Background and purpose
Specific respiratory tract infections, including COVID‐19, may cause smell and/or taste disorders (STDs) with increased frequency. The aim was to determine whether new‐onset ...STDs are more frequent amongst COVID‐19 patients than influenza patients.
Method
This was a case–control study including hospitalized patients of two tertiary care centres. Consecutive patients positive for COVID‐19 polymerase chain reaction (cases) and patients positive for influenza polymerase chain reaction (historical control sample) were assessed during specific periods, employing a self‐reported STD questionnaire.
Results
Seventy‐nine cases and 40 controls were included. No significant differences were found in basal features between the two groups. New‐onset STDs were significantly more frequent amongst cases (31, 39.2%) than in the control group (5, 12.5 %) adjusted odds ratio 21.4 (2.77–165.4, P = 0.003). COVID‐19 patients with new‐onset STDs were significantly younger than COVID‐19 patients without STDs (52.6 ± 17.2 vs. 67.4 ± 15.1, P < 0.001). Amongst COVID‐19 patients who presented STDs, 22 (70.9%) recalled an acute onset and it was an initial manifestation in 11 (35.5%). Twenty‐five (80.6%) presented smell disorders (mostly anosmia, 14, 45.2%) and 28 (90.3%) taste disorders (mostly ageusia, 14, 45.2%). Only four (12.9 %) reported concomitant nasal obstruction. The mean duration of STD was 7.5 ± 3.2 days and 12 patients (40%) manifested complete recovery after 7.4 ± 2.3 days of onset.
Conclusion
New‐onset STDs were significantly more frequent amongst COVID‐19 patients than influenza patients; they usually had an acute onset and were commonly an initial manifestation. The use of STD assessment in anamnesis as a hint for COVID‐19 and to support individuals’ self‐isolation in the current epidemic context is suggested.
Abstract The aim of this experimental study is to predict the long-term mechanical behavior of a porous scaffold implanted in a cartilage defect for tissue engineering purpose. Fatigue studies were ...performed by up to 100,000 unconfined compression cycles in a polycaprolactone (PCL) scaffold with highly interconnected pores architecture. The scaffold compliance, stress–strain response and hysteresis energy have been measured after different number of fatigue cycles, while the morphology has been observed by scanning electron microscopy at the same fatigue times. To simulate the growing tissue in the scaffold/tissue construct, the scaffold was filled with an aqueous solution of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and subjected to repeating cycles of freezing and thawing that increase the hydrogel stiffness. Fatigue studies show that the mechanical loading provokes failure of the dry scaffold at a smaller number of deformation cycles than when it is immersed in water, and also that 100,000 compressive dynamic cycles do not affect the scaffold/gel construct. This shows the stability of the scaffold implanted in a chondral defect and gives a realistic simulation of the mechanical performance from implantation of the empty scaffold to regeneration of the new tissue inside the scaffold׳s pores.
Purpose
Advanced glycation end products (AGEs) can be formed in foods by the reaction of reducing sugars with proteins, and have been shown to induce insulin resistance and obesity in experimental ...studies. We examined the association between dietary AGEs intake and changes in body weight in adults over an average of 5 years of follow-up.
Methods
A total of 255,170 participants aged 25–70 years were recruited in ten European countries (1992–2000) in the PANACEA study (Physical Activity, Nutrition, Alcohol, Cessation of smoking, Eating out of home in relation to Anthropometry), a sub-cohort of the EPIC (European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition). Body weight was measured at recruitment and self-reported between 2 and 11 years later depending on the study center. A reference database for AGEs was used containing UPLC–MS/MS-measured N
ε
-(carboxymethyl)-lysine (CML), N
ε
-(1-carboxyethyl)-lysine (CEL), and N
δ
-(5-hydro-5-methyl-4-imidazolon-2-yl)-ornithine (MG-H1) in 200 common European foods. This reference database was matched to foods and decomposed recipes obtained from country-specific validated dietary questionnaires in EPIC and intake levels of CEL, CML, and MG-H1 were estimated. Associations between dietary AGEs intake and body weight change were estimated separately for each of the three AGEs using multilevel mixed linear regression models with center as random effect and dietary AGEs intake and relevant confounders as fixed effects.
Results
A one-SD increment in CEL intake was associated with 0.111 kg (95% CI 0.087–0.135) additional weight gain over 5 years. The corresponding additional weight gain for CML and MG-H1 was 0.065 kg (0.041–0.089) and 0.034 kg (0.012, 0.057), respectively. The top six food groups contributing to AGEs intake, with varying proportions across the AGEs, were cereals/cereal products, meat/processed meat, cakes/biscuits, dairy, sugar and confectionary, and fish/shellfish.
