Objective
This randomized, double‐blind, placebo‐controlled crossover study assessed the efficacy of topical tocopherol acetate compared with placebo in easing oral discomfort in patients with ...reticular oral lichen planus (ROLP).
Materials and Methods
Thirty‐four patients with clinically diagnosed and histologically confirmed ROLP were randomly assigned to two groups, which received first one of two treatments (treatment 1 or 2) for a month, then the other (treatment 2 or 1) for another month, with a two‐week washout between them. One treatment contained tocopherol acetate and the other only liquid paraffin. The primary outcome was less discomfort, measured on a visual analog scale (VAS). Secondary outcomes were as follows: length of striae measured and photographed at each follow‐up; surface area of lesions; and a modified Thongprasom score.
Results
No statistically significant differences emerged between the two treatments (1 vs 2) in terms of VAS scores (P > 0.05; 0.8624) or length of striae (P = 0.0883). Significant differences were seen for surface area of lesions (P < 0.05, P = 0.0045) and modified Thongprasom scores (P = 0.0052).
Conclusion
The two treatments differed only in terms of the surface area of the lesions and Thongprasom scores, not in VAS scores for discomfort or the length of patients’ striae. Topical tocopherol proved effective in the treatment of ROLP.
The objective of this study was to evaluate possible influences of parenteral nutrition on growth and bone development in preterms and to search for markers of bone status.
Metacarpus bone ...transmission time (mc-BTT) was performed at birth, 21 days and 36 weeks of gestational age (GA) in preterms, receiving two different nutritional regimens, together with biochemical analysis.
A total of 234 patients were studied. Newborns with aggressive nutrition had significantly better growth rate and higher values of mc-BTT until discharge. Mc-BTT at day 21 correlates positively with nutritional intakes and phosphatemia; lower limb length positively correlated with mc-BTT (P<0.01). Newborns with low energy intake in the first week of life (<70 kcal kg(-1) per day) and low serum phosphate level (<1.4 mmol l(-1)) at 21 days had lower mc-BTT at 36 weeks of GA (P<0.01).
Aggressive parenteral intakes in preterms improve growth and bone status in the short-medium term, suggesting that early nutrition could influence bone development.
Response to Nimisha Bacci, C; Vanzo, V; Frigo, A C ...
Oral diseases,
2018-Apr-24
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
We thank Dr Nimisha for the letter and provide a response to the comments raised.Table 1 shows the characteristics and medians of assessment parameters before the two treatment sequences (AB-BA) so ...it corresponds to the baseline of first period cross-over design (the value before receiving treatment A for patients randomized to AB sequence, the value before receiving treatment B for patients randomized to AB sequence).Table 2 shows the medians of assessment parameters before and after each treatment (A and B), in this case the baseline is the baseline of the period 1 for the patients randomized to AB sequence and the baseline of the period 2 for the patients randomized to BA sequence. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
This controlled, randomized, crossover, double-blind study was performed to evaluate the efficacy of tocopherol acetate in terms of improvement of the clinical aspect and the discomfort level in ...patients with oral reticular Oral Lichen Planus comparing the results a Placebo. The authors recruited 26 patients with clinical and histological diagnosis of OLP. Patients were divided in two groups (A and B) according to a randomization list generated by a specifical software (SAS 9.2 for Windows, SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA). This study exploits the role of antioxidant tocopherol as a factor in preventing the oxidation of polyunsaturated fatty acids, in the development of the process of lipid peroxidation. Tocopherol has proven to be a valuable support in the management of OLP reticular, although asymptomatic. Surprisingly, we noticed significant differences between two treatment sequences for two periods, limited the extent of lesions and the scale of Thongprasom; while there has been no statistical significance in the comparison of VAS, nor between the lengths.
In critically ill neonates, peripheral perfusion and oxygenation assessment may provide indirect information on circulatory failure in limb arterial thromboembolic emergencies. Aims of our study ...were: 1) to evaluate the changes on tissue oxygenation index, oxyhemoglobin, deoxyhemoglobin and blood volume obtained by near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) on the infants legs; 2) to compare them with ultrasonographic data.
Tissue oxygenation index (TOI), oxyhemoglobin (O2Hb), deoxyhemoglobin (HHb) and blood volume (BV) differences were assessed by NIRS on the calf of 8 newborn infants (median weight 1995, range 585-3010 g; median gestational age 32.5, range 26-40 wks). An ultrasonographic scan of the arterial system was performed before the NIRS measurements, to validate the site of arterial occlusion.
