Abstract Objective. This case control study assessed: the relationship of systemic sclerosis (SSc) related to exposure to heavy metals, the risk of SSc related to occupational exposure in male and ...female patients. Methods From 2005 to 2008, 100 patients with a definite diagnosis of SSc were included in the study; 3 age, gender, and smoking habits matched controls were selected for each patient. All SSc patients and controls underwent detection and quantification of heavy metal traces in hair samples, using multi-element inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). Results SSc patients exhibited higher median levels of the following metals: antimony ( p = 0.001), cadmium ( p = 0.0003), lead ( p = 0.02), mercury ( p = 0.02), molybdenum ( p = 0.04), palladium ( p < 0.001) and zinc ( p = 0.0003). A marked association between SSc and occupational exposure was further found for: 1) antimony ( p = 0.008) and platinum ( p = 0.04) in male patients; and 2) antimony ( p = 0.02), cadmium ( p = 0.001), lead ( p = 0.03), mercury ( p = 0.03), palladium ( p = 0.0003) and zinc ( p = 0.0001) in female patients Conclusion The results show the impact of occupational risk factors in the development of SSc for: antimony, cadmium, lead, mercury, molybdenum, palladium and zinc. Thus, occupational exposure should be systematically checked in all SSc patients at diagnosis. Finally, the association between SSc and occupational exposure may be variable according to patients” gender.
Abstract Introduction Systemic sclerosis (SSc) has complex pathogenesis and likely multifactorial causes. Environmental exposures have been suggested to play a role in SSc pathogenesis, including ...occupational exposure to pollutants and chemicals as well as use of drugs leading to modulation of immune response. Thus, this case–control study aimed to assess: the relationship between SSc and occupational exposure; and the risk of SSc related to occupational exposure in male and female patients. Methods From 2005 to 2008, 100 patients with a definite diagnosis of SSc were included in the study; 3 age, gender, and smoking habits matched controls were selected for each patient. A committee of experts evaluated blindly occupational exposure to crystalline silica, white spirit, organic solvents, ketones, welding fumes, epoxy resins, and pesticides; an occupational exposure score was calculated for all subjects. Our findings were compared with previous data in the literature. Results Increased ORs for SSc were found for: crystalline silica (p < 0.0001), white spirit (p < 0.0001), aromatic solvents (p = 0.0002), chlorinated solvents (p = 0.014), trichlorethylene (p = 0.044), ketones (p = 0.002) and welding fumes (p = 0.021). Elevated risk associated with high final cumulative score in SSc was observed for: crystalline silica, white spirit, chlorinated solvents, trichlorethylene, aromatic solvents, any type of solvents, ketones and welding fumes. A marked association between SSc and occupational exposure was further found for: 1) crystalline silica, chlorinated solvents, trichloroethylene, white spirit, ketones and welding fumes in male patients; and 2) white spirit, aromatic solvents, any type of solvent and ketones in female patients. Finally, we did not find an association between SSc and: 1) the use of drugs that have been speculated to play a role in SSc onset (anorexigens, pentazocine, bromocriptine, l -tryptophan); 2) implants — that are prosthesis, silicone implants, and contact lenses; and 3) dyeing hair. In the literature, SSc has been associated with occupational exposure to silica and solvents, while the association between SSc and specific organic solvents and welding fumes has been anecdotally reported. Conclusion The following occupational factors have an impact in the development of SSc: crystalline silica, white spirit, aromatic solvents, chlorinated solvents, trichlorethylene, ketones and welding fumes. The risk of SSc appears to be markedly associated with high cumulative exposure. Finally, the association between SSc and occupational exposure may be variable according to gender.
•Guaiacol was converted under hydrotreating conditions over a NiMo/Al2O3 catalyst.•A kinetic model was developed for the conversion of guaiacol.•Heating and cooling periods contribute significantly ...to the overall conversion.•Dynamic simulations were performed using a Stochastic Simulation Algorithm.•The conversion of guaiacol and the selectivity towards its derivatives is well predicted.
Lignocellulosic biomass can be used as a source of hydrocarbons after an initial transformation by one of three different routes: biochemical conversion, chemical conversion and thermochemical conversion. In the last class, one of the possible approaches is fast pyrolysis, a process in which the biomass is exposed for a short time at high temperature and in the absence oxygen. Through this conversion step, gas, bio-char and bio-oil are the effluents that are generated. Bio-oil can be subsequently be upgraded into hydrocarbons by means of hydroconversion and hydrotreating. Like heavy oil fractions, fast pyrolysis oils are complex mixtures and, consequently, react via a complex reaction network. In the present work, the reaction pathways of model molecules representative of bio-oil are studied under hydrotreating conditions over a reduced NiMo/Al2O3 catalyst. To simulate the various reactions, a general kinetic Monte Carlo method, called Stochastic Simulation Algorithm, was developed and applied to a model molecule guaiacol. The simulations are compared to the experimental results.
