Articles publicats (IRBLleida)
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L'IRBLleida és un centre de recerca conjunt entre la Universitat i el Departament de Salut de la Generalitat de Catalunya. Té com a funció potenciar les sinergies de recerca biomèdica entre ambdós institucions i està compromès en avançar en la recerca biomèdica com a mitja per millorar la salut de la població i facilitar una activitat assistencial òptima en situacions de malaltia. [Més informació].
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- ItemEmbargoThe expanding role of Cav3 channels in glioblastoma(Elsevier, 2026) Casals, Maria; Herreros Danés, Judit; Cantí Nicolás, CarlesTumor-intrinsic voltage-gated Cav3 calcium channels, comprising the Cav3.1, Cav3.2 and Cav3.3 isoforms, have been implicated in cancer cell proliferation and survival. Recent work by Dube et al. reveals a role for microenvironmental Cav3.2 channels in glioblastoma, promoting neuron–cancer cell crosstalk and identifying changes in immune-related programs associated with Cav3.2 deficiency.
- ItemOpen AccessQuantifying spectral information and redundancy in high-dimensional personality taxonomies: an entropy-based approach(Frontiers Media, 2026) Gutiérrez, Fernando; Aluja Fabregat, Antón; Ruiz-Rodríguez, José; García, Luis F.; Baillés, Eva; Calvo, Natalia; Rodríguez, Claudia; Gárriz, MiguelBackground: Personality assessment involves the collection and organization of information into multidimensional taxonomies. However, no routinely used index directly quantifies the amount of information encoded in such taxonomies. Effective dimensionality (ED) is a Shannon entropy-based metric that uses eigenvalue distributions to quantify a system’s spectral information as the effective number of non-redundant components. Although ED has been applied across fields ranging from physics to political science, it remains underutilized in psychological assessment.Methods: After establishing an interpretive framework through Monte Carlo simulation, we applied ED to quantify informational content and redundancy across five widely used taxonomies of normal and pathological personality in large community and clinical samples (n = 2,510–7,953), as well as across hierarchical levels of measurement (domains, facets, items), alternative factor-analytic solutions, and populations.Results: On average, domains conveyed 21% less spectral information than their nominal dimensionality implies, and facets 45% less, reflecting substantial trait overlap. Across levels, items contained 9- to 31-fold greater spectral information than domains, reflecting both specific variance and measurement error. Although residualized facets and items contained unique variance that predicted clinically relevant life outcomes, gains did not reach significance under stringent out-of-sample comparisons. In factor analysis, ED quantified factor redundancy across rotation methods, with oblique rotations producing up to 25% less spectral information. ED also informed cutoff calibration to mitigate the curse of dimensionality—which can artifactually inflate disorder rates in high-dimensional systems—maintaining prevalence estimates within 1–15% of target levels under multivariate normality.Conclusion: ED provides a model-agnostic, continuous index for quantifying spectral information, structural redundancy, and complexity in multidimensional psychological systems. However, it does not necessarily coincide with psychologically meaningful information. ED may support the development of informationally parsimonious taxonomies and well-calibrated diagnostic thresholds in high-dimensional personality assessment.
- ItemOpen AccessScreening-based repurposing identifies potassium dehydroandrographolide succinate (KDAS) as a selective suppressor of TNF-α-induced caspase-8-dependent apoptosis in colonic epithelial cells(Nature Portfolio, 2026) Valero-Cortijo, Alvaro; Shoenenberger-Arnaiz, Joan Antoni; Yuste Mateos, Víctor J. (Víctor José); Ribas i Fortuny, JuditUnder physiological conditions, tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) favors cell survival through cytoprotective checkpoints, including a FIP200-dependent non-canonical autophagy pathway. Disruption of this checkpoint shifts TNF-α signaling toward apoptosis, a process relevant to epithelial injury in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Anti-TNF-α biologics are standard IBD therapy but primarily neutralize extracellular TNF-α without reducing epithelial susceptibility to death. Here, we conducted a two-step screen of 2421 clinically approved compounds in TNF-α-challenged FIP200-deficient cells to identify drugs that restore cytoprotection. Potassium dehydroandrographolide succinate (KDAS) emerged as a top candidate and conferred > 85% cytoprotection in FIP200-deficient HCT116 cells by inhibiting TNF-α-induced, caspase-8-dependent apoptosis without affecting necroptosis. Other andrographolides did not confer cytoprotection, highlighting KDAS specificity. KDAS also suppressed TRAIL-induced apoptosis and protected additional human cell lines and primary human colonic epithelial cells. Although KDAS enhanced early NF-κB and ERK signaling, pharmacological inhibition of these pathways did not abrogate cytoprotection, suggesting that they are dispensable for its protective effect. These findings identify KDAS as a candidate cytoprotective compound capable of preserving epithelial cell viability downstream of TNF-α receptor activation and indicate a pharmacological approach to limit epithelial apoptosis in TNF-α-mediated diseases such as IBD.
