Obesity and especially hypertrophy of epicardial adipose tissue accelerate coronary atherogenesis. We aimed at comparing levels of inflammatory and atherogenic hormones from adipose tissue in the ...pericardial fluid and circulation of cardiovascular disease patients.
Venous plasma (P) and pericardial fluid (PF) were obtained from elective cardiothoracic surgery patients (n = 37). Concentrations of leptin, adipocyte fatty acid-binding protein (A-FABP) and adiponectin (APN) were determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA). The median concentration of leptin in PF (4.3 (interquartile range: 2.8-9.1) μg/L) was comparable to that in P (5.9 (2.2-11) μg/L) and these were significantly correlated to most of the same patient characteristics. The concentration of A-FABP was markedly higher (73 (28-124) versus 8.4 (5.2-14) μg/L) and that of APN was markedly lower (2.8 (1.7-4.2) versus 13 (7.2-19) mg/L) in PF compared to P. APN in PF was unlike in P not significantly related to age, body mass index, plasma triglycerides or coronary artery disease. PF levels of APN, but not A-FABP, were related to the size of paracardial adipocytes. PF levels of APN and A-FABP were not related to the immunoreactivity of paracardial adipocytes for these proteins.
In cardiac and vascular disease patients, PF is enriched in A-FABP and poor in APN. This adipokine microenvironment is more likely determined by the heart than by the circulation or paracardial adipose tissue.
Trying to conceive and being pregnant is an emotional period for those involved. In the majority of patients suffering from inflammatory bowel disease, maintenance therapy is required during ...pregnancy to control the disease, and disease control might necessitate introduction of new drugs during a vulnerable period. In this updated consensus on the reproduction and pregnancy in inflammatory bowel disease reproductive issues including fertility, the safety of drugs during pregnancy and lactation are discussed.
It has been suggested that prenatal exposure to n-3 long-chain fatty acids protects against asthma and other allergy-related diseases later in childhood. The extent to which fish intake in pregnancy ...protects against child asthma and rhinitis symptoms remains unclear. We aimed to assess whether fish and seafood consumption in pregnancy is associated with childhood wheeze, asthma and allergic rhinitis.
We pooled individual data from 60 774 mother-child pairs participating in 18 European and US birth cohort studies. Information on wheeze, asthma and allergic rhinitis prevalence was collected using validated questionnaires. The time periods of interest were: infancy (0-2 years), preschool age (3-4 years), and school age (5-8 years). We used multivariable generalized models to assess associations of fish and seafood (other than fish) consumption during pregnancy with child respiratory outcomes in cohort-specific analyses, with subsequent random-effects meta-analyses.
The median fish consumption during pregnancy ranged from 0.44 times/week in The Netherlands to 4.46 times/week in Spain. Maternal fish intake during pregnancy was not associated with offspring wheeze symptoms in any age group nor with the risk of child asthma adjusted meta-analysis relative risk (RR) per 1-time/week = 1.01, 95% confidence interval 0.97-1.05) and allergic rhinitis at school age (RR = 1.01, 0.99-1.03). These results were consistently found in further analyses by type of fish and seafood consumption and in sensitivity analyses.
We found no evidence supporting a protective association of fish and seafood consumption during pregnancy with offspring symptoms of wheeze, asthma and allergic rhinitis from infancy to mid childhood.
Background
The incidence of neuroendocrine neoplasm (NEN) and related carcinoid syndrome (CaS) has increased markedly in recent decades, and women appear to be more at risk than men. As per other ...tumors, gender may be relevant in influencing the clinical and prognostic characteristics of NEN-associated CS. However, specific data on carcinoid syndrome (CaS) are still lacking.
Purpose
To evaluate gender differences in clinical presentation and outcome of CaS.
Methods
Retrospective analysis of 144 CaS patients from 20 Italian high-volume centers was conducted. Clinical presentation, tumor characteristics, therapies, and outcomes (progression-free survival, PFS, overall survival, OS) were correlated to gender.
Results
Ninety (62.5%) CaS patients were male. There was no gender difference in the site of primary tumor, tumor grade and clinical stage, as well as in treatments. Men were more frequently smokers (37.2%) and alcohol drinkers (17.8%) than women (9.5%,
p
= 0.002, and 3.7%,
p
= 0.004, respectively). Concerning clinical presentation, women showed higher median number of symptoms (
p
= 0.0007), more frequent abdominal pain, tachycardia, and psychiatric disorders than men (53.3% vs 70.4%,
p
= 0.044; 6.7% vs 31.5%,
p
= 0.001; 50.9%
vs
. 26.7%,
p
= 0.003, respectively). Lymph node metastases at diagnosis were more frequent in men than in women (80% vs 64.8%;
p
= 0.04), but no differences in terms of PFS (
p
= 0.51) and OS (
p
= 0.64) were found between gender.
