Sexually transmitted infections are communicable diseases where the pathogen is transmitted through sexual contact. The Sexually Transmitted Infections Working Group of the Spanish Academy of ...Dermatology and Venereology (AEDV) is engaged in the drafting of documents to guide dermatologists and health care personnel who treat Spanish patients with these infections. This document analyzes the epidemiological, clinical, therapeutic, and control characteristics of 2 sexually transmitted parasitosis: scabies due to Sarcoptes scabiei var. hominis, and pubic pediculosis due to Phthirus pubis. Both parasitoses share a sort of mixed spread through sexual and community transmission regardless of the route through which the infection was initially acquired. This specific feature creates particularities in the management and control of the infestation.
Las enfermedades transmisibles en las que el patógeno se transmite por contacto sexual se denominan infecciones de transmisión sexual. La Academia Española de Dermatología (AEDV), a través de su grupo de trabajo de infecciones de transmisión sexual, se ha propuesto elaborar documentos de recomendaciones, destinados a la orientación de los dermatólogos y del personal sanitario que atiende en España a personas afectadas de estas infecciones. El presente documento analiza las características epidemiológicas, clínicas, terapéuticas y de control de 2 parasitosis consideradas de transmisión sexual: la escabiosis, causada por Sarcoptes scabiei var. hominis, y la pediculosis púbica, causada por el Pthirus pubis. Ambas parasitosis tienen en común que pueden diseminarse de forma mixta, por vía sexual y comunitaria, independientemente del modo de adquisición de la infestación. Esta peculiaridad genera particularidades en el control de la infestación.
Sexually transmitted infections are communicable diseases where the pathogen is transmitted through sexual contact. The Sexually Transmitted Infections Working Group of the Spanish Academy of ...Dermatology and Venereology (AEDV) is engaged in the drafting of documents to guide dermatologists and health care personnel who treat Spanish patients with these infections. This document analyzes the epidemiological, clinical, therapeutic, and control characteristics of 2 sexually transmitted parasitosis: scabies due to Sarcoptes scabiei var. hominis, and pubic pediculosis due to Phthirus pubis. Both parasitoses share a sort of mixed spread through sexual and community transmission regardless of the route through which the infection was initially acquired. This specific feature creates particularities in the management and control of the infestation.
Evolution of functional link networks Sierra, A.; Macias, J.A.; Corbacho, F.
IEEE transactions on evolutionary computation,
02/2001, Letnik:
5, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This paper addresses the genetic design of functional link networks (FLN). FLN are high-order perceptrons (HOP) without hidden units. Despite their linear nature, FLN can capture nonlinear ...input-output relationships, provided that they are fed with an adequate set of polynomial inputs, which are constructed out of the original input attributes. Given this set, it turns out to be very simple to train the network, as compared with a multilayer perceptron (MLP). However finding the optimal subset of units is a difficult problem because of its nongradient nature and the large number of available units, especially for high degrees. Some constructive growing methods have been proposed to address this issue, Here, we rely on the global search capabilities of a genetic algorithm to scan the space of subsets of polynomial units, which is plagued by a host of local minima. By contrast, the quadratic error function of each individual FLN has only one minimum, which makes fitness evaluation practically noiseless. We find that surprisingly simple FLN compare favorably with other more complex architectures derived by means of constructive and evolutionary algorithms on some UCI benchmark data sets. Moreover, our models are especially amenable to interpretation, due to an incremental approach that penalizes complex architectures and starts with a pool of single-attribute FLN.
The BCL-2 family members BAK and BAX are required for apoptosis and trigger mitochondrial outer membrane permeabilization (MOMP). Here we identify a MOMP-independent function of BAK as a required ...factor for long-chain ceramide production in response to pro-apoptotic stress. UV-C irradiation of wild-type (WT) cells increased long-chain ceramides; blocking ceramide generation prevented caspase activation and cell death, demonstrating that long-chain ceramides play a key role in UV-C-induced apoptosis. In contrast, UV-C irradiation did not increase long-chain ceramides in BAK and BAX double knock-out cells. Notably, this was not specific to the cell type (baby mouse kidney cells, hematopoietic) nor the apoptotic stimulus employed (UV-C, cisplatin, and growth factor withdrawal). Importantly, long-chain ceramide generation was dependent on the presence of BAK, but not BAX. However, ceramide generation was independent of the known downstream actions of BAK in apoptosis (MOMP or caspase activation), suggesting a novel role for BAK in apoptosis. Finally, enzymatic assays identified ceramide synthase as the mechanism by which BAK regulates ceramide metabolism. There was no change in CerS expression at the message or protein level, indicating regulation at the post-translational level. Moreover, CerS activity in BAK KO microsomes can be reactivated upon addition of BAK-containing microsomes. The data presented indicate that ceramide-induced apoptosis is dependent upon BAK and identify a novel role for BAK during apoptosis. By establishing a unique role for BAK in long-chain ceramide metabolism, these studies further demonstrate that the seemingly redundant proteins BAK and BAX have distinct mechanisms of action during apoptosis induction.
