A 28-day randomized open-label multicenter study was conducted to assess the efficacy of bromhexine plus standard of care (SOC) (n = 98) vs. SOC alone (n = 93) in 191 outpatients with ...mild-to-moderate COVID-19 in the primary health care setting. Bromhexine three daily doses of 10 mL (48 mg/day) were administered for seven days. The primary efficacy endpoint was the reduction of viral load estimated as the cycle thresholds (Ct) to detect ORF1ab, N Protein, and S Protein genes by RT-qPCR in saliva samples on day 4 as compared with baseline. Ct values of the three genes increased from baseline throughout days 4 to 14 (p < 0.001) but significant differences between the study groups were not found. Differences in the percentages of patients with low, medium, and high viral loads at 4, 7, and 14 days were not found either. In summary, treatment with bromhexine plus SCO was associated with a viral load reduction of ORF1ab, N Protein, and S Protein genes at day 4, which was not significantly different than similar viral load reductions observed with SOC alone. The present findings do not seem to favor the use of bromhexine as an antiviral in patients with COVID-19.
Background: The concept of severe mental illness (SMI) has been related to bipolar or psychotic diagnosis, or to some cases of depressive disorders. Other mental health problems such as personality ...disorders or posttraumatic dissociative conditions, which can sometimes lead to relevant functional impairments, remain separate from the SMI construct.
Aims: This study aimed to evaluate the clinical severity as well as healthcare spending on dissociative disorders (DDs). This diagnostic group was compared with two other groups usually considered as causing severe impairment and high healthcare spending: bipolar and psychotic disorders, and unipolar depression.
Methods: From a random sample of 200 psychiatric outpatients, 108 with unipolar depression (N = 45), psychotic/bipolar (N = 31) or DDs (N = 32) were selected for this study. The three groups were compared by the severity of their disorder and healthcare indicators.
Results: Of the three groups, those with a DD were more prone to and showed higher indices of suicide, self-injury, emergency consultations, as well as psychotropic drug use. This group ranked just below psychotic/bipolar patients in the amount of psychiatric hospitalisations.
Conclusions: Despite a certain intra-professional stigma regarding DDs, these data supported the severity of these posttraumatic conditions, and their inclusion in the construct of SMI.
Entrepreneurial activity and economic growth: A multi-country analysis Almodóvar-González, Manuel; Fernández-Portillo, Antonio; Díaz-Casero, Juan Carlos
European research on management and business economics,
2020, January-April 2020, 2020-01-00, 2020-01-01, Letnik:
26, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Most scientific literature assumes that entrepreneurial activity, in a broad sense, is positive for economic growth. Our work analyses 74 economies in a period of 6 years, identifying those factors ...related simultaneously with an entrepreneurial spirit and economic growth. The results enable to know the impact of a specific factor on entrepreneurship and economic growth. Additionally, we suggest that entrepreneurial activity plays a different role depending on the economic stage of the country in question. On the other hand, less developed countries should not be based on generic entrepreneurship if the objective they pursue is to promote economic growth.
Abstract
Objective
To assess the efficacy and safety of abatacept (ABA) in monotherapy (ABAMONO) vs combined ABA ABA plus MTX (ABAMTX) or ABA plus non-MTX conventional synthetic DMARDs (csDMARDs) ...(ABANON-MTX) in RA patients with interstitial lung disease (ILD) (RA-ILD).
Methods
This was a restrospective multicentre study of RA-ILD Caucasian patients treated with ABA. We analysed in the three groups (ABAMONO, ABAMTX, ABANON-MTX) the following outcome variables: (i) dyspnoea; (ii) forced vital capacity (FVC) and diffusion capacity of the lung for the carbon monoxide (DLCO); (iii) chest high-resolution CT (HRCT); (iv) DAS28-ESR; (v) CS-sparing effect; and (vi) ABA retention and side-effects. Differences between basal and final follow-up were evaluated. Multivariable linear regression was used to assess the differences between the three groups.
