Stone residual fragments: A thorny problem Prezioso, Domenico; Barone, Biagio; Di Domenico, Dante ...
Urologia,
11/2019, Letnik:
86, Številka:
4
Book Review, Journal Article
Recenzirano
Urolithiasis represents a widespread and common disorder among the world population, with a predicted increase in affected patients in the coming years. Treatment of renal and ureteral stones varies ...widely, and achieving true stone-free status in all patients is still difficult. Moreover, imaging used to assess residual fragments following procedure impacts the diagnosed stone-free rate percentage considerably. In particular, the use of computed tomography scans has led to a better evaluation of residual fragments as well as so-called clinically insignificant residual fragments, which in a considerable number of cases are, despite their definition, causes of adverse urological events, thus creating a thorny problem for both patients and urologists. Currently, there is no gold standard or validated protocol regarding the management, clearance and prevention of residual fragments. In this article, we review the current literature regarding residual fragments, clinically insignificant residual fragments and their natural history, reporting on diagnostic methods, incidence, complications and outcome with the use of less invasive procedures, taking into consideration viable treatment and management of patients affected.
Members of the following marine annelid families are found almost exclusively in the interstitial environment and are highly adapted to move between sand grains, relying mostly on ciliary locomotion: ...Apharyngtidae n. fam., Dinophilidae, Diurodrilidae, Nerillidae, Lobatocerebridae, Parergodrilidae, Polygordiidae, Protodrilidae, Protodriloididae, Psammodrilidae and Saccocirridae. This article provides a review of the evolution, systematics, and diversity of these families, with the exception of Parergodrilidae, which was detailed in the review of Orbiniida by Meca, Zhadan, and Struck within this Special Issue. While several of the discussed families have previously only been known by a few described species, recent surveys inclusive of molecular approaches have increased the number of species, showing that all of the aforementioned families exhibit a high degree of cryptic diversity shadowed by a limited number of recognizable morphological traits. This is a challenge for studies of the evolution, taxonomy, and diversity of interstitial families as well as for their identification and incorporation into ecological surveys. By compiling a comprehensive and updated review on these interstitial families, we hope to promote new studies on their intriguing evolutionary histories, adapted life forms and high and hidden diversity.
A displacive-type mechanism, which accounts for the occurrence of ferroelectricity in most inorganic ferroelectrics, is rarely found in molecule-based ferroelectrics. Its role is often covered by the ...predominant order–disorder one. Herein, we report a lone-pair-electron-driven displacive-type ferroelectric organic–inorganic hybrid compound, H2dmdapSbCl5 (1; dmdap = N,N-dimethyl-1,3-diaminopropane). The structure of 1 features a typical zigzag chain of SbCl5∞ containing cis-connected anionic octahedra. The compound undergoes a second-order paraelectric–ferroelectric phase transition at 143 K (P21/c ↔ Pc) with a saturation polarization of 1.36 μC·cm–2 and a coercive field of 3.5 kV·cm–1 at 119 K. Theoretical study discloses the ferroelectricity mainly originating from the relative displacements of the Sb and Cl ions in the crystal lattice, which are driven by the 5s2 lone-pair electrons of the SbIII center. Furthermore, on the basis of analysis, possible routes are suggested to enhance ferroelectric polarization in this class of compounds.
Great efforts have been made with chemicals and pesticides to contain the spread of
pv.
(
) responsible for kiwifruit canker. Unfortunately, only partial results were obtained for this bacterial ...pandemic, and alternative remedies were proposed to avoid soil pollution and the onset of antibiotic resistance. Among these, phage therapy represents a possible tool with low environmental impact and high specificity. Several phages have been isolated and tested for the capacity to kill
in vitro, but experiments to verify their efficacy in vivo are still lacking. In the present study, we demonstrated that the phage φPSA2 (previously characterized) contains the spread of
inside plant tissue and reduces the symptoms of the disease. Our data are a strong indication for the efficiency of this phage and open the possibility of developing a phage therapy based on φPSA2 to counteract the bacterial canker of kiwifruit.
