Summary
Background
Oesophageal dilation is frequently used as an adjunct treatment to alleviate symptoms that develop from fibrostenotic remodelling in eosinophilic oesophagitis (EoE). Earlier ...reports described an increased risk of complications associated with dilation.
Aim
Perform a systematic review and meta‐analysis to assess the efficacy and safety of endoscopic dilation in children and adults with EoE.
Methods
Professional librarians searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, the Cochrane library, Scopus, and Web of Science for articles in any language describing studies of dilation in EoE through December 2016. Studies were selected and data were ed independently and in duplicate. Random effects modelling was used to generate summary estimates for clinical improvement and complications (haemorrhage, perforation, hospitalisation, and death).
Results
The search resulted in 3495 references, of which 27 studies were included in the final analysis. The studies described 845 EoE patients, including 87 paediatric patients, who underwent a total of 1820 oesophageal dilations. The median number of dilations was 3 (range: 1‐35). Clinical improvement occurred in 95% of patients (95% CI: 90%‐98%, I2: 10%, 17 studies). Perforation occurred in 0.38% (95% CI: 0.18%‐0.85%, I2: 0%, 27 studies), haemorrhage in 0.05% (95% CI: 0%‐0.3%, I2: 0%, 18 studies), and hospitalisation in 0.67% (95% CI: 0.3%‐1.1%, I2: 44%, 24 studies). No deaths occurred (95% CI: 0%‐0.2% I2: 0%, 25 studies).
Conclusions
Endoscopic dilation is consistently effective in children and adults with EoE, resulting in improvement in 95% of patients with very low rates (<1%) of major complications.
Linked ContentThis article is linked to Moaward et al and Kia and Hirano papers. To view these articles visit https://doi.org/10.1111/apt.14216 and https://doi.org/10.1111/apt.14213.
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•Plastic particles crossing the intestinal barrier is debated.•PS-NP particles were tested in ex-vivo time series experiments using Ussing chambers.•Two PS-NP concentrations were ...tested on two locations of adult Seabass guts.•PS-NP directly crossed the intestinal barrier of adult Seabass within few minutes.•PS-NP translocation was confirmed by 3 complementary techniques.
Plastic pollution in marine ecosystems constitutes an important threat to marine life. For vertebrates, macro/microplastics can obstruct and/or transit into the airways and digestive tract whereas nanoplastics (NPs; < 1000 nm) have been observed in non-digestive tissues such as the liver and brain. Whether NPs cross the intestinal epithelium to gain access to the blood and internal organs remains controversial, however. Here, we show directly NP translocation across the intestinal barrier of a fish, the European seabass, Dicentrarchus labrax, ex vivo. The luminal side of median and distal segments of intestine were exposed to fluorescent polystyrene NPs (PS-NPs) of 50 nm diameter. PS-NPs that translocated to the serosal side were then detected quantitatively by fluorimetry, and qualitatively by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and pyrolysis coupled to gas chromatography and high-resolution mass spectrometry (Py-GC-HRMS). Fluorescence intensity on the serosal side increased 15–90 min after PS-NP addition into the luminal side, suggesting that PS-NPs crossed the intestinal barrier; this was confirmed by both SEM and Py-GC-HRMS. This study thus evidenced conclusively that NPs beads translocate across the intestinal epithelium in this marine vertebrate.
The idea that dark matter can be made of intermediate-mass primordial black holes (PBHs) in the 10 M M 200 M range has recently been reconsidered, particularly in the light of the detection of ...gravitational waves by the LIGO experiment. The existence of even a small fraction of dark matter in black holes should nevertheless result in noticeable quasar gravitational microlensing. Quasar microlensing is sensitive to any type of compact objects in the lens galaxy, to their abundance, and to their mass. We have analyzed optical and X-ray microlensing data from 24 gravitationally lensed quasars to estimate the abundance of compact objects in a very wide range of masses. We conclude that the fraction of mass in black holes or any type of compact objects is negligible outside of the 0.05 M M 0.45 M mass range and that it amounts to 20% 5% of the total matter, in agreement with the expected masses and abundances of the stellar component. Consequently, the existence of a significant population of intermediate-mass PBHs appears to be inconsistent with current microlensing observations. Therefore, primordial massive black holes are a very unlikely source of the gravitational radiation detected by LIGO.
