Browsing by Subject "Sex characteristics"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Examination of Social Inferencing Skills in Men and Women After Traumatic Brain Injury
    (Elsevier, 2022-05) Neumann, Dawn; Mayfield, Ryan; Sander, Angelle M.; Jang, Jeong Hoon; Bhamidipalli, Surya Sruthi; Hammond, Flora M.; Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, School of Medicine
    Objective To examine sex differences in social inferencing deficits after traumatic brain injury (TBI) and to examine the odds of men and women being impaired while controlling for potential confounders. Design Cross-sectional survey. Setting Two TBI rehabilitation hospitals. Participants One hundred five participants with TBI (60 men, 45 women) and 105 controls without TBI (57 men, 48 women) (N=210). Interventions Not applicable. Main Outcome Measures The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT), which includes (1) Emotion Evaluation Test (EET), (2) Social Inference-Minimal (SI-M) test, and (3) Social Inference-Enriched (SI-E) test. Results Within the control sample, men and women performed similarly on all 3 TASIT subtests. Within the group with TBI, men had significantly lower scores than women on EET (P=.03), SI-M (P=.01), and SI-E (P=.04). Using impairment cutoffs derived from the sample without TBI, we found significantly more men with TBI (30%) were impaired on the EET than women (16.7%); impairment was similar between men and women on SI-M and SI-E. When adjusting for executive functioning and education, the odds of being impaired on the EET did not significantly differ for men and women (odds ratio, 0.47; 95% CI, 0.16-1.40; P=.18). Conclusions Although more men with TBI have emotion perception deficits than women, the difference appears to be driven by education and executive functioning. Research is needed in larger samples with more definitive norms to better understand social inferencing impairments in men and women with TBI as well as translation to interpersonal behaviors.
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    Increased spatial dimensions of repetitive heat and cold stimuli in older women
    (Wolters Kluwer, 2017-05) Naugle, Kelly M.; Cruz-Almeida, Yenisel; Fillingim, Roger B.; Staud, Roland; Riley, Joseph L., III; Kinesiology, School of Physical Education and Tourism Management
    Protocols of temporal summation (TS) of pain typically involve the delivery of brief repetitive noxious pulses of a constant intensity while measuring the perceived intensity of pain after each pulse. The size percept of noxious repetitive stimulation has been poorly characterized. Furthermore, no studies have investigated age differences in TS of cold pain. The current study examined TS of pain intensity and the perceived size of the painful area during repetitive noxious heat and cold pulses in healthy younger (n = 104) and older adults (n = 40). Trials of 10 brief repetitive noxious heat or cold pulses were delivered to the upper extremities. Participants rated the perceived size of the painful area or intensity of pain after each pulse. The magnitude of change for the size percept and intensity for pain were calculated for each trial. The results indicated that older adults experienced greater TS of the size percept of cold stimuli compared with younger adults. Additionally, older women experienced greater TS of the size percept of heat stimuli compared with older men and all younger participants. No overall age or sex differences were found in the TS of pain intensity for cold or heat trials. These results suggest dysfunctional modulation of the spatial percept of the painful stimuli by older adults, and in particular older women, during repetitive noxious thermal pulses.
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    Laterality, sexual dimorphism, and human vagal projectome heterogeneity shape neuromodulation to vagus nerve stimulation
    (Springer Nature, 2024-11-19) Biscola, Natalia P.; Bartmeyer, Petra M.; Beshay, Youssef; Stern, Esther; Mihaylov, Plamen V.; Powley, Terry L.; Ward, Matthew P.; Havton, Leif A.; Surgery, School of Medicine
    Neuromodulation by vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) provides therapeutic benefits in multiple medical conditions, including epilepsy and clinical depression, but underlying mechanisms of action are not well understood. Cervical vagus nerve biopsies were procured from transplant organ donors for high resolution light microscopy (LM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to map the human fascicular and sub-fascicular organization. Cervical vagal segments show laterality with right sided dominance in fascicle numbers and cross-sectional areas as well as sexual dimorphism with female dominance in fascicle numbers. The novel and unprecedented detection of numerous small fascicles by high resolution LM and TEM expand the known fascicle size range and morphological diversity of the human vagus nerve. Ground truth TEM quantification of all myelinated and unmyelinated axons within individual nerve fascicles show marked sub-fascicular heterogeneity of nerve fiber numbers, size, and myelination. A heuristic action potential interpreter (HAPI) tool predicts VNS-evoked compound nerve action potentials (CNAPs) generated by myelinated and unmyelinated nerve fibers and validates functional dissimilarity between fascicles. Our findings of laterality, sexual dimorphism, and an expanded range of fascicle size heterogeneity provide mechanistic insights into the varied therapeutic responses and off-target effects to VNS and may guide new refinement strategies for neuromodulation.