Home‐based online business ventures are an increasingly pervasive yet under‐researched phenomenon. The experiences and mindset of entrepreneurs setting up and running such enterprises require better ...understanding. Using data from a qualitative study of 23 online home‐based business entrepreneurs, we propose the augmented concept of ‘mental mobility’ to encapsulate how they approach their business activities. Drawing on Howard P. Becker's early theorising of mobility, together with Victor Turner's later notion of liminality, we conceptualise mental mobility as the process through which individuals navigate the liminal spaces between the physical and digital spheres of work and the overlapping home/workplace, enabling them to manipulate and partially reconcile the spatial, temporal and emotional tensions that are present in such work environments. Our research also holds important applications for alternative employment contexts and broader social orderings because of the increasingly pervasive and disruptive influence of technology on experiences of remunerated work.
Dietary behaviour is a core element in diabetes self-management. There are no remarkable differences between nutritional guidelines for people with type 2 diabetes and healthy eating recommendations ...for the general public. This study aimed to evaluate dietary differences between subjects with and without diabetes and to describe any emerging dietary patterns characterizing diabetic subjects. In this cross-sectional study conducted on older adults from Southern Italy, eating habits in the "Diabetic" and "Not Diabetic" groups were assessed with FFQ, and dietary patterns were derived using an unsupervised learning algorithm: principal component analysis. Diabetic subjects (
= 187) were more likely to be male, slightly older, and with a slightly lower level of education than subjects without diabetes. The diet of diabetic subjects reflected a high-frequency intake of dairy products, eggs, vegetables and greens, fresh fruit and nuts, and olive oil. On the other hand, the consumption of sweets and sugary foods was reduced compared to non-diabetics (23.74 ± 35.81 vs. 16.52 ± 22.87; 11.08 ± 21.85 vs. 7.22 ± 15.96). The subjects without diabetes had a higher consumption of red meat, processed meat, ready-to-eat dishes, alcoholic drinks, and lower vegetable consumption. The present study demonstrated that, in areas around the Mediterranean Sea, older subjects with diabetes had a healthier diet than their non-diabetic counterparts.
Fulfillment of the basic psychological needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy is believed to facilitate people’s integrative tendencies to process psychological conflicts and develop a ...coherent sense of self. The present study therefore used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine the relation between need fulfillment and the amplitude of conflict negativity (CN), a neurophysiological measure of conflict during personal decision making. Participants completed a decision-making task in which they made a series of forced choices according to their personal preferences. Three types of decision-making situations were created on the basis of participants’ unique preference ratings, which were obtained prior to ERP recording: low-conflict situations (choosing between an attractive and an unattractive option), high-conflict approach-approach situations (choosing between two similarly attractive options), and high-conflict avoidance-avoidance situations (choosing between two similarly unattractive options). As expected, CN amplitudes were larger in high- relative to low-conflict situations, and source localization analyses suggested that the anterior cingulate cortex was the generating structure of the CN. Most importantly, people reporting higher need fulfillment exhibited larger CN amplitudes in avoidance–avoidance situations relative to low-conflict situations; to a lesser extent, they also exhibited larger CN amplitudes in approach–approach situations relative to low-conflict situations. By contrast, people reporting lower need fulfillment exhibited CN amplitudes that poorly discriminated the three decision situations. These results suggest that need fulfillment may promote self-coherent functioning by increasing people’s receptivity to and processing of events that challenge their abilities to make efficient, self-congruent choices.
Abstract
Summary
bollito is an automated, flexible and parallelizable computational pipeline for the comprehensive analysis of single-cell RNA-seq data. Starting from FASTQ files or preprocessed ...expression matrices, bollito performs both basic and advanced tasks in single-cell analysis integrating >30 state-of-the-art tools. This includes quality control, read alignment, dimensionality reduction, clustering, cell-marker detection, differential expression, functional analysis, trajectory inference and RNA velocity. bollito is built using the Snakemake workflow management system, which easily connects each execution step and facilitates the reproducibility of results. bollito’s modular design makes it easy to incorporate other packages into the pipeline enabling its expansion with new functionalities.
