Enhancing linkage to care for hepatitis B, D, and C patients: A retrospective-prospective study.

Background: The WHO has set a goal to decrease viral hepatitis-related fatalities by 65% by 2030.

Aims: To locate and retrieve to care all individuals diagnosed with hepatitis B, D or C, and investigate why they were not linked to appropriate medical management.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective-prospective search for patients with hepatitis B, D or C virus (HBV, HDV and HCV) infection in the central laboratory database of the Barcelona northern health area (catchment population, 450,000).

Parenting styles and dental caries in Brazilian children and adolescents in foster care.

Purpose: This study aimed to analyse parenting styles as a possible factor associated with caries in foster children and adolescents who had been victims of domestic violence.

Methods: The study was carried out in nine foster shelters in Recife, Northeast Brazil, with a sample of 88 participants aged 8 to 17 years old. Data were collected through intraoral examinations to verify deft/DMFT indices, applying the Demandingness and Responsiveness Scales to determine parenting styles.

Compilation of Evidence Supporting the Role of a T Helper 2 Reaction in the Pathogenesis of Acute Appendicitis.

Despite being the most common abdominal surgical emergency, the cause of acute appendicitis (AA) remains unclear, since in recent decades little progress has been made regarding its etiology. Obstruction of the appendicular lumen has been traditionally presented as the initial event of AA; however, this is often the exception rather than the rule, as experimental data suggest that obstruction is not an important causal factor in AA, despite possibly occurring as a consequence of the inflammatory process. Type I hypersensitivity reaction has been extensively studied, involving Th2 lymphocytes, and cytokines such as IL-4, IL-5, IL-9 and IL-13, which have well-defined functions, such as a positive-feedback effect on Th0 for differentiating into Th2 cells, recruitment of eosinophils and the release of eosinophilic proteins and the production of IgE with the activation of mast cells, with the release of proteins from their granules.

The influence of carvedilol posology timing on clinically significant portal hypertension: insights from elastography measurements.

Background And Aims: Carvedilol has emerged as the preferred β-blocker for treating portal hypertension. However, there is still a debate in dosing regimen, with a potential lower bioavailability in once-daily regimens. The aim of this study is to assess the acute effects of carvedilol posology in patients with clinically significant portal hypertension (CSPH), as a surrogate marker of bioavailability.

Pediatric chronic kidney disease mortality in Brazil-A time trend analysis.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is defined based on structural or functional abnormalities of the kidneys, or a glomerular filtration rate (GFR) below the threshold of 60 ml/min per 1.73 m2 for more than 3 months. It is an important noncommunicable disease with a rising worldwide, becoming a global public health problem.

Emergency department contribution to HCV elimination in the Iberian Peninsula.

Background: Undiagnosed cases of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection result in significant morbidity and mortality, further transmission, and increased public health costs. Testing in emergency departments (EDs) is an opportunity to expand HCV screening. The goal of this project was to increase the proportion of eligible patients screened for HCV in urban areas.

Treating Advanced Hepatocellular Carcinoma with Sorafenib: A 10-Year Single Center Experience.

Introduction: Sorafenib was the first therapy used for systemic treatment of unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Multiple prognosis factors associated with sorafenib therapy have been described.

Objectives: The aim of this work was to evaluate survival and time to progression (TTP) on HCC patients treated with sorafenib, and check for predictive factors of sorafenib benefit.

Eosinophil Granule Proteins Involvement in Acute Appendicitis-An Allergic Disease?

Several pieces of evidence point to an allergic component as a trigger of acute appendicitis. As the Th2 immune response is characterized by eosinophil mobilization to the target organ and release of their cationic granule proteins, it is reasonable to investigate if the degranulation of eosinophils could be associated with the local injury. The primary aim of this study is to evaluate the participation of eosinophils granules proteins in acute appendicitis, both at local and systemic levels and the secondary aim is to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of eosinophils granules proteins for the detection of acute appendicitis, as well as for distinguishing between complicated and uncomplicated acute appendicitis.

Ionic Levothyroxine Formulations: Synthesis, Bioavailability, and Cytotoxicity Studies.

Thyroid diseases affect a considerable portion of the population, with hypothyroidism being one of the most commonly reported thyroid diseases. Levothyroxine (T4) is clinically used to treat hypothyroidism and suppress thyroid stimulating hormone secretion in other thyroid diseases. In this work, an attempt to improve T4 solubility is made through the synthesis of ionic liquids (ILs) based on this drug.