Results
We studied 263 RA-ILD patients (mean ± s.d. age 64.6 ± 10 years) ABAMONO (n = 111), ABAMTX (n = 46) and ABANON-MTX (n = 106). At baseline, ABAMONO patients were older (67 ± 10 years) and took higher prednisone dose 10 (interquartile range 5–15) mg/day. At that time, there were no statistically significant differences in sex, seropositivity, ILD patterns, FVC and DLCO, or disease duration. Following treatment, in all groups, most patients experienced stabilization or improvement in FVC, DLCO, dyspnoea and chest HRCT as well as improvement in DAS28-ESR. A statistically significant difference between basal and final follow-up was only found in CS-sparing effect in the group on combined ABA (ABAMTX or ABANON-MTX). However, in the multivariable analysis, there were no differences in any outcome variables between the three groups.
Conclusion
In Caucasian individuals with RA-ILD, ABA in monotherapy or combined with MTX or with other conventional-DMARDs seems to be equally effective and safe. However, a CS-sparing effect is only observed with combined ABA.
The resolution of the three-dimensional structure of infectious prions at the atomic level is pivotal to understand the pathobiology of Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSE), but has been ...long hindered due to certain particularities of these proteinaceous pathogens. Difficulties related to their purification from brain homogenates of disease-affected animals were resolved almost a decade ago by the development of in vitro recombinant prion propagation systems giving rise to highly infectious recombinant prions. However, lack of knowledge about the molecular mechanisms of the misfolding event and the complexity of systems such as the Protein Misfolding Cyclic Amplification (PMCA), have limited generating the large amounts of homogeneous recombinant prion preparations required for high-resolution techniques such as solid state Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (ssNMR) imaging. Herein, we present a novel recombinant prion propagation system based on PMCA that substitutes sonication with shaking thereby allowing the production of unprecedented amounts of multi-labeled, infectious recombinant prions. The use of specific cofactors, such as dextran sulfate, limit the structural heterogeneity of the in vitro propagated prions and makes possible, for the first time, the generation of infectious and likely homogeneous samples in sufficient quantities for studies with high-resolution structural techniques as demonstrated by the preliminary ssNMR spectrum presented here. Overall, we consider that this new method named Protein Misfolding Shaking Amplification (PMSA), opens new avenues to finally elucidate the three-dimensional structure of infectious prions.
Cancer is one of the major diseases leading to death worldwide, and the fight against the disease is still challenging. Cancer diseases are usually associated with increased oxidative stress and the ...accumulation of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species as a result of metabolic alterations or signaling aberrations. While numerous antioxidants exhibit potential therapeutic properties, their clinical efficiency against cancer is limited and even unproven. Conventional anticancer antioxidants and drugs have, among others, the great disadvantage of low bioavailability, poor targeting efficiency, and serious side effects, constraining their use in the fight against diseases. Here, we review the rationale for and recent advances in potential delivery systems that could eventually be employed in clinical research on antioxidant therapy in cancer. We also review some of the various strategies aimed at enhancing the solubility of poorly water-soluble active drugs, including engineered delivery systems such as lipid-based, polymeric, and inorganic formulations. The use of cyclodextrins, micro- and nanoemulsions, and thermosensitive smart liposomes as useful systems for the delivery and release of poorly aqueous-soluble drugs, improving their bioactivity and stability, is also addressed. We also provide some details on their formulation processes and their use in a variety of medical applications. Finally, we briefly cover a case study specifically focused on the use of delivery systems to minimize oral cancer and associated dental problems.
Electrocoagulation is a promising technology for the removal of colloids from different types of wastewater and it has also demonstrated good efficiencies for the breaking-up of emulsions. It ...consists of the dissolution of aluminum or iron anodes, promoting the formation of coagulant reagents in wastewater that helps to coagulate pollutants and the formation of bubbles that favors the mixing (electroflocculation) and the removal of suspended solids by flotation (electroflotation). During the recent years, the combination of this technology with other treatment technologies has become a hot topic looking for a synergistic improvement in the efficiencies. This work aims to review some of the more recent works regarding this topic, in particular the combination of electrocoagulation with ozonation, adsorption and ultrasound irradiation.
