This multicentre cross-sectional study aims to estimate the prevalence of five neglected tropical diseases (Chagas disease, filariasis, schistosomiasis, strongyloidiasis and toxocariasis) among ...immigrants accessing health care facilities in five Italian cities (Bologna, Brescia, Florence, Rome, Verona).
Individuals underwent a different set of serological tests, according to country of origin and presence of eosinophilia. Seropositive patients were treated and further followed up.
A total of 930 adult immigrants were enrolled: 477 men (51.3%), 445 women (47.9%), eight transgender (0.8%); median age was 37.81 years (range 18–80 years). Most of them had come from the African continent (405/930, 43.5%), the rest from East Europe, South America and Asia, and 9.6% (89/930) were diagnosed with at least one of the infections under study. Seroprevalence of each specific infection varied from 3.9% (7/180) for Chagas disease to 9.7% (11/113) for toxocariasis. Seropositive people were more likely to be 35–40 years old and male, and to come from South East Asia, sub-Saharan Africa or South America.
The results of our study confirm that neglected tropical diseases represent a substantial health problem among immigrants and highlight the need to address this emerging public health issue.
Posttransplant lymphoproliferative disease (PTLD) is an important cause of morbidity and mortality in solid organ transplants. Epstein Barr virus (EBV) plays a major role in PTLD development. ...Guidelines recommend EBV viral load (VL) monitoring in high-risk populations in the first year.
Retrospective observational study in all adult patients who had at least 1 EBV-VL performed in the postkidney transplant (KT) period from January 2005 to December 2014 at the Policlinico Modena Hospital. We compared patients with negative EBV-DNA to patients with positive EBV-DNA and we described PTLD developed in the study period.
One hundred ninety (36.3%) KT patients of 523 were screened for EBV-DNA with 796 samples. One hundred twenty-eight (67.4%) of 190 tested patients presented at least 1 positive sample for EBV. Older age, the use of sirolimus, everolimus, and steroids were associated with EBV-DNA positivity in the univariate analysis. Nine (1.7%) of 523 patients had PTLD. Incidence rate of PTLD in the KT cohort was 0.19/100 person year follow-up (95% confidence interval, 0.09-0.37). One of 9 patients developed early PTLD and was a high-risk patient. Only this PTLD case was positive for EBV. No PTLD case had an EBV-VL superior to 4000 copies/mL.
Our results suggest that the keystone of PTLD diagnosis is the clinical suspicion. Our study suggests that, in line with guidelines, EBV-VL assays may be avoided in low-risk patients in the absence of a strong clinical PTLD suspicion without increasing patients' risk of developing PTLD. This represents a safe and cost-saving clinical strategy for our center.
Eight patients affected by non-small-cell lung cancer were treated with intralesional and systemic recombinant IL-2 (rIL-2) injection with the aim of activating both tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes ...and circulating cytotoxic or killer cells. The schedule of treatment was as follows: a daily fine-needle transparietal intralesional rIL-2 injection (1 x 10(5) Cetus units) from day 1 to day 5 and systemic rIL-2 infusion (1 x 10(5) Cetus units kg-1 day-1) from day 6 to day 10. One to four cycles of treatment were received by each patient. Clinical and immunological evaluations were performed (a) before treatment, (b) following the intralesional rIL-2 administration, (c) 1 h after the beginning of rIL-2 infusion and (d) at the end of the systemic rIL-2 infusion. No complete remission was achieved, two patients showed a partial remission, three resulted in stable disease and three patients progressed. Natural killer and lymphokine-activated killer cell activity dramatically decreased 1 h after the beginning of rIL-2 infusion and increased at the end of treatment. A progressive increase of circulating CD8+ and HLA class II+ T cells as well as of CD8+ T cell clones, most of which displayed NK activity, was recorded following rIL-2 infusion. Present data indicate that (a) the local administration of rIL-2 coupled with systemic rIL-2 infusion may be suggested as an alternative approach for the immunotherapy of lung cancer, (b) rIL-2 induces different immunological modifications according to the route and the time of its administration and (c) rIL-2 administration increases the amount of circulating immune cells with potential antitumour activity.
Purpose
The etiology of young-onset breast cancer (BC) is poorly understood, despite its greater likelihood of being hormone receptor-negative with a worse prognosis and persistent racial and ...socioeconomic inequities. We conducted a population-based case–control study of BC among young Black and White women and here discuss the theory that informed our study, exposures collected, study methods, and operational results.
Methods
Cases were non-Hispanic Black (NHB) and White (NHW) women age 20–49 years with invasive BC in metropolitan Detroit and Los Angeles County SEER registries 2010–2015. Controls were identified through area-based sampling from the U.S. census and frequency matched to cases on study site, race, and age. An eco-social theory of health informed life-course exposures collected from in-person interviews, including socioeconomic, reproductive, and energy balance factors. Measured anthropometry, blood (or saliva), and among cases SEER tumor characteristics and tumor tissue (from a subset of cases) were also collected.