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    Sex Differences in Cancer Cachexia
    (SpringerLink, 2020-12) Zhong, Xiaoling; Zimmers, Teresa A.; Surgery, School of Medicine
    Purpose of review: Cachexia, a feature of cancer and other chronic diseases, is marked by progressive weight loss and skeletal muscle wasting. This review aims to highlight the sex differences in manifestations of cancer cachexia in patients, rodent models, and our current understanding of the potential mechanisms accounting for these differences. Recent findings: Male cancer patients generally have higher prevalence of cachexia, greater weight loss or muscle wasting, and worse outcomes compared with female cancer patients. Knowledge is increasing about sex differences in muscle fiber type and function, mitochondrial metabolism, global gene expression and signaling pathways, and regulatory mechanisms at the levels of sex chromosomes vs. sex hormones; however, it is largely undetermined how such sex differences directly affect the susceptibility to stressors leading to muscle wasting in cancer cachexia. Few studies have investigated basic mechanisms underlying sex differences in cancer cachexia. A better understanding of sex differences would improve cachexia treatment in both sexes.
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    Sex-Dependent Differences in Cholestasis: Why Estrogen Signaling May Be a Key Pathophysiological Driver
    (Elsevier, 2023) Ismail, AbdiGhani; Kennedy, Lindsey; Francis, Heather; Medicine, School of Medicine
    Primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) and primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) are cholestatic liver diseases that have significant clinical impact with debilitating symptoms and mortality. While PBC is predominantly seen in perimenopausal and postmenopausal women, men who are diagnosed with PBC have worse clinical outcomes and all-cause mortality. In contrast, 60% to 70% of patients with PSC are men; the data indicate that female sex may be an independent factor against PSC-related complications. These findings suggest a sex-dependent biological basis for these differences. Estrogen has been implicated in the pathogenesis of intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy and may induce cholestasis through a variety of interactions. However, it is unclear why some sexual dimorphic features may provide a protective effect despite known estrogen models that induce cholestasis. This article provides a brief introductory background and discusses the sexual dimorphism in clinical presentation in PSC and PBC. It also explores the role of estrogen signaling in pathogenesis and how it relates to intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy. Studies have already targeted certain molecules involved in estrogen signaling, and this review discusses these studies that identify estrogen-related receptor, estrogen receptor-α, estrogen receptor-β, farnesoid X receptor, and mast cells as possible targets, in addition to long noncoding RNA H19-induced cholestasis and sexual dimorphism. It also explores these interactions and their role in the pathogenesis of PBC and PSC.
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    Up-Regulation of the Long Noncoding RNA X-Inactive-Specific Transcript and the Sex Bias in Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension
    (Elsevier, 2021) Qin, Shanshan; Predescu, Dan; Carman, Brandon; Patel, Priyam; Chen, Jiwang; Kim, Miran; Lahm, Tim; Geraci, Mark; Predescu, Sanda A.; Medicine, School of Medicine
    Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a sex-biased disease. Increased expression and activity of the long-noncoding RNA X-inactive-specific transcript (Xist), essential for X-chromosome inactivation and dosage compensation of X-linked genes, may explain the sex bias of PAH. The present studies used a murine model of plexiform PAH, the intersectin-1s (ITSN) heterozygous knockout (KOITSN+/-) mouse transduced with an ITSN fragment (EHITSN) possessing endothelial cell proliferative activity, in conjunction with molecular, cell biology, biochemical, morphologic, and functional approaches. The data demonstrate significant sex-centered differences with regard to EHITSN-induced alterations in pulmonary artery remodeling, lung hemodynamics, and p38/ETS domain containing protein/c-Fos signaling, altogether leading to a more severe female lung PAH phenotype. Moreover, the long-noncoding RNA-Xist is up-regulated in the lungs of female EHITSN-KOITSN+/- mice compared with that in female wild-type mice, leading to sex-specific modulation of the X-linked gene ETS domain containing protein and its target, two molecular events also characteristic to female human PAH lung. More importantly, cyclin A1 expression in the S and G2/M phases of the cell cycle of synchronized pulmonary artery endothelial cells of female PAH patients is greater versus controls, suggesting functional hyperproliferation. Thus, Xist up-regulation leading to female pulmonary artery endothelial cell sexual dimorphic behavior may provide a better understanding of the origin of sex bias in PAH. Notably, the EHITSN-KOITSN+/- mouse is a unique experimental animal model of PAH that recapitulates most of the sexually dimorphic characteristics of human disease.