COVID-19 is rapidly spreading and there are currently no specific clinical treatments available. The absence of an immediate available vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 made it hard for health professionals to tackle the problem. Thus, the need of ready to use prescription drugs or herbal remedies is urgent. SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro) and Angiotensin Converting Enzyme2 (ACE2) protein structure are made available to facilitate finding solutions to the present problem. In this brief research, we compare the efficacy of some natural compounds against COVID-19 Mpro and ACE2 to that of Hydroxy-Chloroquine in silico.<br>Molecular docking investigations were carried out using AutoDock. Virtual screening was performed using AutoDock Vina and the best ligand / protein mode was identified based on the binding energy. Amino Acids residues of ligands interactions were identified using PyMOL. According to present research results, Quercetin, Hispidulin, Cirsimaritin, Sulfasalazine, Artemisin and Curcumin exhibited better potential inhibition than Hydroxy-Chloroquine against COVID-19 main protease active site and ACE2. Our provided docking data of these compounds may help pave a way for further advanced research to the synthesis of novel drug candidate for COVID-19.<br>

COVID-19 is rapidly spreading and there are currently no specific clinical treatments available. The absence of an immediate available vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 made it hard for health professionals to tackle the problem. Thus, the need of ready to use prescription drugs or herbal remedies is urgent. SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro) and Angiotensin Converting Enzyme2 (ACE2) protein structure are made available to facilitate finding solutions to the present problem. In this brief research, we compare the efficacy of some natural compounds against COVID-19 Mpro and ACE2 to that of Hydroxy-Chloroquine in silico.<br>Molecular docking investigations were carried out using AutoDock. Virtual screening was performed using AutoDock Vina and the best ligand / protein mode was identified based on the binding energy. Amino Acids residues of ligands interactions were identified using PyMOL. According to present research results, Quercetin, Hispidulin, Cirsimaritin, Sulfasalazine, Artemisin and Curcumin exhibited better potential inhibition than Hydroxy-Chloroquine against COVID-19 main protease active site and ACE2. Our provided docking data of these compounds may help pave a way for further advanced research to the synthesis of novel drug candidate for COVID-19.<br>

Functional neuroimaging research on anxiety has traditionally focused on brain networks associated with the psychological aspects of anxiety. Here, instead, we target the somatic aspects of anxiety. Motivated by the growing appreciation that top-down cortical processing plays a crucial role in perception and action, we used resting-state functional MRI data from the Human Connectome Project and Dynamic Causal Modeling (DCM) to characterize effective connectivity among hierarchically organized regions in the exteroceptive, interoceptive, and motor cortices. In people with high (fear-related) somatic arousal, top-down effective connectivity was enhanced in all three networks: an observation that corroborates well with the phenomenology of anxiety. The anxiety-associated changes in connectivity were sufficiently reliable to predict whether a new participant has mild or severe somatic anxiety. Interestingly, the increase in top-down connections to sensorimotor cortex were not associated with fear affect scores, thus establishing the (relative) dissociation between somatic and cognitive dimensions of anxiety. Overall, enhanced top-down effective connectivity in sensorimotor cortices emerges as a promising and quantifiable candidate marker of trait somatic anxiety.

BackgroundFunctional neuroimaging research on anxiety has traditionally focused on brain networks associated with the complex psychological aspects of anxiety. In this study, instead, we target the somatic aspects of anxiety. Motivated by the growing recognition that top-down cortical processing plays crucial roles in perception and action, we investigate effective connectivity among hierarchically organized sensorimotor regions and its association with (trait) anxiety.MethodsWe selected 164 participants from the Human Connectome Project based on psychometric measures. We used their resting-state functional MRI data and Dynamic Causal Modeling (DCM) to assess effective connectivity within and between key regions in the exteroceptive, interoceptive, and motor hierarchy. Using hierarchical modeling of between-subject effects in DCM with Parametric Empirical Bayes we first established the architecture of effective connectivity in sensorimotor networks and investigated its association with fear somatic arousal (FSA) and fear affect (FA) scores. To probe the robustness of our results, we implemented a leave-one-out cross validation analysis.ResultsAt the group level, the top-down connections in exteroceptive cortices were inhibitory in nature whereas in interoceptive and motor cortices they were excitatory. With increasing FSA scores, the pattern of top-down effective connectivity was enhanced in all three networks: an observation that corroborates well with anxiety phenomenology. Anxiety associated changes in effective connectivity were of effect size sufficiently large to predict whether somebody has mild or severe somatic anxiety. Interestingly, the enhancement in top-down processing in sensorimotor cortices were associated with FSA but not FA scores, thus establishing the (relative) dissociation between somatic and cognitive dimensions of anxiety.ConclusionsOverall, enhanced top-down effective connectivity in sensorimotor cortices emerges as a promising and quantifiable candidate marker of trait somatic anxiety. These results pave the way for a novel approach into investigating the neural underpinnings of anxiety based on the recognition of anxiety as an embodied phenomenon and the emerging interest in top-down cortical processing.