During June 2022, Spain was one of the countries most affected worldwide by a multicountry monkeypox outbreak with chains of transmission without identified links to disease-endemic countries. We ...provide epidemiologic features of cases reported in Spain and the coordinated measures taken to respond to this outbreak.
Scope
This work is part of the clinical study NCT03885648 registered in ClinicalTrials.gov, aimed at studying the relationship among breast cancer, microbiota, and exposure to environmental ...pollutants. As a first step, we characterized and evaluated risk factors of the participants.
Methods and results
A case–control study was designed with breast cancer (cases, n = 122) and healthy women (controls, n = 56) recruited in two hospitals of Andalusia (Southern Spain). Participants answered questionnaires of Mediterranean diet adherence and food frequency. Data were collected from medical histories and microbiota was analyzed on stool samples. Most cases (78.2%) were diagnosed as stages I and II. Cases had higher age, body mass index (BMI), glucose, cholesterol, and potassium values than controls. Cases exhibited higher adherence to the Mediterranean diet and their food consumption was closer to that dietary pattern. A hierarchical cluster analysis revealed that the Bacillota/Bacteroidota ratio was the most relevant variable in women with breast cancer, which was higher in this group compared with controls.
Conclusion
Although cases exhibited higher adherence to the Mediterranean diet compared with controls, they presented features and microbiota alterations typical of the metabolic syndrome, probably due to their higher BMI and reflecting changes in their lifestyle around the time of diagnosis.
The MICROMA study investigates the relationship among breast cancer, microbiota, and exposure to environmental pollutants. This paper, as a first step, characterizes and evaluates risk factors of the participants. (Icons are taken from Freepik and Shutterstock.)
•Forest condition, biodiversity and ecosystems services are strongly interlinked.•A transferable and operational European wide forest condition indicator is presented.•The methodology includes ...structural, functional, and compositional variables.•This spatially explicit indicator is built on information accessible EU databases.•This supports the monitoring and assessment of efforts towards EU and SDG goals.
Forest condition, biodiversity, and ecosystem services are strongly interlinked. The biodiversity levels depend to a large extent on the integrity, health, and vitality of forests at the same time as losses of forest biodiversity lead to decreased forest productivity and sustainability. Under this conceptual framework, this study presents a methodology for mapping forest condition at European scale supporting the attainment of the 2020 Aichi Biodiversity Target 5 “the rate of loss of all natural habitats, including forests, is at least halved and where feasible brought close to zero, and degradation and fragmentation is significantly reduced” and the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), as well as the EU forest strategy since the sustainable forest management is oriented to support the provision of forest services and to enhance the condition of biodiversity forests’ host.
The work presents the developments of an operational indicator at European scale. This spatially explicit information on forest condition can be the baseline map with a 1 km resolution to monitor the state and changes of condition by exposition to pressures and threats. This condition indicator considers structural, functional, and compositional aspects of forest with relevance for health and vitality of species and habitats hosted by forest ecosystems.
The methodology implemented used harmonized, published and open datasets. It provided confident results for the assessment of the condition within hemiboreal, temperate and alpine forests, showing the Carpathian, Dinaric Alps and Alps, among others, as hotspots with pre-dominantly good condition. The results were validated with data derived from the reporting for the EU Habitat Directive and explicit dataset on known primary forests in Europe. However, this method underestimated the forest condition in the Mediterranean and Boreal forest types due to data gaps, regional specific characteristics, and design limitations.
This study illustrates an operational and transferable approach for addressing the assessment of ecosystem forest condition at European scale being considered as a support tool for European countries when mapping and assessing their national territory, as potential common approach to map forest ecosystems that allows for consistent aggregation and comparisons across scales.
