Addiction and Substance Abuse

A variety of behavioral, environmental, developmental, and genetic factors have been documented as contributing to the development of Substance use disorders (SUDs) in youth. For example, it has been suggested that things such as the perceived availability of substances, familial history of anti-social behavior, personal attitudes favorable towards drug use all have strong correlations to the development of substance use in youth.

Unresolved inflammatory processes contribute to impaired healing in diabetic wounds, with increasing evidence implicating persistent pro-inflammatory macrophage polarization as a driver of chronic inflammation and delayed wound closure. Previous investigations aimed to uncover the role of regulatory RNAs in macrophage polarization and to understand how aberrant expression patterns contribute to wound healing impairment, with the goal of identifying novel therapeutic targets for promoting normal wound healing progression. In the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, Hu et al. reveal a role of the tumor suppressor, long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) Growth Arrest-Specific 5 (GAS5), in regulating macrophage polarization.

Scalp psoriasis, a skin condition characterized by red, thickened (erythematous), well-demarcated patches or plaques with overlying silvery-white scales, affecting part or all of the scalp, is an autoimmune disease accompanied by itchy skin. The disease is associated with faulty functioning of adaptive and innate components of immune systems. The key pro- inflammatory cytokines mediating immunopathology of psoriasis are IL-17 and IL-23 which promote proliferation of Th 17 cells which in turn induce proliferation of keratinocytes leading to the disease.

In a recent issue of the Children and Youth Services Review, I published an article examining systems of support for LGBTQ youth transitioning from foster care to emerging adulthood [1]. The methodology I used to gather this data included in-depth interviewing combined with ecomapping techniques that I modified to identify the strength and structure of LGBTQ youths’ support networks. 

During the last few decades, the ribosome has been regarded primarily as a major cell player devoted to the catalysis of protein biosynthesis during translation [1-5]. It is therefore not surprising that several processes related to translation exploit the ribosome as a central hub. For instance, it is well-known that many events related to translational regulation are mediated by interactions between the ribosome and initiation, elongation or termination factors [6-9]. In addition, the ribosome is involved in mRNA-code recognition and proofreading [10-12] as well as in the control of translation rates via interactions with mRNA codons bearing high- and low-frequency [13-15] and associated with variable tRNA abundance within the translation machinery [16-18].