A t-test for independent samples showed lower values in the affected limb for all NIRS measurements. TOI measurements displayed lower values in the thromboembolic limb (mean 44.79±12%) versus unaffected (mean 47.95±17.08%) (P=0.0001). Mean (SD) peak systolic velocity in the patent artery below the occlusion decreased from 108±25 cm/s in the normal limb to 25.6±28 cm/s in the thrombus site (P=0.02).
In neonatal intensive care units, measurement of limb peripheral perfusion and oxygenation seems to be clinically useful in arterial thromboembolic emergencies.
Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved process that captures aberrant intracellular proteins and/or damaged organelles for delivery to lysosomes, with implications for cellular and organismal ...homeostasis, aging and diverse pathologies, including cancer. During cancer development, autophagy may play both tumour-supporting and tumour-suppressing roles. Any relationships of autophagy to the established oncogene-induced replication stress (RS) and the ensuing DNA damage response (DDR)-mediated anti-cancer barrier in early tumorigenesis remain to be elucidated. Here, assessing potential links between autophagy, RS and DDR, we found that autophagy is enhanced in both early and advanced stages of human urinary bladder and prostate tumorigenesis. Furthermore, a high-content, single-cell-level microscopy analysis of human cellular models exposed to diverse genotoxic insults showed that autophagy is enhanced in cells that experienced robust DNA damage, independently of the cell-cycle position. Oncogene- and drug-induced RS triggered first DDR and later autophagy. Unexpectedly, genetic inactivation of autophagy resulted in RS, despite cellular retention of functional mitochondria and normal ROS levels. Moreover, recovery from experimentally induced RS required autophagy to support DNA synthesis. Consistently, RS due to the absence of autophagy could be partly alleviated by exogenous supply of deoxynucleosides. Our results highlight the importance of autophagy for DNA synthesis, suggesting that autophagy may support cancer progression, at least in part, by facilitating tumour cell survival and fitness under replication stress, a feature shared by most malignancies. These findings have implications for better understanding of the role of autophagy in tumorigenesis, as well as for attempts to manipulate autophagy as an anti-tumour therapeutic strategy.
Long-duration γ-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most luminous sources of electromagnetic radiation known in the Universe. They arise from outflows of plasma with velocities near the speed of light that are ...ejected by newly formed neutron stars or black holes (of stellar mass) at cosmological distances
. Prompt flashes of megaelectronvolt-energy γ-rays are followed by a longer-lasting afterglow emission in a wide range of energies (from radio waves to gigaelectronvolt γ-rays), which originates from synchrotron radiation generated by energetic electrons in the accompanying shock waves
. Although emission of γ-rays at even higher (teraelectronvolt) energies by other radiation mechanisms has been theoretically predicted
, it has not been previously detected
. Here we report observations of teraelectronvolt emission from the γ-ray burst GRB 190114C. γ-rays were observed in the energy range 0.2-1 teraelectronvolt from about one minute after the burst (at more than 50 standard deviations in the first 20 minutes), revealing a distinct emission component of the afterglow with power comparable to that of the synchrotron component. The observed similarity in the radiated power and temporal behaviour of the teraelectronvolt and X-ray bands points to processes such as inverse Compton upscattering as the mechanism of the teraelectronvolt emission
. By contrast, processes such as synchrotron emission by ultrahigh-energy protons
are not favoured because of their low radiative efficiency. These results are anticipated to be a step towards a deeper understanding of the physics of GRBs and relativistic shock waves.
MAGIC, a system of two imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes, achieves its best performance under dark conditions, i.e. in absence of moonlight or twilight. Since operating the telescopes only ...during dark time would severely limit the duty cycle, observations are also performed when the Moon is present in the sky. Here we develop a dedicated Moon-adapted analysis to characterize the performance of MAGIC under moonlight. We evaluate energy threshold, angular resolution and sensitivity of MAGIC under different background light levels, based on Crab Nebula observations and tuned Monte Carlo simulations. This study includes observations taken under non-standard hardware configurations, such as reducing the camera photomultiplier tubes gain by a factor ∼ 1.7 (reduced HV settings) with respect to standard settings (nominal HV) or using UV-pass filters to strongly reduce the amount of moonlight reaching the cameras of the telescopes. The Crab Nebula spectrum is correctly reconstructed in all the studied illumination levels, that reach up to 30 times brighter than under dark conditions. The main effect of moonlight is an increase in the analysis energy threshold and in the systematic uncertainties on the flux normalization. The sensitivity degradation is constrained to be below 10%, within 15–30% and between 60 and 80% for nominal HV, reduced HV and UV-pass filter observations, respectively. No worsening of the angular resolution was found. Thanks to observations during moonlight, the maximal duty cycle of MAGIC can be increased from ∼ 18%, under dark nights only, to up to ∼ 40% in total with only moderate performance degradation.
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