Wearable sensor makes possible today to obtain motion measurement for health monitoring, physical activity assessment, or sport performance evaluation in ecological environment. One of them, the ...inertial measurement unit (IMU), is extensively used to obtain measurements relative to human motion. The IMU, composed of 3D gyroscope, accelerometer, and generally magnetometer, can be used to provide an orientation in a global coordinate system after fusion of the different sensor data.
The prototypical xanthine oxidase (XO) inhibitor allopurinol, has been the cornerstone of the clinical management of gout and conditions associated with hyperuricemia for several decades. More recent ...data indicate that XO also plays an important role in various forms of ischemic and other types of tissue and vascular injuries, inflammatory diseases, and chronic heart failure. Allopurinol and its active metabolite oxypurinol showed considerable promise in the treatment of these conditions both in experimental animals and in small-scale human clinical trials. Although some of the beneficial effects of these compounds may be unrelated to the inhibition of the XO, the encouraging findings rekindled significant interest in the development of additional, novel series of XO inhibitors for various therapeutic indications. Here we present a critical overview of the effects of XO inhibitors in various pathophysiological conditions and also review the various emerging therapeutic strategies offered by this approach.
The recent identification of cannabinoid receptors and their endogenous lipid ligands has triggered an exponential growth of studies exploring the endocannabinoid system and its regulatory functions ...in health and disease. Such studies have been greatly facilitated by the introduction of selective cannabinoid receptor antagonists and inhibitors of endocannabinoid metabolism and transport, as well as mice deficient in cannabinoid receptors or the endocannabinoid-degrading enzyme fatty acid amidohydrolase. In the past decade, the endocannabinoid system has been implicated in a growing number of physiological functions, both in the central and peripheral nervous systems and in peripheral organs. More importantly, modulating the activity of the endocannabinoid system turned out to hold therapeutic promise in a wide range of disparate diseases and pathological conditions, ranging from mood and anxiety disorders, movement disorders such as Parkinson's and Huntington's disease, neuropathic pain, multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injury, to cancer, atherosclerosis, myocardial infarction, stroke, hypertension, glaucoma, obesity/metabolic syndrome, and osteoporosis, to name just a few. An impediment to the development of cannabinoid medications has been the socially unacceptable psychoactive properties of plant-derived or synthetic agonists, mediated by CB(1) receptors. However, this problem does not arise when the therapeutic aim is achieved by treatment with a CB(1) receptor antagonist, such as in obesity, and may also be absent when the action of endocannabinoids is enhanced indirectly through blocking their metabolism or transport. The use of selective CB(2) receptor agonists, which lack psychoactive properties, could represent another promising avenue for certain conditions. The abuse potential of plant-derived cannabinoids may also be limited through the use of preparations with controlled composition and the careful selection of dose and route of administration. The growing number of preclinical studies and clinical trials with compounds that modulate the endocannabinoid system will probably result in novel therapeutic approaches in a number of diseases for which current treatments do not fully address the patients' need. Here, we provide a comprehensive overview on the current state of knowledge of the endocannabinoid system as a target of pharmacotherapy.
The LePix project aims at developing monolithic pixel detectors in a 90nm CMOS technology ported on moderate resistivity substrate. The radiation tolerance of the base material, which is an order of ...magnitude higher doped than standard high resistivity detectors, and which underwent the full advanced CMOS process, has been investigated. Diodes of about 1mm2 and pixel matrices were irradiated with neutrons at fluences from 1012n/cm2 to 2×1015n/cm2 and characterized using CV and IV measurements. Matrices have also been irradiated with Xrays and withstand at least 10Mrad.
Inertial units offer a promising alternative to optoelectronic systems for joint lower limbs kinematic analysis. However, only one study 1 has made a proposal for sensor-to-segment calibration (S2S ...calibration) dedicated to patients even though this S2S calibration is a crucial step in the procedure 2.This study proposes to investigate whether it is possible to define a customizable protocol that could take the functional capacities of the analyzed patient into account.
The platinum compound cisplatin is one of the most potent chemotherapy agents available to treat various malignancies. Nephrotoxicity is a common complication of cisplatin chemotherapy, which ...involves increased oxidative and nitrosative stress, limiting its clinical use. In this study, we have investigated the effects of a nonpsychoactive cannabinoid cannabidiol, which was reported to exert antioxidant effects and has recently been approved for the treatment of inflammation, pain, and spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis in patients in a mouse model of cisplatin-induced nephropathy. Cisplatin induced increased expression of superoxide-generating enzymes RENOX (NOX4) and NOX1, enhanced reactive oxygen species generation, inducible nitric-oxide synthase expression, nitrotyrosine formation, apoptosis (caspase-3/7 activity, DNA fragmentation, and terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick-end labeling staining), poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase activity, and inflammation (tumor necrosis factor-alpha and interleukin-1beta) in the kidneys of mice, associated with marked histopathological damage and impaired renal function (elevated serum blood urea nitrogen and creatinine levels) 72 h after the administration of the drug. Treatment of mice with cannabidiol markedly attenuated the cisplatin-induced oxidative/nitrosative stress, inflammation, and cell death in the kidney, and it improved renal function. Thus, our results suggest that cannabidiol may represent a promising new protective strategy against cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity.
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