The aim of this systematic review was to summarize the results of trials evaluating interventions for the reduction of sarcopenia in patients undergoing surgery.
Searches were conducted using the ...Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, MEDLINE and Embase. RCTs evaluating exercise, dietary or pharmacological interventions to address sarcopenia in the perioperative period were included. Treatment effect estimates were expressed as standardized mean differences (MDs) with confidence intervals, and heterogeneity was expressed as I2 values.
Seventy trials including 3402 participants were selected for the data synthesis. Exercise interventions significantly increased muscle mass (MD 0.62, 95 per cent c.i. 0.34 to 0.90; P < 0.001), muscle strength (MD 0.55, 0.39 to 0.71; P < 0.001), measures of gait speed (MD 0.42, 0.05 to 0.79; P = 0.03), and reduced time for completion of set exercises (MD -0.76, -1.12 to -0.40; P < 0.001) compared with controls. Subgroup analysis showed that interventions in the early postoperative period were more likely to have a positive effect on muscle mass (MD 0.71, 0.35 to 1.07; P < 0.001) and timed tests (MD -0.70, -1.10 to -0.30; P = 0.005) than preoperative interventions. Treatment effects on muscle mass (MD 0.09, -0.31 to 0.49; P = 0.66) and strength (MD 0.46, -0.01 to 0.92; P = 0.05) were attenuated by the presence of cancer. Results of analyses restricted to nine trials at low risk of allocation concealment bias and fourteen trials at low risk of attrition bias were comparable to those of the primary analysis. Risk-of-bias assessment showed that most trials were at high risk of incomplete outcome and attrition bias, thus reducing the estimate of certainty of the evidence according to the GRADE assessment tool.
Exercise interventions appear beneficial in reducing the impact of sarcopenia. Because of the high risk of bias and low certainty of the current evidence, large RCTs using standardized measures of muscle mass should be undertaken.
The electron-positron collider DA Phi NE, the Italian Phi factory, has been recently upgraded in order to implement an innovative collision scheme based on large crossing angle, small beam sizes at ...the crossing point, and compensation of beam-beam interaction by means of sextupole pairs creating a "crab-waist" configuration in the interaction region. Experimental tests of the novel scheme exhibited an increase by a factor of 3 in the peak luminosity of the collider with respect to the performances reached before the upgrade. In this Letter we present the new collision scheme, discuss its advantages, describe the hardware modifications realized for the upgrade, and report the results of the experimental tests carried out during commissioning of the machine in the new configuration and standard operation for the users.
Summary
The advent of modern treatments together with the improvement of the surgical techniques has significantly increased 5‐year survival rates of young patients with cancer. Although the ...deleterious effects of chemotherapy and radiation are well documented, controversies exist about the effect of cancer itself on semen parameters before treatment. We collected data on 236 patients representative of different types of cancers reoffered at our institution for sperm cryopreservation with the aim to correlate the pre‐freeze semen parameters with type of cancer, disease stage and with semen quality of 102 fertile and healthy men. The median baseline semen parameters of all our patients with cancer are placed above the 5th percentile of the World Health Organization reference value, but the type of cancer may impact the sperm parameters. In testicular tumours and in Hodgkin lymphoma, we show a semen concentration statistically lower than in the fertile population, while in patients with other cancers, there is no difference with the healthy men. We found no correlation between semen quality and disease stage. Eighty‐six per cent of our patients do not have children at the time of semen cryopreservation, and the only established clinical option for preserving fertility of these men is cryopreservation of spermatozoa.
We have searched for a deeply bound kaonic state by using the FINUDA spectrometer installed at the e(+)e(-) collider DAPhiNE. Almost monochromatic K(-)'s produced through the decay of phi(1020) ...mesons are used to observe K(-) absorption reactions stopped on very thin nuclear targets. Taking this unique advantage, we have succeeded to detect a kaon-bound state K(-)pp through its two-body decay into a Lambda hyperon and a proton. The binding energy and the decay width are determined from the invariant-mass distribution as 115(+6)(-5)(stat)(+3)(-4)(syst) MeV and 67(+14)(-11)(stat)(+2)(-3)(syst) MeV, respectively.
CYGNO is a project realising a cubic meter demonstrator to study the scalability of the performance of the optical approach for the readout of large-volume, GEM-equipped TPC. This is part of the ...CYGNUS proto-collaboration which aims at constructing a network of underground observatories for directional Dark Matter search. The combined use of high-granularity sCMOS and fast sensors for reading out the light produced in GEM channels during the multiplication processes was shown to allow on one hand to reconstruct 3D direction of the tracks, offering accurate energy measurements and sensitivity to the source directionality and, on the other hand, a high particle identification capability very useful to distinguish nuclear recoils. Results of the performed R&D and future steps toward a 30-100 cubic meter experiment will be presented.
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