Background and Aim
Simaba ferruginea
A.St.-Hil. Popularly known as “calunga,” is a typical Brazilian cerrado plant whose rhizomes are popular for treating diarrhea.
Aims
The aim of this study was to ...evaluate the spasmolytic activity and the antidiarrheal effect of the ethanolic extract obtained from
S. ferruginea
(Sf-EtOH).
Methods
Ileal segments (1–2 cm) from male Wistar rats were mounted in isolated organ baths and connected to a force transducer, and then to an amplifier which was connected to a computer (AVS Projetos/São Paulo-SP). After stabilization for 60 min, under tension (1 gf), two submaximal contractions were induced with KCl 40 mM or carbachol 10
−6
M on ileal segments. During the third tonic and sustained contraction, Sf-EtOH was added in cumulative concentrations to the organ bath. Incubations with L-NAME (10
−4
M), ODQ (10
−5
M), TEA
+
(5 or 1 mM), glibenclamide (10
−5
M), or apamine (100 nM) were prepared (
n
= 5), separately and used to verify the involvement of the nitric oxide synthase, guanylate cyclase, and potassium channels in the relaxing effect. The results were expressed as mean ± standard error of the mean and were statistically evaluated using one-way ANOVA followed by Bonferroni test, when necessary *
p
< 0.05.
Results
Sf-EtOH promotes relaxation on rat isolated ileum pre-contracted with CCh and KCl in a concentration-dependent manner. Sf-EtOH also inhibited ileum contractions against cumulative concentrations of carbachol (CCh), KCl, and CaCl
2
, shifting the curves to the right in a non-parallel manner with an
E
max
reduction. In the presence of potassium channel blockers, Sf-EtOH shifted the curves to the right with a reduction of
E
max
, suggesting the involvement of BK
Ca
, K
ATP
, and SK
Ca
in its spasmolytic effect. In the presence of L-NAME or ODQ, the relaxation curves were shifted to the right, suggesting the involvement of this pathway in Sf-EtOH spasmolytic effect.
Conclusions
Sf-EtOH acts in a concentration-dependent manner, involving the positive modulation of K
+
channels and NO pathway.
Training machine learning models for artificial intelligence (AI) applications in pathology often requires extensive annotation by human experts, but there is little guidance on the subject. In this ...work, we aimed to describe our experience and provide a simple, useful, and practical guide addressing annotation strategies for AI development in computational pathology. Annotation methodology will vary significantly depending on the specific study’s objectives, but common difficulties will be present across different settings. We summarize key aspects and issue guiding principles regarding team interaction, ground-truth quality assessment, different annotation types, and available software and hardware options and address common difficulties while annotating. This guide was specifically designed for pathology annotation, intending to help pathologists, other researchers, and AI developers with this process.
Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are responsible for a high mortality rate worldwide. One of the most common causes of CVDs is vascular inflammation associated to atherosclerosis. Inflammatory ...biomarkers are used to assist the detection of CVDs and monitor their evaluation, prognosis and therapy implementation. C-reactive protein (CRP) is an acute phase protein produced after stimulation by pro-inflammatory cytokines. CRP is a biomarker of the inflammatory reaction and an important mediator of atherosclerosis. Given it actively contributes to the development of the atherosclerotic plaque, instability and subsequent clot formation it is also considered a CVD risk factor. Since 2010, the plasma concentration of hsCRP (high sensitivity CRP) has been used as a biomarker for disease prognosis in patients with intermediate risk for CVDs. It could be useful to establish a high concentration limit of hsCRP that can be used by clinicians for diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction, cardio embolic or ischemic stroke, and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. The end cost/effectiveness of hsCRP screening is still an area of controversy but it is a priority to make the medical community aware of the positive relation between high hsCRP and CVDs to improve median survival and life quality of the patients.
Aim
This topical review presents common patients’ misbeliefs about temporomandibular disorders (TMD) and discusses their possible impact on the diagnosis, treatment and prognosis. We also discussed ...the possible influence of the beliefs and behaviours of healthcare providers on the beliefs of patients with TMD and suggested possible strategies to overcome the negative impacts of such misbeliefs.
Methods
This topical review was based on a non‐systematic search for studies about the beliefs of patients and healthcare professionals about TMD in PubMed and Embase.