Conclusion
In this study of European adults, higher intakes of AGEs were associated with marginally greater weight gain over an average of 5 years of follow-up.
Although a large amount of acoustic indicators have already been proposed in the literature to evaluate the hypokinetic dysarthria of people with Parkinson's Disease, the goal of this work is to ...identify and interpret new reliable and complementary articulatory biomarkers that could be applied to predict/evaluate Parkinson's Disease from a diadochokinetic test, contributing to the possibility of a further multidimensional analysis of the speech of parkinsonian patients. The new biomarkers proposed are based on the kinetic behaviour of the envelope trace, which is directly linked with the articulatory dysfunctions introduced by the disease since the early stages. The interest of these new articulatory indicators stands on their easiness of identification and interpretation, and their potential to be translated into computer based automatic methods to screen the disease from the speech. Throughout this paper, the accuracy provided by these acoustic kinetic biomarkers is compared with the one obtained with a baseline system based on speaker identification techniques. Results show accuracies around 85% that are in line with those obtained with the complex state of the art speaker recognition techniques, but with an easier physical interpretation, which open the possibility to be transferred to a clinical setting.
In the past few years, 3D electron microscopy (3DEM) has undergone a revolution in instrumentation and methodology. One of the central players in this wide-reaching change is the continuous ...development of image processing software. Here we present Scipion, a software framework for integrating several 3DEM software packages through a workflow-based approach. Scipion allows the execution of reusable, standardized, traceable and reproducible image-processing protocols. These protocols incorporate tools from different programs while providing full interoperability among them. Scipion is an open-source project that can be downloaded from http://scipion.cnb.csic.es.
The Galactic center supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) is one of the most promising targets to study the dynamics of black hole accretion and outflow via direct imaging with very long ...baseline interferometry (VLBI). At 3.5 mm (86 GHz), the emission from Sgr A* is resolvable with the Global Millimeter VLBI Array (GMVA). We present the first observations of Sgr A* with the phased Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) joining the GMVA. Our observations achieve an angular resolution of ∼87 as, improving upon previous experiments by a factor of two. We reconstruct a first image of the unscattered source structure of Sgr A* at 3.5 mm, mitigating the effects of interstellar scattering. The unscattered source has a major-axis size of 120 34 as (12 3.4 Schwarzschild radii) and a symmetrical morphology (axial ratio of ), which is further supported by closure phases consistent with zero within 3 . We show that multiple disk-dominated models of Sgr A* match our observational constraints, while the two jet-dominated models considered are constrained to small viewing angles. Our long-baseline detections to ALMA also provide new constraints on the scattering of Sgr A*, and we show that refractive scattering effects are likely to be weak for images of Sgr A* at 1.3 mm with the Event Horizon Telescope. Our results provide the most stringent constraints to date for the intrinsic morphology and refractive scattering of Sgr A*, demonstrating the exceptional contribution of ALMA to millimeter VLBI.
Background
The impact of chemotherapy‐associated liver injury (CALI) on postoperative outcome in patients undergoing partial hepatectomy for colorectal liver metastases (CRLM) remains controversial. ...The objective of this study was to clarify the effect of CALI (sinusoidal dilatation (SD), steatosis and steatohepatitis) on postoperative morbidity and mortality by investigating a large data set from multiple international centres.
Methods
PubMed and Embase were searched for studies published between 1 January 2004 and 31 December 2013 with keywords ‘chemotherapy’, ‘liver resection’, ‘outcome’ and ‘colorectal metastases’ to identify potential collaborating centres. Univariable and multivariable analyses were performed using binary logistic regression models, with results presented as odds ratios (ORs) with 95 per cent confidence intervals.
Results
A consolidated database comprising 788 patients who underwent hepatectomy for CRLM in eight centres was obtained. In multivariable analyses, severe SD was associated with increased major morbidity (Dindo–Clavien grade III–V; OR 1·73, 95 per cent c.i. 1·02 to 2·95; P = 0·043). Severe steatosis was associated with decreased liver surgery‐specific complications (OR 0·52, 95 per cent c.i. 0·27 to 1·00; P = 0·049), whereas steatohepatitis was linked to an increase in these complications (OR 2·08, 1·18 to 3·66; P = 0·012). Subgroup analysis showed that lobular inflammation was the sole component associated with increased overall morbidity (OR 2·22, 1·48 to 3·34; P = 0·001) and liver surgery‐specific complications (OR 3·35, 2·11 to 5·32; P < 0·001). Finally, oxaliplatin treatment was linked to severe SD (OR 2·74, 1·67 to 4·49; P < 0·001).