Inter-rater reliability of the Rasch-modified medical research council scoring criteria for manual muscle testing in neuromuscular diseases.

It was argued that researchers and clinicians are not able to make judgments between most categories of the original Medical Research Council (MRC) scale and that a modified short version would reach higher agreement levels. We aimed to assess the inter-rater reliability for both the original and the Rasch-modified MRC scoring criteria of Manual Muscle Strength tests (MMSt) in patients with neuromuscular diseases. Two MRC scoring criteria were used to score muscle strength using MMSt in 40 muscle groups of the upper and lower limbs in patients with neuromuscular disorders.

Processing speed impairment in chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy patients: a cross-sectional study.

Background: There is a lack of evidence of cognitive involvement in chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP) and, the reports about the involvement of the brain and central nervous system (CNS) are few and controversial. The Five Digit Test (FDT) evaluates processing speed (PS) and executive functions orally.

Objective: To evaluate the performance on the FDT of CIDP patients with and without CNS (brain/cerebellum) alterations observed on brain Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans.

Detailed stratified GWAS analysis for severe COVID-19 in four European populations.

Given the highly variable clinical phenotype of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a deeper analysis of the host genetic contribution to severe COVID-19 is important to improve our understanding of underlying disease mechanisms. Here, we describe an extended genome-wide association meta-analysis of a well-characterized cohort of 3255 COVID-19 patients with respiratory failure and 12 488 population controls from Italy, Spain, Norway and Germany/Austria, including stratified analyses based on age, sex and disease severity, as well as targeted analyses of chromosome Y haplotypes, the human leukocyte antigen region and the SARS-CoV-2 peptidome. By inversion imputation, we traced a reported association at 17q21.

Ultrasound evaluation of digital flexor tendons of jumping horses undergoing treadmill training.

This study aimed to perform ultrasonographic evaluation of the digital flexor tendons of jumping horses undergoing complementary training on a treadmill. Fifteen Brazilian Sport horses were divided into two groups: Group I with 7 animals in physical training complementary to the standard training at the Brazilian Army's Riding School; and Group II with 8 animals in standard training used in the Brazilian Army's Riding School. Complementary training was performed on a treadmill on an inclined plane.

Brief International Cognitive Assessment for Multiple Sclerosis (BICAMS): discrete and regression-based norms for the Brazilian context.

Background: The Brief International Cognitive Assessment for Multiple Sclerosis (BICAMS) has been recently developed as a brief, practical, and feasible tool for cognitive impairment in multiple sclerosis (MS).

Objective: This study aimed to provide continuous and discrete normative values for the BICAMS in the Brazilian context.

Methods: Normatization was achieved using six hundred and one healthy controls from the community assessed at five Brazilian geopolitical regions.

[The influence of family and peer violence in the practice of bullying among school adolescents].

The objective of this study was to estimate the prevalence of bullies and identify factors related to bullying among high school students in Recife. This is an analytical cross-sectional epidemiological study, composed of a probabilistic sample by clusters of 1,402 students aged 15 to 19 years old, enrolled in the second year of high school in both public and private schools in Recife. In this work the bullying will be approached according to the Bioecological Theory of Human Development of Bronfenbrenner.

Primary neural leprosy: clinical, neurophysiological and pathological presentation and progression.

Disability in leprosy is a direct consequence of damage to the peripheral nervous system which is usually worse in patients with no skin manifestations, an underdiagnosed subtype of leprosy known as primary neural leprosy. We evaluated clinical, neurophysiological and laboratory findings of 164 patients with definite and probable primary neural leprosy diagnoses. To better understand the disease progression and to improve primary neural leprosy clinical recognition we compared the characteristics of patients with short (≤12 months) and long (>12 months) disease duration.

Analysis of the optical properties of the silvery spots on the wings of the Gulf Fritillary, Dione vanillae.

The ventral face of the wings of the butterfly Dione vanillae is covered with bright and shiny silvery spots. These areas contain densely packed ground- and coverscales with a bright metallic appearance reflecting more than 50% of light uniformly over the visible range. Our analysis shows that this optically attractive feature is caused by the inner microstructure of the scales located in these areas.