A
bstract
The Swampland Distance Conjecture (SDC) states that, as we move towards an infinite distance point in moduli space, a tower of states becomes exponentially light with the geodesic distance ...in any consistent theory of Quantum Gravity. Although this fact has been tested in large sets of examples, it is fair to say that a bottom-up justification based on fundamental Quantum Gravity principles that explains both the
geodesic
requirement and the
exponential behavior
has been missing so far. In the present paper we address this issue by making use of the Covariant Entropy Bound as applied to the EFT. When applied to backgrounds of the Dynamical Cobordism type in theories with a moduli space, we are able to recover these main features of the SDC. Moreover, this naturally leads to universal lower and upper bounds on the ‘decay rate’ parameter λ
sp
of the species scale, that we propose as a convex hull condition under the name of Species Scale Distance Conjecture (SSDC). This is in contrast to already proposed universal bounds, that apply to the SDC parameter of the lightest tower. We also extend the analysis to the case in which asymptotically exponential potentials are present, finding a nice interplay with the asymptotic de Sitter conjecture. To test the SSDC, we study the convex hull that encodes the large-moduli dependence of the species scale. In this way, we show that the SSDC is the strongest bound on the species scale exponential rate which is preserved under dimensional reduction and we verify it in M-theory toroidal compactifications.
Microplastics are present in marine habitats worldwide and may be ingested by low trophic organisms such as fish larvae, with uncertain physiological consequences. The present study aims at assessing ...the impact of polyethylene (PE 10–45 μM) microbeads ingestion in European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) larvae. Fish were fed an inert diet including 0, 104 and 105 fluorescent microbeads per gram from 7 until 43 days post-hatching (dph). Microbeads were detected in the gastrointestinal tract in all fish fed diet incorporating PE. Our data revealed an efficient elimination of PE beads from the gut since no fluorescent was observed in the larvae after 48 h depuration. While the mortality rate increased significantly with the amount of microbeads scored per larvae at 14 and 20 dph, only ingestion of the highest concentration slightly impacted mortality rates. Larval growth and inflammatory response through Interleukine-1-beta (IL-1β) gene expression were not found to be affected while cytochrome-P450-1A1 (cyp1a1) expression level was significantly positively correlated with the number of microbeads scored per larva at 20 dph. Overall, these results suggest that ingestion of PE microbeads had limited impact on sea bass larvae possibly due to their high potential of egestion.
•First data on the effect of microplastic ingestion in marine fish larvae.•Fish larvae exhibit high potential of microplastic beads egestion.•Ingestion of microplastic beads has limited impact on traits linked to fitness.
During these last 20 years, many studies have focussed on the development of the digestive tract in marine fish larvae. Most of the studies aimed at acquiring knowledge on the optimal form of dietary ...supply for different nutrients, in order to formulate a compound diet able to totally replace live preys in the fish larvae feeding sequence. Consequently, most of the studies aimed at describing the effect of dietary adaptation on digestive enzymes profile, the morphology of the main organs, while others aspects of the physiology of the larvae digestive tract (gut hormones, intestinal transport…) were poorly investigated.
This review reports the more recent data on dietary modulation of digestive enzymes with a particular emphasis, when possible, on the molecular and hormonal mechanisms controlling enzyme expression in larvae. We examined how the dietary modulation of pancreatic and intestinal enzymes involved in protein digestion can provide useful information concerning the nature and molecular form of a dietary protein supply that would be adequate for larval stages. In the same way, data on lipase and phospholipase A2 paralleled with recent findings on lipid transport, strongly suggests that fish larvae handle phospholipids better than triglycerides.
A new field of research has been opened in fish larvae nutrition, with the study of the effects of some nutrients on the functioning of some metabolic pathways involved in development and their impact on larvae physiology and morphogenesis, as well as the further development of juveniles. These studies revealed cross-talks between some metabolic processes, particularly those concerning vitamin A and polyunsaturated fatty acids, during fish larvae development and unveil the necessity to design a global approach for determining the requirements of some nutrients.
Summary
Background
Several measures have been used to assess the health‐related quality of life (HRQoL) of patients with eosinophilic oesophagitis (EoE).
Aims
To systematically review these HRQoL ...measures, to appraise measurement properties of specific instruments and to evaluate determinant factors influencing HRQoL in paediatric and adult EoE patients.
Methods
We searched the PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science (WOS) and PsycINFO databases for documents providing original information on the development of measurement tools and/or evaluation of HRQoL outcomes in EoE patients of all ages.