Sludge from Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) have been determined as a sink of microplastics (MP) removed from wastewater. The aim of this research work has been to evaluate the presence of these ...pollutants in the sludge of seven WWTPs (five urban and two industrial), located in southern Spain. Samples were collected in the primary, secondary and digested sludge matrixes, MPs were extracted following wet peroxide oxidation and the removal of cellulose, finally the samples were analyzed according to their abundance, size (from 100 μm to 5 mm), shape, colour, and polymer type. Subsequently, the data obtained on the WWTPs were compared, the main difference among the WWTPs and different sample points showed high heterogeneity in terms of abundance of microplastics, due to the differences in the sludge loaded, the processes and the type of sludge. The results from this study established that the most abundant shape was fibers; regarding the size, 100–355 μm fraction was the most abundant, showing that the amount of MPs increased when the size decreased. Regarding the type of polymers, 23 were identified by ATR-FTIR. Further, Acrylate, PE, EAA and PP were the most abundant found polymers. The presence of MPs in the digested sludge varied from 0.02 ± 0.006 MP g DW−1 to 57.18 ± 20.69 MP g DW−1 in the WWTP 6 (food industry) and WWTP 3 (urban city over 212,000 inhabitants), respectively; higher abundance of MPs found in the primary sludge in respect to secondary sludge; in concordance with the removal from wastewater line reported in other studies. The results obtained showed that MPs were widely present in sludge, becoming a sink of these pollutants, estimating that among 8.05 · 104 and 1.77 · 109 MPs · day−1 were loaded to sludge; therefore, these facilities act as a significant source of MPs into agriculture when sludge is used as soil amendment.
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•MPs were found in all sludge samples, from primary, secondary and digested sludge.•Great heterogeneity in terms of MPs abundance ranging from 0.02 to 57.18 MP/g DW.•Fibers were the most abundant shape and 44% of the particles were under 355 μm.•Twenty-three polymers were identified, where PE, PP and Acrylates were the predominant.•Sewage and industrial sludge act as a sink of MPs into soil when used as agriculture amendment.
Cardiovascular disease (CV) is the second leading cause of morbidity and mortality in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is associated with cardiovascular ...disease, and its risk factors are common to other atherosclerotic diseases. The objective is to determine the prevalence of PAD in a population of patients with COPD using the ankle / brachial index (ABI) and to investigate the relationship between PAD and lung disease severity.
In a prospective cross-sectional study, 246 patients with COPD were recruited. Patients were enrolled consecutively according to their admission to Povisa hospital from September 1, 2008, until March 1, 2010, and were assessed by clinical history, spirometry and ABI. The COPD severity was graded by GOLD criteria in spirometry.
Overall, 84 patients (36.8%) had abnormal ABI results and 59 (70.2%) were asymptomatic for PAD. COPD patients with PAD had a higher prevalence of moderate to severe COPD (61.9% vs. 41.7%, P=0.004), lower mean forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) values (46.7% ± 15 vs. 52.3±14%, P=0.001) and a higher prevalence of hypertension (69% vs. 54.3%, P=0.03) and previous cardiovascular disease (34.5% vs. 21.3%, P=0.03).
There was a high prevalence of asymptomatic PAD in the COPD patients we examined. Abnormal ABI results were associated with a higher prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors and more severe lung disease. The diagnosis of peripheral arterial disease in COPD is important because this is an entity that limits the patient's physical activity and impairs their quality of life in addition to turn it into a high cardiovascular risk patient that requiring additional therapeutic measures.
We hypothesized that the abundance of PD1 mRNA in tumor samples might explain the differences in overall response rates (ORR) observed following anti-PD1 monotherapy across cancer types.
RNASeqv2 ...data from 10078 tumor samples representing 34 different cancer types was analyzed from TCGA. Eighteen immune-related gene signatures and 547 immune-related genes, including PD1, were explored. Correlations between each gene/signature and ORRs reported in the literature following anti-PD1 monotherapy were calculated. To translate the in silico findings to the clinical setting, we analyzed the expression of PD1 mRNA using the nCounter platform in 773 formalin-fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) tumor samples across 17 cancer types. To test the direct relationship between PD1 mRNA, PDL1 immunohistochemistry (IHC), stromal tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (sTILs) and ORR, we evaluated an independent FFPE-based dataset of 117 patients with advanced disease treated with anti-PD1 monotherapy.
In pan-cancer TCGA, PD1 mRNA expression was found strongly correlated (r>0.80) with CD8 T-cell genes and signatures and the proportion of PD1 mRNA-high tumors (80th percentile) within a given cancer type was variable (0%–84%). Strikingly, the PD1-high proportions across cancer types were found strongly correlated (r=0.91) with the ORR following anti-PD1 monotherapy reported in the literature. Lower correlations were found with other immune-related genes/signatures, including PDL1. Using the same population-based cutoff (80th percentile), similar proportions of PD1-high disease in a given cancer type were identified in our in-house 773 tumor dataset as compared with TCGA. Finally, the pre-established PD1 mRNA FFPE-based cutoff was found significantly associated with anti-PD1 response in 117 patients with advanced disease (PD1-high 51.5%, PD1-intermediate 26.6% and PD1-low 15.0%; odds ratio between PD1-high and PD1-intermediate/low=8.31; P<0.001). In this same dataset, PDL1 tumor expression by IHC or percentage of sTILs was not found associated with response.
Our study provides a clinically applicable assay that links PD1 mRNA abundance, activated CD8 T-cells and anti-PD1 efficacy.
![[Translated article] Spanis...](http://api.summon.serialssolutions.com/2.0.0/image/issn/XR4PS5YY4K/0001-7310_1578-2190_1695-4734/small "[Translated article] Spanish Academy of Dermatology and Venereology (AEDV) expert recommendations for the management of sexual transmitted parasitosis. Scabies, and pediculosis pubis")
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