La prescription d’un arrêt de travail (AT) est un acte médical qui concerne les salariés atteints d’une maladie (on parle alors d’arrêt-maladie) ou à la suite d’un accident (d’origine professionnelle ...ou non). Il s’agit de permettre au salarié de cesser son travail quand celui-ci est incompatible avec son état de santé, tout en lui maintenant des revenus financiers. Les urgentistes ne sont normalement amenés à effectuer que des AT initiaux ; ils ne sont pas concernés si le patient est hospitalisé ou opéré. L’AT doit être prescrit à sa juste durée en fonction de la maladie ou des lésions, et des caractéristiques du travail : suffisamment long pour que l’état de santé du salarié soit compatible avec la reprise du travail ; mais sans excès puisque l’argent qui est versé au salarié fait appel à la solidarité nationale par le biais de l’assurance maladie. En l’absence de complication, la durée prescrite doit permettre au salarié de revenir au travail sans visite supplémentaire chez son médecin traitant. L’estimation de la durée optimale d’un AT doit reposer sur la pathologie en cause, sur son expression symptomatique plus ou moins sévère, sur le terrain du patient, et sur les contraintes physiques liées à sa pratique professionnelle. Deux fiches élaborées avec l’assurance maladie sont présentées pour guider l’urgentiste dans le choix de la durée, l’une pour des urgences médicales fréquentes, l’autre pour des urgences traumatologiques non chirurgicales.
The prescription of a paid sick leave (PSL) is a medical act which concerns employees suffering from an illness (we are then talking about sick leave) or following an accident (of occupational origin or not). The goal is to allow the employee to stop working when it is incompatible with his state of health while maintaining his financial income. Emergency workers are normally only required to perform initial PSL; they are not concerned if the patient is hospitalized or operated on. The PSL must be prescribed at its proper duration according to the illness or injury, and the characteristics of the work: long enough for the employee’s state of health to be compatible with the return to work; but without excess since the money paid to the employee appeals to national solidarity through health insurance. In the absence of any complication, the prescribed period must allow the employee to return to work without additional visits to his/her treating physician. The estimation of the optimal duration of a PSL must be based on the pathology in question, on its symptomatic expression more or less severe, in the patient’s comorbidities, and on the physical constraints related to his professional practice. Two sheets developed with health insurance are presented to guide the emergency physician in the choice of duration, one for frequent medical emergencies, the other for non-surgical trauma emergencies.
Background
There are few population‐based studies assessing the prevalence of skin diseases.
Objectives
To estimate the prevalence of five chronic skin inflammatory diseases, i.e. atopic dermatitis ...(AD), psoriasis, alopecia areata (AA), vitiligo and hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) in France, using validated self‐diagnostic questionnaires.
Methods
Population‐based study using a representative sample of the French general population aged more than 15 years and sampling with replacement design. All participants were asked (ii) to fill in a specific questionnaire including socio‐demographic characteristics, (ii) to declare if they have been diagnosed with one or more skin problem or skin diseases during their life, and (iii) to fill in five validated self‐reported questionnaires for AD, psoriasis, AA, vitiligo and HS.
Results
A total of 20.012 adult participants responded to the questionnaire of whom 9760 were men (48.8%) and 10.252 (51.2%) were women. We identified a prevalence of 4.65% for AD (931 individuals), 4.42% for psoriasis (885 individuals), 1.04% for AA (210 individuals), 0.46% for vitiligo (93 individuals) and 0.15% for HS (29 individuals), respectively.
Limitations
Questionnaire‐based study and possible disease misclassifications.
Conclusion
This is the largest population‐based study aiming to estimate the prevalence of five chronic skin inflammatory diseases.
Plant traits – the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants and their organs – determine how primary producers respond to environmental ...factors, affect other trophic levels, influence ecosystem processes and services and provide a link from species richness to ecosystem functional diversity. Trait data thus represent the raw material for a wide range of research from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology to biogeography. Here we present the global database initiative named TRY, which has united a wide range of the plant trait research community worldwide and gained an unprecedented buy-in of trait data: so far 93 trait databases have been contributed. The data repository currently contains almost three million trait entries for 69 000 out of the world’s 300 000 plant species, with a focus on 52 groups of traits characterizing the vegetative and regeneration stages of the plant life cycle, including growth, dispersal, establishment and pepersistence. A first data analysis shows that most plant traits are approximately log-normally distributed, with widely differing ranges of variation across traits. Most trait variation is between species (interspecific), but significant intraspecific variation is also documented, up to 40% of the overall variation. Plant functional types (PFTs), as commonly used in vegetation models, capture a substantial fraction of the observed variation – but for several traits most variation occurs within PFTs, up to 75% of the overall variation. In the context of vegetation models these traits would better be represented by state variables rather than fixed parameter values. The improved availability of plant trait data in the unified global database is expected to support a paradigm shift from species to trait-based ecology, offer new opportunities for synthetic plant trait research and enable a more realistic and empirically grounded representation of terrestrial vegetation in Earth system models.