Results
Of the 596 references identified, data was collected from 34 studies (with only 16 of them being published as full papers) including a total of 1,689 individual patients. Three disease‐specific HRQoL measures in EoE covering different aspects of patients’ lives and developed in English, were scored positive regarding measurement properties. The PedsQL inventory (including parent and child report forms) and the Peds‐QoL EoE module were the generic and specific instruments respectively used in children, while the SF‐36 and EoE‐QoL‐A were the most used questionnaires in adults. Patients with EoE show an impaired HRQoL compared to controls, which greatly depends on symptom severity and disease duration. Severity of endoscopic features and female gender may also determine an impaired HRQoL. The effect of treatments on HRQoL requires further assessment.
Conclusions
HRQoL is a relevant outcome that should be considered in clinical practice and research of EoE. Further validation studies in several languages and populations are required to support the use of disease‐specific HRQoL measures.
The main goal of this work was to determine the effect of dietary live yeast
Debaryomyces hansenii on the enzymatic antioxidative status of sea bass
Dicentrarchus labrax larvae. Growth, activity and ...expression of the main antioxidative enzymes: catalase (CAT), glutathione peroxidase (GPX) and superoxide dismutase (SOD), and heat shock protein (HSP70) were measured in sea bass larvae at 23 and 48
days after hatching. Larvae were fed on two microdiets: group one, fed microdiet containing live yeast and the control group fed microdiet without yeast. Heat shock protein 70 showed the same expression levels in both fish larvae fed yeast and the control diet. The group fed
D. hansenii showed highest growth and lower activity and expression levels of GPX and SOD compared to fish fed control diet. In our work the differences in activity and gene expression patterns could only be attributed to the presence of yeast, assuming a possible involvement of superoxide anion retention in fish larvae, which could represent importance to the host to increase cell or tissue responsiveness to growth- and/or differentiation-enhancing factors.
Haemal lordosis, a frequent skeletal deformity in teleost fish, has long been correlated with increased mechanical loads induced by swimming activity. In the present study, we examine whether ...juvenile zebrafish can recover from haemal lordosis and explore the musculoskeletal mechanisms involved. Juveniles were subjected to a swimming challenge test (SCT) that induced severe haemal lordosis in 49% of the animals and then immediately transferred them to 0.0 total body lengths (TL) per second of water velocity for a week. The recovery from lordosis was examined by means of whole mount staining, histology and gene expression analysis. Results demonstrate that 80% of the lordotic zebrafish are capable of internal and external recovery within a week after the SCT. Recovered individuals presented normal shape of the vertebral centra, maintaining though distorted internal tissue organization. Through the transcriptomic analysis of the affected haemal regions, several processes related to chromosome organization, DNA replication, circadian clock and transcription regulation were enriched within genes significantly regulated behind this musculoskeletal recovery procedure. Genes especially involved in adipogenesis, bone remodeling and muscular regeneration were regulated. A remodeling tissue-repair hypothesis behind haemal lordosis recovery is raised. Limitations and future possibilities for zebrafish as a model organism to clarify mechanically driven musculoskeletal changes are discussed.
Vitamins D and C are essential in many physiological functions. Vitamin D, a fat soluble vitamin, is crucial to preserve calcium and phosphate homeostasis and to protect the skeletal integrity. This ...hormone functions through the vitamin D receptor (VDR) inducing the expression of various calcium binding and transport proteins in the intestine to stimulate active calcium uptake, thus preserving normocalcemia and, indirectly, maintaining bone mineralization. Besides, vitamin D also acts directly on osteoblasts, the resident bone-forming cells of the skeleton, to inhibit proliferation, modulate differentiation, and regulate mineralization of the extracellular matrix. Vitamin C, a water soluble vitamin, acts as a co-substrate for hydroxylase and oxygenase enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of pro-collagen, carnitine and neurotransmitters, among other numerous physiological functions such as antioxidant or pro-oxidant. Both vitamins should be supplied by the diet because fish are unable to synthesize them. However, their wide range of action makes it difficult to adjust the adequate amount of these vitamins to achieve an optimal fish performance. Besides, the dietary vitamin needs of fish depend on several factors such as developmental stage, physiological, environmental/ecological and genetic conditions. In this sense, vitamin requirements of flatfish do not necessarily meet those of pelagic fish and depends also on their feeding habits (carnivorous, planktivorous or detritivorous); the dietary vitamin demands of an adult fish differ from those of a larva; and even within the same fish species and developmental stage, the environmental conditions would also influence the vitamin needs (i.e., under stress conditions, high vitamin C levels have been demonstrated to improve stress resistance and, consequently, growth).
The present paper gives a general overview about the requirements of vitamins D and C in fish and specifically reviews the role of these vitamins in fish skeletogenesis and their influence in the development of skeletal deformities. In addition, new insights on the molecular pathways involving these vitamins in the skeletal ossification process are provided.
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