Controlling the temperature inside a greenhouse during the summer is a problem of increasing importance in the Mediterranean countries, especially in the Spanish southeast. The metabolic profile of ...greenhouse tomatoes and leaves grown under conventional conditions and within the presence of a shade mesh (∼50% reduction of sunlight radiation) has been monitored. Tomatoes were weekly harvested from May to July 2017 and analyzed by NMR spectroscopy coupled to multivariate data analysis techniques, together with oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) assays (for antioxidant activity). Fatty acids and carotenoids profiles were unraveled by GC-FID and HPLC-DAD, respectively. To verify whether it would be possible to take advantage of different light growing conditions to potentiate a plant’s defense system, leaves of the corresponding plants were collected and their methanolic extracts were analyzed by NMR toward deciphering new biomarkers, which were used to assess their antibacterial and antibiofilm activities. The presence of a shading mesh resulted in a reduction in tomato production and in smaller fruits with lower contents of sugars (glucose and fructose) and carotenoids (lycopene and β-carotene) and higher contents of organic acids, amino acids, and polyunsaturated fatty acids (linoleic and oleic acids) and of phenylpropanoids and flavonoids (which contributed to an increased antioxidant activity). Methanolic extracts of leaves of nonshaded plants showed a higher antibiofilm activity than that from shaded plants. This activity was well-correlated with an increase of phenolic compounds, together with some specific amino acids and organic acids from tomato leaves.
Abstract
Plant growth and development depend on sufficient nutrient availability in soils. Agricultural soils are generally nitrogen (N) deficient, and thus soils need to be supplemented with ...fertilizers. Ammonium (NH4+) is a major inorganic N source. However, at high concentrations, NH4+ becomes a stressor that inhibits plant growth. The cause of NH4+ stress or toxicity is multifactorial, but the interaction of NH4+ with other nutrients is among the main determinants of plants’ sensitivity towards high NH4+ supply. In addition, NH4+ uptake and assimilation provoke the acidification of the cell external medium (apoplast/rhizosphere), which has a clear impact on nutrient availability. This review summarizes current knowledge, at both the physiological and the molecular level, of the interaction of NH4+ nutrition with essential mineral elements that are absorbed as cations, both macronutrients (K+, Ca2+, Mg2+) and micronutrients (Fe2+/3+, Mn2+, Cu+/2+, Zn2+, Ni2+). We hypothesize that considering these nutritional interactions, and soil pH, when formulating fertilizers may be key in order to boost the use of NH4+-based fertilizers, which have less environmental impact compared with nitrate-based ones. In addition, we are convinced that better understanding of these interactions will help to identify novel targets with the potential to improve crop productivity.
Background:
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused mental health problems worldwide. The psychopathological implications of COVID-19 in cancer patients have rarely been addressed. Considering the increased ...vulnerability of oncology patients, this issue needs to be addressed to improve the long-term mental health status of these patients.
Methods:
We conducted a prospective study in outpatients under active cancer treatment during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. A semi-structured 24-question survey was designed to measure baseline sociodemographic, psychosocial and COVID-19 exposure characteristics. The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale was used to measure psychological symptoms. A descriptive and analytical univariate analysis of the variables studied was performed. We used the
Z
-score to compare different populations (experimental and historical control cohort).
Results:
104 patients were included, the majority of which were women (64.4%), were above 65 years of age (57.7%), had either lung and breast cancer (56.7%), had advanced disease (64%) and were undergoing chemotherapy (63.5%). 51% of them expressed greater fear of cancer than of COVID-19 infection or both.
In relation to HADS, 52.8% of emotional distress, 42.3% of anxiety and 58.6% of depression rates were detected. The main factors related with higher rates of psychological symptomatology were history of previous psychotropic drug consumption and the adoption of additional infection prevention measures because they considered themselves at risk of severe COVID-19 infection (
p
= 0.008;
p
= 0.003 for emotional distress,
p
= 0.026;
p
= 0.004 for anxiety, and
p
= 0.013;
p
= 0.008 for depression). Tumor type, stage, oncologic treatment or rescheduling of cancer treatments were not related to higher levels of psychological symptomatology.
Comparison of our results with another population of similar characteristics was not significant (
Z
score = −1.88;
p
= 0.060).
Conclusions:
We detected high rates of emotional distress during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic among cancer patients in active treatment (52.8%). This was higher and clinically relevant than observed in a comparable population (42.5%), although not significant. Cancer itself is the main factor of concern for cancer patients, above and beyond the emotional distress generated by COVID-19 pandemic.
