally focus on pest cockroach species belonging to the Blattidae and Ectobiidae families. There are no reports characterizing the gut microbiome of non-pest cockroach species Blaberus discoidalis (family Blaberidae), which is commonly used as a food source for insectivorous animals. We discovered the parasitic nematode Leidynema appendiculata in the B. discoidalis hindgut during initial work characterizing the gut microbiome of this organism. To determine the proportion of the B...

OBJECTIVE: The genomic response and the role of genetic variants in hypoxia condition are always interesting issues about adaption pathways at genomic level. Herein, we carried out a comparative genomic study between highland and lowland native chickens, in order to identify the adaptive variants in hypoxia condition. We generated more than 20 million genetic variants in highland and lowland chickens. Finally, 3877 SNVs including the mtDNA ones, were discovered as novel adaptive genetic variants...

OBJECTIVE: This study proposes to identify and validate weighted sensor stream signatures that predict near-term risk of a major depressive episode and future mood among healthcare workers in Kenya. APPROACH: The study will deploy a mobile application (app) platform and use novel data science analytic approaches (Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning) to identifying predictors of mental health disorders among 500 randomly sampled healthcare workers from five healthcare facilities in Nairobi, Kenya...

The global rise in life expectancy transforms age structure consequently having impact to the sustainability of social protection systems and working life. This descriptive study aimed to illustrate the annual prevalence of sustainable working life across Swedish residential regions, and investigate differences between age groups, sex, or being identical or fraternal twin. The study sample included 81,231 twins with linkage to national register data on sickness absence, disability pension, unemployment, and residential regions...

OBJECTIVE: Diversification of cell types and changes in epigenetic states during cell differentiation processes are important for understanding development. Recently, phylogenetic analysis using DNA methylation and histone modification information has been shown useful for inferring these processes. The purpose of this study was to examine whether chromatin accessibility data can help infer these processes in murine hematopoiesis. RESULTS: Chromatin accessibility data could partially infer the hematopoietic differentiation hierarchy...

OBJECTIVE: This research note introduces a set of tools to conduct analysis of household structure and composition with either limited or comprehensive longitudinal data. The data used here are from Health and Demographic Surveillance Systems in Africa, but the methods can be adapted and applied to other longitudinal micro-data such as register data. A training manual describing the procedures for creating time-varying household measures step-by-step is supplied as supplementary material to this note...

BACKGROUND: Medical emergency situations in dental clinics have been contemplated to be an issue in most of the countries by reason of dentist's lack of knowledge and preparedness to attend emergency situations in dental offices. The aim of this paper is to observe the knowledge, attitude, and perceived confidence of the general dental practitioners regarding emergency medical care and its practical application. Questionnaire on knowledge assessment was circulated among 500 dentists using printed questionnaire formats and various social media platforms...

OBJECTIVE: The 1,000 wheat exome project captured the single nucleotide variants in the coding regions of a diverse set of 890 wheat accessions to analyse the contribution of introgression to adaptation of wheat. However, this highly useful single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) dataset is based on RefSeq v1.0 of the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC) assembly of the bread wheat genome of Chinese Spring. This reference sequence has recently been updated using optical maps and long-read sequencing to produce the improved RefSeq v2...

INTRODUCTION: Evidence suggests that majority of patients with diabetes mellitus in Uganda have poor glycaemic control as well as periodontal disease. This study set out to determine the association between periodontitis and insulin resistance in adult patients with diabetes mellitus in Uganda using the triglyceride glucose index. METHODS: Two hundred and twenty-three adult study participants with confirmed diabetes mellitus were enrolled in a cross-sectional study...

OBJECTIVES: This release note describes the Maize GxE project datasets within the Genomes to Fields (G2F) Initiative. The Maize GxE project aims to understand genotype by environment (GxE) interactions and use the information collected to improve resource allocation efficiency and increase genotype predictability and stability, particularly in scenarios of variable environmental patterns. Hybrids and inbreds are evaluated across multiple environments and phenotypic, genotypic, environmental, and metadata information are made publicly available...

There are 13 globally recognized rubella virus genotypes of which only 2 (1E and 2B) have been detected recently. The largest percentage of all reported rubella virus sequences come from China and Japan with Africa reporting limited data. In a bid to address the lack of rubella genotype data in Uganda and the World Health Organization Africa region, we sought to characterize rubella viruses retrospectively using sera collected from suspected measles patients that turned out rubella IgM positive.Seven sequences belonging to genotype 2B sub-lineage 2B-L2c were obtained...

OBJECTIVE: Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) is a major cell wall component of gram-negative bacteria. Colon bacteria contribute to LPS which promotes colon cancer metastasis. The objective of this study was to survey the effect of LPS on cell viability and gene expression of 55 molecular targets in human colon cancer cells. RESULTS: LPS did not affect the viability of COLO 225 cells under the culture conditions but affected the expression of a number of genes important in inflammatory responses and cancer development...

The present study was designed aiming at finding novel botanicals for controlling the vector population. Objective was to evaluate the larvicidal and pupicidal efficacies of crude and solvent extracts of Michelia champaca seed against the notorious dengue vector Aedes albopictus. 0.5% concentration of the crude extractive and 40 ppm concentration of ethyl acetate extractive were enough to execute 100% of larval mortality of all the instars after 72 h of exposure and the LC50 and LC90 values (95% confidence level) of ethyl acetate extractive were 0...

OBJECTIVE: Aloe elegans Tod. is an ecologically, environmentally, medicinally, and commercially useful aloe species in Ethiopia and Eritrea. Unfortunately, it is highly threatened due to industrial and urban expansion and traditional mining and agricultural activities. As a consequence, it is included in the IUCN List of Threatened Species since 2013. The plant is getting thinly populated in many parts of the Tigrai floristic region since it is being exploited for traditional and commercial purposes...

OBJECTIVE: Lifestyle choices including physical inactivity, smoking, abuse of alcohol and drugs, unhealthy diet are common among traders and market women and these behavioural activities predispose individuals to ill-health conditions including cardiovascular diseases and chronic anaemia. We evaluated lifestyle choices such as alcohol intake, smoking and resorting to self-medication among traders in the Tamale Central market in Ghana. We then associated these lifestyle choices with anaemia...

OBJECTIVES: South Africa is experiencing both HIV and hypertension epidemics. Data were compiled for a study to identify effects of HIV and high systolic blood pressure on mortality risk among people aged 40-plus in a rural South African area experiencing high prevalence of both conditions. We aim to release the replication data set for this study. DATA DESCRIPTION: The research data comes from the 2010-11 Ha Nakekela (We Care) population-based survey nested in the Agincourt Health and socio-Demographic Surveillance System (AHDSS) located in the northeast region of South Africa...

OBJECTIVES: Pollen is a useful tool for identifying the provenance and complex ecosystems surrounding honey production in Malaysian forests. As native key pollinators in Malaysia, Apis dorsata and Heterotrigona itama forage on various plant/pollen species to collect honey. This study aims to generate a dataset that uncovers the presence of these plant/pollen species and their relative abundance in the honey of A. dorsata and H. itama. The information gathered from this study can be used to determine the geographical and botanical origin and authenticity of the honey produced by these two species...