How does the work-life balance impact stress on primary healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Background: Most studies in advanced care settings reported that the increasing workload increases the work-life imbalance and harms the mental health of health workers. The COVID-19 Pandemic's tracing, testing, treatment, and mass vaccination also have multiplied the primary healthcare workers' workload. Nevertheless, studies on primary care workers are scarce.

Intraoperative recurrent laryngeal nerve monitoring in unconventional thyroid surgery.

The most common surgical risk after total thyroidectomy remains the recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN) injury. Nowadays, the use of intraoperative nerve monitoring systems (IONM) such as the endotracheal tube-based is recommended to prevent RLN palsy. The use of the nerve monitoring is standardized by dedicated guidelines on the basis of a normal laryngeal anatomy, but previous head and neck surgical procedures may complicate its application.

Concordance between indirect fibrosis and steatosis indices and their predictors in subjects with overweight/obesity.

Background: The non-invasive assessment of steatosis/fibrosis tried to overcome some of peri-procedural risk of liver biopsy; for this, several indices of steatosis and fibrosis in liver have been proposed.

Aim: To evaluate concordance of non-invasive fibrosis and steatosis indices in a large population of adult subjects at risk of NAFLD, and how obesity and its physio-pathological features may interact with steatosis/fibrosis indexes and related biomarkers of cardio-metabolic risk.

Methods: Indices of steatosis (fatty liver index-FLI), NAFLD liver fat score-NLFS)) and fibrosis (Fibrosis 4 (FIB-4), BARD, BAAT and FORN) were calculated in 1145 outpatients with overweight or obesity at risk for T2D and NAFLD.

Efficacy of calcipotriol plus betamethasone dipropionate foam on psoriatic skin lesions beyond human eyes: An observational study.

Background And Aims: Calcipotriol plus betamethasone dipropionate foam has been developed as a new topical therapeutic option for psoriasis, whose effect has been documented mainly on clinical basis.

Methods: We decided to evaluate its efficacy on 11 patients, not only at the clinical level (by using Psoriasis Area Severity Index [PASI], Dermatology Life Quality Index [DLQI], and Psoriasis Global Assessment [PGA] clinimetric indexes) but especially from a subclinical viewpoint (by using videocapillaroscopy and thermography).

Results: After 4 weeks of treatment with calcipotriol plus betamethasone dipropionate foam, there was a marked reduction in all three clinimetric indixes PASI, PGA, and DLQI (DLQI mean value decreased from 13.

The Relationship between Serum Uric Acid and Ejection Fraction of the Left Ventricle.

As a byproduct of protein metabolism, serum uric acid is a controversial risk factor and is the focus of several recent studies in the field of cardiovascular disease. Whether serum uric acid is involved in the development of these pathologies alone or in conjunction with other factors is a matter of debate. The objective of this study is to assess the direct relationship between serum uric acid and the ejection fraction.

Variant in a common odorant-binding protein gene is associated with bitter sensitivity in people.

Deeper understanding of signaling mechanisms underlying bitterness perception in people is essential for designing novel and effective bitter blockers, which could enhance nutrition and compliance with orally administered bitter-tasting drugs. Here we show that variability in a human odorant-binding protein gene, OBPIIa, associates with individual differences in bitterness perception of fat (oleic acid) and of a prototypical bitter stimulus, 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP), suggesting a novel olfactory role in the modulation of bitterness sensitivity.