Conclusions
In this Italian cohort, CaS was slightly more frequent in males than females. Gender-related differences emerged in the clinical presentation of CaS, as well as gender-specific risk factors for CaS development. A gender-driven clinical management of these patients should be advisable.
In year 2010, the Province of San Juan – Argentina (South America) produced around 81 947 tons of grape pomace, which is a winery waste by-product. Wineries demand a great quantity of power during ...the three months that winemaking time lasts, which involve a high installed electric power. This power is used mainly for refrigerating the must during the fermentation. The control of temperature is crucial in winemaking as the low temperature preserves subtle fruit characters. An alternative for reducing the requirement of power from the utility electric grid is producing it locally, using the residuals generated by the own wineries. The technology for bioenergy conversion proposed to be implemented in this research for electricity generation is the anaerobic digestion of grape pomace. The aim of this research is to develop the thermodynamic equilibrium analysis of grape pomace anaerobic digestion based on the equilibrium constants for predicting the potential production of biogas and its composition. In addition, a dynamic model of a biogas-fuelled microturbine system for distributed generation applications is derived.
► Proposal of power generation from biogas production using residuals of wineries. ► Development of a thermodynamic model of anaerobic digestion for predicting biogas production. ► Design of a model and control scheme of a biogas-fuelled microturbine (MT) system. ► Validation of developments by digital simulations and experimental results. ► Results show that the MT enables to reduce up to 45% of the power requirements of a winery.
Induction of broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) by HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein immunogens would be a major advance toward an effective vaccine. A critical step in this process is the activation ...of naive B cells expressing germline (gl) antibody precursors that have the potential to evolve into bNAbs. Here, we reengineered the BG505 SOSIP.664 glycoprotein to engage gl precursors of bNAbs that target either the trimer apex or the CD4-binding site. The resulting BG505 SOSIP.v4.1-GT1 trimer binds multiple bNAb gl precursors in vitro. Immunization experiments in knock-in mice expressing gl-VRC01 or gl-PGT121 show that this trimer activates B cells in vivo, resulting in the secretion of specific antibodies into the sera. A crystal structure of the gl-targeting trimer at 3.2-Å resolution in complex with neutralizing antibodies 35O22 and 9H+109L reveals a native-like conformation and the successful incorporation of design features associated with binding of multiple gl-bNAb precursors.
The liver restores its mass and architecture after injury. Yet, investigating morphogenetic cell behaviours and signals that repair tissue architecture at high spatiotemporal resolution remains ...challenging. We developed LiverZap, a tuneable chemoptogenetic liver injury model in zebrafish. LiverZap employs the formation of a binary FAP-TAP photosensitiser followed by brief near-infrared illumination inducing hepatocyte-specific death and recapitulating mammalian liver injury types. The tool enables local hepatocyte ablation and extended live imaging capturing regenerative cell behaviours, which is crucial for studying cellular interactions at the interface of healthy and damaged tissue. Applying LiverZap, we show that targeted hepatocyte ablation in a small region of interest is sufficient to trigger local liver progenitor-like cell (LPC)-mediated regeneration, challenging the current understanding of liver regeneration. Surprisingly, the LPC response is also elicited in adjacent uninjured tissue, at up to 100 µm distance to the injury. Moreover, dynamic biliary network rearrangement suggests active cell movements from uninjured tissue in response to substantial hepatocyte loss as an integral step of LPC-mediated liver regeneration. This precisely targetable liver cell ablation tool will enable the discovery of key molecular and morphogenetic regeneration paradigms.
New physical processes specific for microdosimetry simulation are under development in the Geant4 Low Energy Electromagnetic package. The first set of models implemented for this purpose cover the ...interactions of electrons, protons and light ions in liquid water; they address a physics domain relevant to the simulation of radiation effects in biological systems, where water represents an important component. The design developed for effectively handling particle interactions down to a low energy scale and the physics models implemented in the first public release of the software are described.
The Geant4 Simulation Toolkit provides an ample set of physics models describing electromagnetic interactions of particles with matter. This paper presents the results of a series of comparisons for ...the evaluation of Geant4 electromagnetic processes with respect to United States National Institute of Standards and Technologies (NIST) reference data. A statistical analysis was performed to estimate quantitatively the compatibility of Geant4 electromagnetic models with NIST data; the statistical analysis also highlighted the respective strengths of the different Geant4 models.
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