👤 Atefeh Tavakoli

We tested whether spontaneous speech acoustics provide a scalable digital marker of biologically defined Alzheimer's disease (AD) risk. Forty-nine cognitively unimpaired older adults were stratified within APOE genotype into Low-, Moderate-, and High-Risk groups based on log₁₀-transformed plasma p-tau217. Acoustic features were extracted from spontaneous speech and entered into multiclass SVM classifiers with leave-one-out cross-validation, with and without genetic-algorithm feature selection and age. Parallel models using neuropsychological measures were evaluated for comparison. Feature contributions were interpreted using SHAP. Speech-based models substantially outperformed cognition-only models and exceeded chance performance for three-group classification (33.3%), achieving up to 77% accuracy compared with 47% for neuropsychological models. SHAP analyses identified a compact, stage-dependent acoustic signature dominated by voice-quality, spectral-envelope, and formant-bandwidth features, with age contributing secondary effects. Spontaneous speech acoustics capture p-tau217/APOE-defined AD risk despite preserved cognition, supporting speech as a scalable, biologically grounded biomarker for preclinical AD risk stratification. Show less

Recent studies suggest a link between dietary fat quality and obesity. Genetic risk scores (GRS) can predict obesity risk based on genetic factors. This study investigates how GRS and fatty acid quality affect visceral adiposity index (VAI) and body adiposity index (BAI) in overweight and obese women. In this study, 278 overweight and obese women (aged 18-58) participated. We have used a comprehensive food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) to evaluate dietary intake and the fatty acids quality indexes. We have employed standard methods to measure biochemical factors, anthropometrics, and physical activity levels. Finally, the GRS was created by combining three SNPs [CAV-1 (rs3807992), Cry-1 (rs2287161), and MC4R (rs17782313)]. The study found that there was no significant association between the quality of fat intake (as measured by CSI score and N6/N3 score) and VAI or BAI in both crude (B = 70.70, SE = 35.14, CI:1.81-139.55, P = 0.04) and adjusted models (B = 93.67, SE = 39.28, CI:16.68-17.68, P = 0.01). CSI provides information on cholesterol and saturated fats. However, there was a notable interaction between the GRS and the N6/N3 score on VAI, suggesting that obese women with high obesity-related SNPs who consumed foods with a higher ratio of N6/N3 fatty acids tended to have an increased VAI. This study shows; that eating more food sources containing a higher ratio of N6/N3 may be the reason for the increase in VAI in obese women who have high obesity-related SNPs and emphasizes the matter of personalized nutrition in obesity issues. Show less

Originally sourced from plants, Bergenin has been used as a medicinal compound in traditional medicine for centuries, and anecdotal reports suggest a wide range of therapeutic uses. Naturally-occurring and lab-synthesized Bergenin, as well as some of its related compounds, have been shown in in vivo and in vitro studies to alter activity of several enzymes and proteins critical in cellular functioning, including reelin, GSK-3β, Lingo-1, Ten-4, GP-43, Aβ 1-42, P-tau, SOD1,2, GPx, Glx1, NQO1, HO1, PPAR-ɣ, BDNF, VEGF, and STAT6. Additionally, Bergenin alters levels of several cytokines, such as IL-6, IL-1β, TNF-α, and TGF-β. Behavioral and cellular effects of Bergenin have been shown to involve PI3K/Akt, NF-κB, PKC, Nrf2, and Sirt1/FOXO3a pathways. These pathways, enzymes, and proteins have been shown to be important in normal neurological functioning, and/or dysfunctions in these pathways and proteins have been shown to be important in several neuro-based disorders or diseases, which suggests that Bergenin could be therapeutic in management of neuropsychiatric conditions or neurological disorders. In preclinical studies, Bergenin has been shown to be useful for the management of Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, anxiety, depression, addiction, epilepsy, insomnia, stroke, and potentially, state control. Our review aims to summarize current evidence supporting the conclusion that Bergenin could play a role in treating various neuro-based disorders and that future studies should be conducted to evaluate the mechanisms by which Bergenin could exert its therapeutic effects. Show less

New insights on cellular and molecular aspects of both oligodendrocyte (OL) differentiation and myelin synthesis pathways are potential avenues for developing a cell-based therapy for demyelinating disorders comprising multiple sclerosis. MicroRNAs (miRNA) have broad implications in all aspects of cell biology including OL differentiation. MiR-184 has been identified as one of the most highly enriched miRNAs in oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs). However, the exact molecular mechanism of miR-184 in OL differentiation is yet to be elucidated. Based on immunochemistry assays, qRT-PCR, and western blotting findings, we hypothesized that overexpression of miR-184 in either neural progenitor cells (NPCs) or embryonic mouse cortex stimulated the differentiation of OL lineage efficiently through regulating crucial developmental genes. Luciferase assays demonstrated that miR-184 directly represses positive regulators of neural and astrocyte differentiation, i.e., SOX1 and BCL2L1, respectively, including the negative regulator of myelination, LINGO1. Moreover, blocking the function of miR-184 reduced the number of committed cells to an OL lineage. Our data highlighted that miR-184 could promote OL differentiation even in the absence of exogenous growth factors and propose a novel strategy to improve the efficacy of OL differentiation, with potential applications in cell therapy for neurodegenerative diseases. Show less