Colorectal cancer screening is fundamental to decreased mortality related to the target disease. This pathology is diffused worldwide for both men and women and its curability rate, when identified ...at stage I, is up to 90%. Fecal occult blood test is currently the methodology adopted in many countries as a screening on population, but it shows a very high percentage of false positives, leading to non-operative colonoscopies performed on people who are often elderly and already debilitated. The use of an economic and easy-to-use method alongside fecal occult blood test would improve effectiveness of the screening. Here, the results so far obtained in the clinical validation protocol, started in May 2016, using a patented device with a core of chemoresistive gas sensors, are shown. The device can identify the difference between the fecal exhalation odor of two categories of subjects: healthy and those affected by high-risk adenomas or tumors. Moreover, further calibration of the instrument for the recognition of low-risk adenomas is on-going. The tests are compared to fecal occult blood test positives and colonoscopy results. In this work the most recent results as well as improvements in screening method are presented, useful for future large-scale production of the device.
Among the major challenges of medicine today there is the early detection of tumors, in order to prevent their degeneration into malignant stages and/or metastases. In particular, the colorectal ...cancer shows a high curability rate, up to 90%, if identified when in stage I. This is the reason why a reliable screening protocol is strictly necessary to avoid colorectal cancer progression. The Protocol discussed here is proposed to implement the clinical validation of a device, consisting of an array of chemoresistive semiconductor gas sensors, capable of identifying the difference between fecal exhalation of healthy subjects and of subjects suffering from high-risk colorectal adenomas or cancers. The analysis done are compared to the results of fecal occult blood test and colonoscopy as a gold standard. The difference among the two classes of fecal samples is due to the presence of tumor gaseous biomarkers, produced by cancerous cells through membrane peroxidation process and metabolic alterations. Our method combines a specific algorithm appositely created for data acquisition with principal component analysis and support vector machine. The test resulted capable of recognizing all the colorectal cancer plus high risk adenomas and the 98% of healthy subjects. The recognition capability of low-risk adenomas is progressively increasing (45%) along with statistics.
Objective
To assess the effectiveness of an HPV vaccination programme in reducing the risk of cervical abnormalities identified at subsequent screening.
Design
Retrospective cohort study using ...administrative health data.
Setting
General population of Ferrara Province, Italy.
Population
Female residents born in 1986–1993 and participating in the organized cervical screening programme in 2011–2018, who were eligible for HPV vaccination in catch‐up cohorts.
Methods
Logistic regression to evaluate the potential association between abnormal cervical cytology and one, two, three or at least one dose of HPV vaccine.
Main outcome measures
Cervical abnormalities, as predicted by low‐grade or high‐grade cytology, by number of vaccine doses, stratified by age.
Results
The sample consisted of 7785 women (mean age 27.5 years, SD 2.3). Overall, 391 (5.0%) were vaccinated with ≥1 dose and 893 (11.5%) had abnormal cytology. Women receiving at least one vaccine dose were significantly less likely to have an abnormal cytology (adjusted odds ratio 0.52; 95% confidence interval 0.34–0.79). Similar results were observed for women receiving a single dose, for both bivalent and quadrivalent vaccines, and applying buffer periods (excluding cytological outcomes within 1 month, 6 months and 1 year of the first dose).
Conclusions
In the context of an organised cervical screening programme in Italy, catch‐up HPV vaccination almost halved the risk of cytological abnormalities.
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Among Ferrara women, vaccination against human papillomavirus halved the risk of screening cervical abnormalities.
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Among Ferrara women, vaccination against human papillomavirus halved the risk of screening cervical abnormalities.
The study was directed towards determining the feasibility of using soda-lime scrap-glass as a fluxing agent in a porcelain stoneware tile mix. Both laboratory and industrial scale tests were carried ...out. Starting from a reference mix composition, different amounts (5–20 wt.%) of sodium feldspar were replaced with the same amounts of soda-lime scrap-glass. The soda-lime scrap-glass was added in the form of powder, prepared by wet grinding in a centrifugal ball mill. The rheological study of the resulting slips showed that increasing the amount of glass in the mix composition increased the viscosity but decreased the yield stress. Both the laboratory experiments and results of industrial trials showed that the only mix in which the soda-lime glass acted as a good fluxing agent, i.e. lowered the firing temperature, was the mix in which the scrap-glass replaced 10 wt.% of the sodium feldspar. This mix also showed better mechanical characteristics, attributed to enhanced microstructural homogeneity.
The crack paths, induced by Vickers indentation in alumina–zirconia composites, were analyzed using fractal geometry. The fractal dimension
n
S was calculated for each crack. This parameter refers to ...a corresponding three-dimensional fracture surface and indicates how its geometry varies by changing the magnification. An interesting correlation between
K
IC and
n
S was found: it suggests that the samples with high percentages of alumina and also the pure zirconia are characterized by an intergranular fracture mode, while the composites with high zirconia content present a transgranular fracture mode. This result is confirmed by analyzing the energies of fracture calculated using both the classical and fractal approaches. The results obtained in this research not only made it possible to understand the fracture behavior of the analyzed composites, but also confirmed the good potential of fractal analysis to explain complex mechanisms such as those involved in the fracture of brittle materials.
A study was carried out to evaluate a new formulation of silk screen paint developed with the objective of changing the traditional, expensive milling process as well as replacing the organic milling ...medium with a water-based solution. The new and traditional formulations are compared on the basis of their rheological properties. Some oscillatory tests were found to be useful to study milling conditions that simulate the industrial preparation process.
Se ha llevado a cabo un estudio para evaluar una nueva fórmula de pasta serigráifca desarrollada con el objetivo de cambiar el proceso tradicional de molienda cuyo coste es más elevado y para reemplazar el vehículo serigráfico de molienda orgánico por uno acuoso. Las dos fórmulas, la nueva y la tradicional, se han comparado en función de sus propiedades reológicas. Las mediciones en régimen oscilatorio han resultado muy útiles para obtener las condiciones de molienda en laboratorio que mejor simularan las condiciones a nivel industrial.
NMR Relaxation and Imaging have been applied to study preparation processes of ceramic porous samples. Relaxation analysis gives a clear characterization of the materials, with high sensitivity. ...Differences in the method of preparation and steps as low as 25°C in the firing temperatures are well detectable. Furthermore, the images permit distinguishing the different samples. The effects of the contrast in relaxation times dominate those due to the different porosities of the samples. Scanning Electron Microscopy confirms the interpretation that the changes in relaxation times are due to different pore space structures associated with the different firing temperatures. The higher the firing temperature, the larger are the pores and the higher is the amount of compact, sintered matrix, leading to higher relaxation times.
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