Large-scale fed-batch cell culture processes of CHO cells are the standard platform for the clinical and commercial production of monoclonal antibodies. Lactate is one of the major by-products of CHO ...fed-batch culture. In pH-controlled bioreactors, accumulation of high levels of lactate is accompanied by high osmolality due to the addition of base to control pH of the cell culture medium, potentially leading to lower cell growth and lower therapeutic protein production during manufacturing. Lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) is an enzyme that catalyzes the conversion of the substrate, pyruvate, into lactate and many factors including pyruvate concentration modulate LDH activity. Alternately, pyruvate can be converted to acetyl-CoA by pyruvate dehydrogenases (PDHs), to be metabolized in the TCA cycle. PDH activity is inhibited when phosphorylated by pyruvate dehydrogenase kinases (PDHKs). In this study, we knocked down the gene expression of lactate dehydrogenase A (LDHa) and PDHKs to investigate the effect on lactate metabolism and protein production. We found that LDHa and PDHKs can be successfully downregulated simultaneously using a single targeting vector carrying small inhibitory RNAs (siRNA) for LDHa and PDHKs. Moreover, our fed-batch shake flask evaluation data using siRNA-mediated LDHa/PDHKs knockdown clones showed that downregulating LDHa and PDHKs in CHO cells expressing a therapeutic monoclonal antibody reduced lactate production, increased specific productivity and volumetric antibody production by approximately 90%, 75% and 68%, respectively, without appreciable impact on cell growth. Similar trends of lower lactate level and higher antibody productivity on average in siRNA clones were also observed from evaluations performed in bioreactors.
Machine learning (ML) has great potential to drive scientific discovery by harvesting data from images of herbarium specimens—preserved plant material curated in natural history collections—but ML ...techniques have only recently been applied to this rich resource. ML has particularly strong prospects for the study of plant phenological events such as growth and reproduction. As a major indicator of climate change, driver of ecological processes, and critical determinant of plant fitness, plant phenology is an important frontier for the application of ML techniques for science and society. In the present article, we describe a generalized, modular ML workflow for extracting phenological data from images of herbarium specimens, and we discuss the advantages, limitations, and potential future improvements of this workflow. Strategic research and investment in specimen-based ML methods, along with the aggregation of herbarium specimen data, may give rise to a better understanding of life on Earth.
Abstract Objectives To date, no studies have yet assessed the characteristics of non-HCV patients with low level of cryoglobulin (≤ 0.05 g/L). The aims of the current study were thus to: 1) determine ...the prevalence of cryoglobulin ≤ 0.05 g/L in patients with non-HCV cryoglobulin; and 2) compare clinical features and long term outcome, including organ complications and mortality rate, between non-HCV patients with cryoglobulin level ≤ 0.05 g/L and those exhibiting cryoglobulin level > 0.05 g/L. Methods Among 6379 cryoglobulin testing, cryoglobulin was detected in 618 patients (9.69% of cases); of these 618 patients, 453 non-HCV patients were included in the study. The medical records of these patients were reviewed. Results Of the 453 non-HCV cryoglobulin-positive patients, 265 (58.6%) exhibited cryoglobulin level ≤ 0.05 g/L. We showed that patients with cryoglobulin level ≤ 0.05 g/L had: 1) less commonly: palpable purpura ( p < 0.001), digital ulcers ( p = 0.006), peripheral neurologic involvement ( p = 0.03) and renal impairment ( p = 0.03); and 2) lower median values of ESR ( p < 0.001) and C-reactive protein ( p = 0.001). The patients with cryoglobulin level ≤ 0.05 g/L less often experienced infections ( p = 0.04) and hematological malignancies ( p = 0.01); both groups did not differ regarding prevalence of connective tissue diseases and solid tumors. Mortality rate was as high as 13.6% in patients with cryoglobulin level ≤ 0.05 g/L; death was mainly due to: solid tumors (16.6%), cardiovascular complications (13.8%), hematological malignancies (11.1%), infections (8.3%), pulmonary/renal complications of cryoglobulin (8.3%) and connective tissue diseases (8.3%). Conclusion Our study shows a high prevalence of cryoglobulin level ≤ 0.05 g/L in clinical practice. Our findings further underscore that non-HCV cryoglobulin level ≤ 0.05 g/L may be responsible for severe renal and neurological complications, leading to high morbidity and mortality in these patients. Thus, our data suggest that both appropriate therapy and close follow-up may be required to improve such patients' outcome.
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