Conclusion
An increase in postoperative major morbidity and liver surgery‐specific complications was observed after partial hepatectomy in patients with severe SD and steatohepatitis. Postoperative liver failure occurred more often in patients with severe SD.
Increased complications in severe sinusoidal dilatation and steatohepatitis
The Southern Parkes Large-Area Survey in Hydroxyl (SPLASH) is a sensitive, unbiased, and fully sampled survey of the southern Galactic plane and Galactic Centre in all four ground-state transitions ...of the hydroxyl (OH) radical. The survey provides a deep census of 1612-, 1665-, 1667-, and 1720-MHz OH absorption and emission from the Galactic interstellar medium, and is also an unbiased search for maser sources in these transitions. We present here first results from the SPLASH pilot region, which covers Galactic longitudes 334° to 344° and latitudes ±2°. Diffuse OH is widely detected in all four transitions, with optical depths that are always small (averaged over the Parkes beam), and with departures from local thermodynamic equilibrium common even in the 1665- and 1667-MHz main lines. To a 3σ sensitivity of ∼30 mK, we find no evidence of OH envelopes extending beyond the CO-bright regions of molecular cloud complexes, and conclude that the similarity of the OH excitation temperature and the level of the continuum background is at least partly responsible for this. We detect masers and maser candidates in all four transitions, approximately 50 per cent of which are new detections. This implies that SPLASH will produce a substantial increase in the known population of ground-state OH masers in the southern Galactic plane.
ABSTRACT This work presents the first characterization of the internal structure of overpressured, steady superfast-magnetosonic relativistic jets in connection with their dominant type of energy. To ...this aim, relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of different jet models threaded by a helical magnetic field have been analyzed covering a wide region in the magnetosonic Mach number-specific internal energy plane. The merit of this plane is that models dominated by different types of energy (internal energy: hot jets; rest-mass energy: kinetically dominated jets; magnetic energy: Poynting-flux-dominated jets) occupy well-separated regions. The analyzed models also cover a wide range of magnetizations. Models dominated by the internal energy (i.e., hot models, or Poynting-flux-dominated jets with magnetizations larger than but close to one) have a rich internal structure characterized by a series of recollimation shocks and present the largest variations in the flow Lorentz factor (and internal energy density). Conversely, in kinetically dominated models, there is not much internal or magnetic energy to be converted into kinetic, and the jets are featureless with small variations in the flow Lorentz factor. The presence of a significant toroidal magnetic field threading the jet produces large gradients in the transversal profile of the internal energy density. Poynting-flux-dominated models with high magnetization ( 10 or larger) are prone to be unstable against magnetic pinch modes, which sets limits on the expected magnetization in parsec-scale active galactic nucleus jets or constrains their magnetic field configuration.
Summary
Background
The most commonly used second‐line Helicobacter pylori eradication regimens are bismuth‐containing quadruple therapy and levofloxacin‐containing triple therapy, both offering ...suboptimal results. Combining bismuth and levofloxacin may enhance the efficacy of rescue eradication regimens.
Aims
To evaluate the efficacy and tolerability of a second‐line quadruple regimen containing levofloxacin and bismuth in patients whose previous H. pylori eradication treatment failed.
Methods
This was a prospective multicenter study including patients in whom a standard triple therapy (PPI–clarithromycin–amoxicillin) or a non‐bismuth quadruple therapy (PPI–clarithromycin–amoxicillin–metronidazole, either sequential or concomitant) had failed. Esomeprazole (40 mg b.d.), amoxicillin (1 g b.d.), levofloxacin (500 mg o.d.) and bismuth (240 mg b.d.) was prescribed for 14 days. Eradication was confirmed by 13C‐urea breath test. Compliance was determined through questioning and recovery of empty medication envelopes. Incidence of adverse effects was evaluated by questionnaires.
Results
200 patients were included consecutively (mean age 47 years, 67% women, 13% ulcer). Previous failed therapy included: standard clarithromycin triple therapy (131 patients), sequential (32) and concomitant (37). A total of 96% took all medications correctly. Per‐protocol and intention‐to‐treat eradication rates were 91.1% (95%CI = 87–95%) and 90% (95%CI = 86–94%). Cure rates were similar regardless of previous (failed) treatment or country of origin. Adverse effects were reported in 46% of patients, most commonly nausea (17%) and diarrhoea (16%); 3% were intense but none was serious.
Conclusions
Fourteen‐day bismuth‐ and levofloxacin‐containing quadruple therapy is an effective (≥90% cure rate), simple and safe second‐line strategy in patients whose previous standard triple or non‐bismuth quadruple (sequential or concomitant) therapies have failed.
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