University of Almería

About: University of Almería is a education organization based out in Almería, Spain. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 4674 authors who have published 10905 publications receiving 233036 citations. The organization is also known as: University of Almeria & Universidad de Almería.

A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial to Explore Cognitive and Emotional Effects of Probiotics in Fibromyalgia.

Abstract: It has recently been found that microbes in the gut may regulate brain processes through the gut microbiota-brain axis, which modulates affection, motivation and higher cognitive functions. According to this finding, the use of probiotics may be a potential treatment to improve physical, psychological and cognitive status in clinical populations with altered microbiota balance such as those with fibromyalgia (FMS). Thus, the aim of the present pilot study with a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomised design was to test whether a multispecies probiotic may improve cognition, emotional symptoms and functional state in a sample of patients diagnosed with FMS. Pain, impact of FMS, quality of life, anxiety and depressive symptoms were measured during the pre- and post-intervention phases; participants also completed two computerised cognitive tasks to assess impulsive choice and decision-making. Finally, urinary cortisol concentration was determined. To our knowledge, this is the first study that explore the effect of a multispecies probiotic in FMS patients. Our results indicated that probiotics improved impulsivity and decision-making in these patients. However, more research is needed to further explore the potential effects of probiotics on other cognitive functions affected in FMS as well as in other clinical populations.

Effects of the North Atlantic oscillation on the probability for climatic categories of local monthly rainfall in southern Spain

Abstract: In many regions of the world, planning agricultural and water management activities is usually done based on probabilities for seasonal or monthly rainfall, for specified intervals of values. These intervals of rainfall amounts are commonly grouped into three categories: drought, normal rainfall, and abundant rainfall. Changes in the probabilities of occurrence of rainfall amounts within these climatic rainfall categories will influence the decisions that farmers and water managers will take. This research explores the changes produced by the North Atlantic oscillation (NAO) on the probability that local monthly rainfall takes in the southern Iberian Peninsula. The evolution of the NAO was divided into three phases: negative NAO, ‘normal’ NAO, and positive NAO, and local rainfall series were divided into three groups, corresponding to each NAO phase. The resulting empirical distribution functions were analysed and modelled by Gamma distributions. The results allow one to estimate the change in the probabilities of wet and dry months when a change in NAO phase is produced. The main result of this work is that changes in the probability of occurrence of climate categories of rainfall are more complex than only an increase of rainfall amount during the negative NAO phase and a decrease during the positive NAO phase. In fact, a certain asymmetry is detected in January, with more extremes linked to the negative NAO phase. Copyright © 2003 Royal Meteorological Society