Results
Patients’ beliefs can negatively impact the diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of TMD. These beliefs can be modulated by several factors such as culture, psychosocial aspects, gender, level of knowledge and previous experiences. Moreover, primary healthcare professionals, including dentists, may lack sufficient experience and skills regarding TMD diagnosis and treatment. Misbeliefs of the healthcare professionals can be based on outdated evidence that is not supported by rigorous methodological investigations. Education and dissemination of knowledge to patients and the general population are effective for prevention, promotion of health and disruption of the cycle of misinformation and dissemination of misbeliefs.
Conclusion
The lack of basic information about TMD and the dissemination of mistaken and outdated concepts may delay the diagnosis, hinder the treatment, and consequently increase the risk of worsening the condition. Education is key to overcome TMD misbeliefs.
Misbeliefs about temporomandibular disorders (TMD) can be the result of patients beliefs but are also influenced by the health care professionals. TMD misbeliefs can negatively impact the TMD management. Education strategies can disrupt the cycle of misbeliefs.
Most oncological cases can be detected by imaging techniques, but diagnosis is based on pathological assessment of tissue samples. In recent years, the pathology field has evolved to a digital era ...where tissue samples are digitised and evaluated on screen. As a result, digital pathology opened up many research opportunities, allowing the development of more advanced image processing techniques, as well as artificial intelligence (AI) methodologies. Nevertheless, despite colorectal cancer (CRC) being the second deadliest cancer type worldwide, with increasing incidence rates, the application of AI for CRC diagnosis, particularly on whole-slide images (WSI), is still a young field. In this review, we analyse some relevant works published on this particular task and highlight the limitations that hinder the application of these works in clinical practice. We also empirically investigate the feasibility of using weakly annotated datasets to support the development of computer-aided diagnosis systems for CRC from WSI. Our study underscores the need for large datasets in this field and the use of an appropriate learning methodology to gain the most benefit from partially annotated datasets. The CRC WSI dataset used in this study, containing 1,133 colorectal biopsy and polypectomy samples, is available upon reasonable request.
Breast cancer treatments can have a negative impact on breast aesthetics, in case when surgery is intended to intersect tumor. For many years mastectomy was the only surgical option, but more ...recently breast conserving surgery (BCS) has been promoted as a liable alternative to treat cancer while preserving most part of the breast. However, there is still a significant number of BCS intervened patients who are unpleasant with the result of the treatment, which leads to self-image issues and emotional overloads. Surgeons recognize the value of a tool to predict the breast shape after BCS to facilitate surgeon/patient communication and allow more educated decisions; however, no such tool is available that is suited for clinical usage. These tools could serve as a way of visually sensing the aesthetic consequences of the treatment. In this research, it is intended to propose a methodology for predict the deformation after BCS by using machine learning techniques. Nonetheless, there is no appropriate dataset containing breast data before and after surgery in order to train a learning model. Therefore, an in-house semi-synthetic dataset is proposed to fulfill the requirement of this research. Using the proposed dataset, several learning methodologies were investigated, and promising outcomes are obtained.
Type 2 diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) is characterized by chronically increased blood glucose levels, which is associated with impairment of the inflammatory and oxidative state and dyslipidaemia. Although ...it is considered a world heath concern and one of the most studied diseases, we are still pursuing an effective therapy for both the pathophysiological mechanisms and the complications. Curcumin, a natural compound found in the rhizome of
Curcuma longa
, is well known for its numerous biological activities, as demonstrated by several studies supporting that curcumin possesses hypoglycaemic, hypolipidemic, anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, among others. These effects have been explored to the attenuation of hyperglycaemia and progression of DM complications, being appointed as a potential therapeutic approach. Besides its strong intrinsic activity, the polyphenol has low bioavailability, compromising its therapeutic efficacy. In order to overcome this limitation, several chemical strategies have been applied to curcumin, such as drug delivery systems, chemical manipulation and the use of adjuvant therapies. Given the promising results obtained with curcumin derivative, in this review we discuss not only the therapeutic targets of curcumin, but also its most recently developed analogues and their efficacy in the management of T2DM pathophysiology and complications.