- ItemOpen AccessModelling Hepatitis B virus related hospital discharges in Spain: ARIMAX based liver disease forecasting tool for hospital workload and mortality progression(Public Library of Science, 2026) Acosta, Lesly; Soldevila, Núria; Torner, Núria; Avellón, Ana; Hernando, Victoria; Borràs, Eva; Martínez, Ana; Pericas, Carles; Rius, Cristina; Godoy i García, Pere; Domínguez, AngelaIntroduction: Chronic hepatitis B (CHB) virus infection leads to severe complications, cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The main objective of this study was to develop an ARIMA-based model to forecast the progression of global hospital discharges, due to cirrhosis and HCC related to chronic hepatitis B. Methods: Retrospective observational study of monthly incidence of CHB related hospitalization discharges from 2005 to 2021 in Spain. Data were obtained through the Spanish Minimum dataset of hospital discharge registry (CMBDH) of the Health Ministry. Main diagnosis of CHB, liver cirrhosis and HCC encoded by International Medical codes (ICM-9 and ICM-10) were used. Descriptive and time series analysis was performed with forecasts made for 2022 using seasonal ARIMA and ARIMAX models. Data stationarity was achieved via a square root Box-Cox transformations and differencing. Model selection used was AIC, BIC, MAPE, and forecasting precision. Analysis was performed in R (version 4.5.0). Results: The total number of discharges related to hepatitis B was 6743, 58% were due to HCC and 42% to cirrhosis diagnosis. Median age was 59 years (range: 7 to > 100), being 83.4% men. The global chronic hepatitis B (CHB) related workload values range from 10 to 55 monthly discharges, while hepatitis B related to HCC and cirrhosis range from 4 to 34 and 1-29 discharges, respectively. The best fit and 2022 forecasts found for CHB and HCC time series was obtained with the approximate Gaussian [Formula: see text]-ARIMAX (6,0,0) (0,1,1) _12 model. This model after treating outliers, removes seasonal patterns and captures the series' autoregressive dynamics with an AR(6) and seasonal MA(1) noise with expression: [Formula: see text] with ε ~ N(0, σ²) and in the square root scale. Conclusion: Both ARIMA and ARIMAX models play critical roles in forecasting CHB-related HCC and cirrhosis, enabling better disease monitoring, healthcare resources, and intervention assessment. ARIMAX provided more accurate context-aware predictions, making it especially valuable for public health decision-making.
- ItemOpen AccessExploring glucocorticoid receptor signalling in lymphangioleiomyomatosis(European Respiratory Society, 2026) Baiges, Alexandra; Ruiz-Auladell, Lara; García, Irene; Rigo-Bonnin, Raúl; Tang, Yan; Bou-Farhat, Elias J; Espín, Roderic; Sanz, Rosario T; Vicent, Guillermo Pablo; Donate-Castillo, Mercè; Shabbir, Arzoo; Adams-Furmanski, Jonathan; Herranz-Ors, Carmen; Laporta, Rosalía; Salas, Clara; Ussetti, Piedad; Valenzuela, Claudia; Ancochea, Julio; Rodríguez-Portal, José A; Molina-Molina, María; Casanova, Álvaro; Revilla-López, Eva; Gómez-Carrera, Luis; Matias-Guiu, Xavier; Pavón, Miguel Angel; Jung, Dominik; Bachmann, Hagen S; Lago-Lestón, Ramón Manuel; Muinelo-Romay, Laura; Farré, Xavier; de Cid, Rafael; Leung, Calvin S; Zannas, Anthony S; Esteller, Manel; Sellares, Jacobo; Błasińska, Katarzyna; Róży, Adriana; Skrońska, Paulina; Gómez, Antonio; Holz, Marina K; Di Martino, Julie S; Monk, David; Sefton, Charlotte; Walker, Leanne; White, Anne; Clements, Debbie; Miller, Suzanne; Johnson, Simon R; Hunt, Hazel J; Henske, Elizabeth P; Kwiatkowski, David; Radzikowska, Elżbieta; Mateo, Francesca; Pujana, Miquel AngelBackground: Lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM) is a rare, low-grade neoplasm that causes progressive cystic lung destruction and is often associated with renal angiomyolipomas (AMLs). Given evidence of pleiotropy linking LAM risk to pulmonary traits, we investigated whether glucocorticoid receptor (GR) signalling might influence LAM biology and clinical features. Methods: We combined cell-based studies, GR inhibition/activation assays, gene expression and single-cell RNA sequencing analyses, and hormone profiling in retrospective and prospective LAM cohorts. Cellular experiments employed murine Tsc2 -/- embryonic fibroblasts and human TSC2 -/- AML cells. Circulating steroid levels were measured in women with LAM and healthy controls, and associations with clinical variables were evaluated. Results: In LAM/AML models, GR activation by glucocorticoids elicited transcriptional responses, whereas GR inhibition reduced clonogenic potential. GR stimulation was associated with CDKN1C upregulation through enhancer binding, and single-cell profiling suggested a shift towards slower proliferation and differentiation-prone states enriched for a LAM cell signature. Clinically, our analyses suggest that women with LAM may show altered circulating hormone profiles, including elevated adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) and cortisol levels, together with reduced 17-hydroxyprogesterone, compared with controls. In a prospective cohort, ACTH levels were suggestively associated with advanced radiological disease stage. AML cells showed elevated expression of POMC, which encodes the precursor of ACTH, and POMC peptide was detected in LAM lung tissue. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that GR signalling may contribute to aspects of LAM cell behaviour and disease status. Further investigation of this pathway could clarify its role as a disease modifier and potential therapeutic target.