THe energy-efficient operation of microgrids—a localized grouping of consuming loads (domestic appliances, EVs, etc.) with distributed energy sources such as solar photovoltaic panels—suggests the ...deployment of Energy Management Systems (EMSs) that enable the actuation of controllable microgrid loads coupled with Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools. Such tools are capable of optimizing the aggregated performance of the microgrid in an automated manner, based on an extensive network of Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI). Modular adaptable/dynamic building envelope (ADBE) solutions have been proven an effective solution—exploiting free façade areas instead of roof areas—for extending the thermal inertia and energy harvesting capacity in existing buildings of different nature (residential, commercial, industrial, etc.). This study presents the PLUG-N-HARVEST holistic workflow towards the delivery of an automatically controllable microgrid integrating active ADBE technologies (e.g., PVs, HVACs). The digital platform comprises cloud AI services and functionalities for energy-efficient management, data healing/cleansing, flexibility forecasting, and the security-by-design IoT to efficiently optimize the overall performance in near-zero energy buildings and microgrids. The current study presents the effective design and necessary digital integration steps towards the PLUG-N-HARVEST ICT platform alongside real-life verification test results, validating the performance of the platform.
Background
Nurses play a central role in the management of atrial fibrillation (AF) patients. An unresolved question is whether a nurse‐led clinic would improve clinical outcomes. Herein, we ...investigated the impact of a nurse‐led clinic on anticoagulation therapy and clinical outcomes in a cohort of naïve AF patients.
Methods
Prospective study including AF patients starting vitamin K antagonists (VKAs) into a nurse‐led AF clinic. These patients were followed in this specific AF clinic. Additionally, AF patients already taking VKAs for 6 months followed according to the routine clinical practice were included as comparison group. The quality of anticoagulation was assessed at 6 months. Efficacy and safety endpoints were recorded during follow‐up.
Results
We included 223 patients (Nurse‐led clinic: 107; Usual care: 116). The mean time in therapeutic range and the proportion of INRs within the therapeutic range were similar in both groups. During 2.06 (IQR 1.01‐2.94) years of follow‐up, 64 (28.7%) patients changed to direct‐acting oral anticoagulants. The proportion of switchers was higher in the nurse‐led clinic (37.4%) than in the usual care group (20.7%) (P = .006) and these patients spent less time to switch (2.0 IQR 0.7‐2.9 vs 6.0 IQR 3.7‐11.2 years; P < .001). Importantly, the annual rate of ischaemic stroke/TIA was significantly lower in the nurse‐led clinic (0.47%/year vs 3.88%/year, P = .016), without differences in safety endpoints.
Conclusion
A nurse‐led AF clinic may offer a “patient‐centered” review and holistic follow‐up, and it would be associated with a reduction of ischaemic stroke/TIA, without increasing bleeding complications. Further studies should confirm these results.
To evaluate the results of keloids treated with perioperative interstitial high-dose-rate brachytherapy (HDR-BT).
A retrospective review of 61 keloids in 51 patients treated with perioperative ...interstitial HDR-BT was performed. Keloid lesions were treated with 12 Gy in 4 fractions within 48 hours. Time between surgery and brachytherapy was less than 90 minutes. Local failure was defined as recurrence of apparent keloid or symptoms in the same place. Median age of patients was 46 years (range, 20-89 years). Keloid scars were located on the chest (41%), ear lobe (21%), back (1.6%), extremities (11.5%), and mean keloid size was 6.3 cm.
With a median follow-up of 47.95 months (range, 1-96 months), the recurrence rate was 4.9%, all located on the chest. The multivariate analysis showed no statistically significant relationship between location, scar size, and previously treated lesions with the recurrence rate.
The treatment of keloid scars with perioperative interstitial high-dose-rate brachytherapy achieved excellent results, with a recurrence rate of only 4.9% and excellent cosmetic outcomes, suggesting that this technique might be one of the best options for treating keloids.
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