The intelligent management of built cultural heritage, including heritage buildings, requires common semantics in the form of standardized ontologies to achieve semantic interoperability. ...Foundational ontologies should be reused when building new ontologies, as they provide high-level terms; however, candidate foundational ontologies should be evaluated for quality and pitfalls. Simple metrics (e.g., number of concepts) are easy to obtain with existing tools. Complex metrics such as quality of ontology structure, functional adequacy, transferability, reliability, compatibility, maintainability, and operability, are defined in recent ontology evaluation frameworks; however, these do not evaluate interoperability features. The paper proposes an improved framework for an automated ontology evaluation based on the OQuaRE framework. Our approach improved some of the metrics of the OQuaRE framework and introduced three metrics for assessing the interoperability of the ontology in question (Externes, Composability, and Aggregability). In the experimental section, the framework is validated in an evaluation of cultural heritage information ontology (CIDOC CRM—ISO 12217:2014) with the use of new software for ontology evaluation. The detailed results reveal that the ontology is minimally acceptable and that the improved evaluation framework efficiently integrated interoperability metrics. Recommendations for the improvement of the cultural heritage information ontology are described in the Discussion and Conclusions section.
Carbon monoxide (CO) is an endogenously produced gasotransmitter with important biological functions: anti‐inflammation, anti‐apoptosis, vasomodulation and cell metabolism modulation. The most ...recognized cellular target for CO is the mitochondria. Physiological concentrations of CO generate mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (ROS), which are signalling molecules for CO‐induced pathways. Indeed, small amounts of ROS promote cytoprotection by a preconditioning effect. Furthermore, CO prevents cell death by limiting mitochondrial membrane permeabilization, which inhibits the release of pro‐apoptotic factors into the cytosol; both events are ROS dependent. CO also increases the ability of mitochondria to take up Ca2+. Mitochondrial metabolism is modulated by CO, namely by increasing TCA cycle rate, oxidative phosphorylation and mitochondrial biogenesis, which, in turn, increases ATP production. CO's modulation of metabolism might be important for cellular response to diseases, namely cancer and ischaemic diseases. Finally, another cytoprotective role of CO involves the control of Ca2+ channels. By limiting the activity of T‐type and L‐type Ca2+ channels, CO prevents excitotoxicity‐induced cell death and modulates cell proliferation. Several questions concerning Ca2+ signalling, mitochondria and CO can be asked, for instance whether CO modulation of cell metabolism would be dependent on the mitochondrial Ca2+ uptake capacity, since small amounts of Ca2+ can increase mitochondrial metabolism. Whether CO controls Ca2+ communication between mitochondria and endoplasmic reticulum is another open field of research. In summary, CO emerges as a key gasotransmitter in the control of several cellular functions of mitochondria: metabolism, cell death and Ca2+ signalling.
Carbon monoxide action on cellular targets: facts and hypotheses. CO inhibits Ca2+ channels located in the cytoplasmic membrane, promoting cytoprotection. At the mitochondrial level, CO has beneficial effects in a ROS‐dependent manner: it decreases mitochondrial membrane permeabilization and consequently inhibits cell death, promotes mitochondrial metabolism and improves mitochondrial Ca2+ uptake ability. In the upper‐right panel, it is hypothesized that CO is involved in Ca2+ balance between ER and mitochondria and that CO modulates mitochondrial metabolism via Ca2+ signalling.
Intervention projects for historical buildings depend on the quality of multidisciplinary data sets; their collection, structure, and semantics. Building information model (BIM) based workflows for ...historical buildings accumulate some of the data sets in a shared information model that contains the building’s geometry assemblies with associated attributes (such as material). A BIM model of any building can be a source of data for different engineering assessments, for example, solar and wind exposure and seismic vulnerability, but for historic buildings it is particularly important for interventions like conservation, rehabilitation, and improvements such as refurbishment and retrofitting. When the BIM model is abstracted to a semantic model, enabling the use of semantic technologies such as reasoning and querying, semantic links can be established to other historical contexts. The semantic technologies help historic building experts to aggregate data into meaningful form. Ontologies provide them with an accurate knowledge representation of the concepts, relationships, and rules related to the historic building. In the paper, we are proposing an improved workflow for the transformation of a heritage BIM model to a semantic model. In the BIM part the workflow demonstrates how the fully parametric modelling of historical building components is relevant, for example, in terms of reusability and adaptation to a different context. In the semantic model part, ontology reuse, reasoning, and querying mechanisms are applied to validate the usability of the proposed workflow. The presented work will improve knowledge-sharing and reuse among stakeholders involved in historic building projects.
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