Availability and implementation
Source code is freely available at https://gitlab.com/bu_cnio/bollito under the MIT license.
Supplementary information
Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Abstract
Background
In patients undergoing orthotopic liver transplant (OLT), immunosuppressive treatment is mandatory and infections are leading causes of morbidity/mortality. Thus, it is essential ...to understand the functionality of cell-mediated immunity after OLT. The aim of the study was to identify changes in T-cell phenotype and polyfunctionality in human immunodeficiency virus–positive (HIV+) and –negative (HIV–) patients undergoing immunosuppressive treatment after OLT.
Methods
We studied peripheral blood mononuclear cells from 108 subjects divided into 4 groups of 27: HIV+ transplanted patients, HIV– transplanted patients, HIV+ nontransplanted patients, and healthy subjects. T-cell activation, differentiation, and cytokine production were analyzed by flow cytometry.
Results
Median age was 55 years (interquartile range, 52–59 years); the median CD4 count in HIV+ patients was 567 cells/mL, and all had undetectable viral load. CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell subpopulations showed different distributions between HIV+ and HIV– OLT patients. A cluster representing effector cells expressing PD1 was abundant in HIV– transplanted patients and they were characterized by higher levels of CD4+ T cells able to produce interferon-γ and tumor necrosis factor–α.
Conclusions
HIV– transplanted patients have more exhausted or inflammatory T cells compared to HIV+ transplanted patients, suggesting that patients who have already experienced a form of immunosuppression due to HIV infection respond differently to anti-rejection therapy.
Background Whether the use of sevelamer rather than a calcium-containing phosphate binder improves cardiovascular (CV) survival in patients receiving dialysis remains to be elucidated. Study Design ...Open-label randomized controlled trial with parallel groups. Settings & Participants 466 incident hemodialysis patients recruited from 18 centers in Italy. Intervention Study participants were randomly assigned in a 1:1 fashion to receive either sevelamer or a calcium-containing phosphate binder (although not required by the protocol, all patients in this group received calcium carbonate) for 24 months. Outcomes All individuals were followed up until completion of 36 months of follow-up or censoring. CV death due to cardiac arrhythmias was regarded as the primary end point. Measurements Blind event adjudication. Results At baseline, patients allocated to sevelamer had higher serum phosphorus (mean, 5.6 ± 1.7 SD vs 4.8 ± 1.4 mg/dL) and C-reactive protein levels (mean, 8.8 ± 13.4 vs 5.9 ± 6.8 mg/dL) and lower coronary artery calcification scores (median, 19 IQR, 0-30 vs 30 IQR, 7-180). At study completion, serum phosphate levels were lower in the sevelamer arm (median dosages, 4,800 and 2,000 mg/d for sevelamer and calcium carbonate, respectively). After a mean follow-up of 28 ± 10 months, 128 deaths were recorded (29 and 88 due to cardiac arrhythmias and all-cause CV death). Sevelamer-treated patients experienced lower CV mortality due to cardiac arrhythmias compared with patients treated with calcium carbonate (HR, 0.06; 95% CI, 0.01-0.25; P < 0.001). Similar results were noted for all-cause CV mortality and all-cause mortality, but not for non-CV mortality. Adjustments for potential confounders did not affect results. Limitations Open-label design, higher baseline coronary artery calcification burden in calcium carbonate–treated patients, different mineral metabolism control in sevelamer-treated patients, overall lower than expected mortality. Conclusions These results show that sevelamer compared to a calcium-containing phosphate binder improves survival in a cohort of incident hemodialysis patients. However, the better outcomes in the sevelamer group may be due to better phosphate control rather than reduction in calcium load.
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