It is a conundrum of the 21st Century that there is much left to discover and yet never before has our cultural and ecological patrimony been so threatened. This is especially true in tropical ...regions where heavy vegetation, inaccessibility, and rugged topography hamper investigation. Here we present two case studies that add to a growing body of literature demonstrating the utility of airborne mapping LiDAR (a.k.a. Airborne Laser Scanning) for rapid archaeological assessments in poorly documented regions. The first outlines a program of LiDAR scanning to better understand the urban center of Angamuco in the Mexican State of Michoacán. This work shows that (1) large urban centers with complex spatial organization were present centuries prior to the formation of the Purépecha Empire; (2) the settlement incorporates gardens and other landscape features within and around the settlement demonstrating a high degree of human environmental modification; and (3) current models for the evolution of social complexity in the region cannot account for the presence of Angamuco. The second presents the results of a LiDAR survey of a remote valley in the Mosquitia tropical wilderness of Honduras which has seen little archaeological research. Here we demonstrate that (1) though today the valley is a wilderness it was densely inhabited in the past; (2) this population was organized into a three-tiered system composed of 19 settlements dominated by a city; and (3) this occupation was embedded within a human engineered landscape. For both, LiDAR data fundamentally changed the understanding of coupled human/natural systems in these areas while providing critical baseline data for conservation and management.
To determine the potential impact of extra-articular manifestations (EAMs) on disease characteristics and cardiovascular (CV) risk in patients with axial spondylarthritis (axSpA).
This is a ...cross-sectional study from the AtheSpAin cohort, a Spanish multicenter cohort to study atherosclerosis in axSpA. Data on the history of CV events, subclinical carotid atherosclerosis, and disease-related features, including EAMs, were collected.
888 axSpA patients were recruited. Concomitant acute anterior uveitis (AAU), psoriasis (PSO), and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) were present in 177 (19.9%), 96 (10.8%), and 57 (6.4%) patients, respectively. When compared with axSpA patients without EAMs, a significant increase in past CV events was observed in patients with PSO (9% versus 4%, p = 0.048) and in those with at least one EAM (7% versus 4%, p = 0.032) or with more than one EAM (11% versus 4%, p = 0.022). The frequency of carotid plaques and the values of cIMT were higher in patients with EAMs than in those without EAMs, although only the univariable analysis for carotid plaques in patients with PSO (39% versus 30%, p = 0.038) and for cIMT in patients with AAU (665 ± 156 µm versus 637 ± 139 µm, p = 0.042) and those with at least one EAM (661 ± 155 µm versus 637 ± 139 µm, p = 0.024) showed significant results. In addition, patients with PSO or IBD were found to have specific disease-related features, such as higher ESR at diagnosis, and more frequent use of glucocorticoids and TNF inhibitors than those without EAMs. Also, PSO patients had more commonly peripheral involvement and those with AAU more severe radiographic damage than those without EAMs. The frequency of HLA B27 was higher in patients with AAU and lower in those with PSO or IBD compared to those without EAMs.
Patients with axSpA and EAMs, in addition to displaying their own disease-related features, are likely to have an increased CV risk that appears proportional to the number of EAMs and could be related to proatherogenic factors other than traditional CV risk factors, such as the inflammatory load and the use of glucocorticoids.
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Bismuth sulfide (Bi2S3) nanostructured films were deposited on glass substrates using a spray pyrolysis method. Herein, we present a study of the effect of substrate temperature (TS) on the ...structural, morphological, and optical properties of the prepared nanocrystalline thin films. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Raman spectroscopy analyses revealed the formation of polycrystalline orthorhombic Bi2S3 films. The crystallite size and micro-strain of the films changed as the substrate temperatures was varied. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images show a compact and dense surface, with a uniform spatial distribution of nearly spherical grains. Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) studies confirm the prevalence of Bi and S elements in the films, being films deposited at a temperature of 400 °C sulfur deficient. The crystallite size increases from 18 to 22 nm when Ts varies from 400 °C to 300 °C. The optical band gap of the films was found to vary between 1.44 and 1.58eV, while a high absorption coefficient (>104 cm−1) was measured in the visible and near-infrared spectral ranges. These experimental results were compared with ab initio calculations performed in the framework of the density functional theory (DFT). The band structure and density of states (DOS) of the Bi2S3 compound reveal an n-type semiconductor with a direct gap of about 1.52 eV. Both experimental and theoretical results provide strong evidence that our bismuth sulfide thin films can be suitable materials for light-harvesting in solar cell devices.
•Spray pyrolysis-grown Bi2S3 films show improved crystallinity for substrate temperature of 300 °C.•Films show a high absorption coefficient (>104 cm−1) in the visible range.•Band gap increases from 1.44 to 1.58 eV by increasing substrate temperature.•Electronic and optical properties have been investigated by ab-initio calculations.•Our Bi2S3 thin films can be suitable materials for light-harvesting in solar cells.
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