Results
Of 5,309 identified potentially eligible cases, 2,720 sampled participants were screened and 1,812 completed interviews (682 NHB, 1140 NHW; response rate (RR): 60%). Of 24,612 sampled control households 18,612 were rostered, 2,716 participants were sampled and screened, and 1,381 completed interviews (665 NHB, 716 NHW; RR: 53%). Ninety-nine% of participants completed the main interview, 82% provided blood or saliva (75% blood only), and SEER tumor characteristics (including ER, PR and HER2 status) were obtained from 96% of cases.
Conclusions
Results from the successfully established YWHHS should expand our understanding of young-onset BC etiology overall and by tumor type and identify sources of racial and socioeconomic inequities in BC.
Get well prune: The C‐terminal third domain of h‐prune is largely unfolded and involved in relevant protein–protein interactions, particularly with Nm23‐H1 (see figure), GSK‐3β and gelsolin. This ...study shows that protein functions mediated by protein–protein interactions can be accurately followed in cell lysates by using fast NMR spectroscopy, which could be easily used for a very efficient NMR drug‐discovery strategy.
The NEMO Collaboration aims to construct an underwater Cherenkov detector in the Mediterranean Sea, able to act as a neutrino telescope. One of the main tasks of this project, which implies difficult ...technological challenges, is the selection of an adequate marine site. In this framework the knowledge of light transmission properties in deep seawater is extremely important. The collaboration has measured optical properties in several marine sites near the Italian coasts, at depths
>3000
m
, using a setup based on a AC9, a commercial trasmissometer, manufactured by
WETLabs. The results obtained for the two sites reported in this paper (
Alicudi and
Ustica), show that deep seawater optical properties are comparable to those of the clearest waters.
The incidence of fetal to maternal bleeding was studied in 773 consecutive patients having genetic amniocentesis by measuring maternal serum alpha-fetoprotein elevation following the procedure. The ...frequency of fetal to maternal bleeding was significantly lower in patients having amniocentesis immediately after real-time ultrasound (21 of 429 cases, 4.9%) when compared with patients having static B-mode ultrasound before the procedure (31 of 344 cases, 9.0%). A lower frequency of fetal to maternal bleeding was observed in the real-time group for anterior or partially anterior placentas (8.1%) and posterior or fundal posterior placentas (0%) when compared with the static B-mode group (12.9 and 5.2%, respectively). The rate of spontaneous abortion in patients with fetal to maternal bleeding (12.8%) was significantly higher than the rate in patients who did not demonstrate such bleeding (1.45%). The implications of these findings with regard to the safety of amniocentesis and the benefit of routine preliminary ultrasound evaluation are discussed.
Transcriptional regulators are thought to play a key role in cell fate determination and territorial specification in sea urchin. Our goals are to clone transcription factors for studying embryonic ...development. One approach has been to use promoter binding and gene transfer technology to investigate the mechanisms of transcriptional activation and repression of the early H2A histone gene. By this analysis we identified a transcriptional activator, the MBF-1, that binds to the modulator element of the H2A gene and enhances the activity of the H2A promoter. However, the enhancer activity of the modulator and its interaction with MBF-1 also occurs at the gastrula stage when the early histone genes are shut off. Therefore, the silencing of the early H2A histone gene at late stages of development requires the inactivation of the modulator function. To search for antimodulator sequence elements, we took advantage of our previous work showing the presence of phased nucleosomes specifically positioned on the 3′-spacer and in the modulator of the repressed H2A gene. Evidence is described indicating that a 3′-spacer DNA fragment cloned between the modulator and the basal promoter behaves as an antimodulator element. However, this element does not confer temporal capability to the modulator in its function, suggesting that other elements have to be involved in the regulation of the early H2A expression. The second approach relied on the cloning of genes controlling development using probes of regulators known to be involved in regional specification, such as the homeobox genes, with the aim to understand their possible role through the study of their temporal and territorial expression and through the analysis of the mechanism of regulation of their expression. We present evidence that PIHbox 12, a homeodomain encoding gene, is transiently expressed during the early/mid cleavage stages. The abundance of the transcripts reach their maximum in embryos at the 64/128-cell stage concomitantly with the segregation of the specified embryonic territories. Expression of PIHbox l2 is drastically reduced in the absence of cell contacts and/or Ca ions, suggesting that this gene is transcriptionally activated by signal transduction mechanisms. Whole mount in situ hybridization showed that PIHbox 12 transcripts are asymmetrically distributed along the A-V axis, being spatially localized in the blastomeres of the ectodermal lineage. We suggest that PIHbox l2 might be involved in the initial events that lead to the specification of the ectodermal territories.
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