Impact of Wound Dressing Changes on Nursing Workload in an Intensive Care Unit.

The objective of this study is to understand how the type of wound dressing changes (routine or frequent) in patients admitted to intensive care units influences nurses' workload. This study used a database of retrospective and analytical observational study from one Portuguese intensive care unit. The sample included 728 adult patients admitted between 2015 and 2019.

Unveiling New Druggable Pockets in Influenza Non-Structural Protein 1: NS1-Host Interactions as Antiviral Targets for Flu.

Influenza viruses are responsible for significant morbidity and mortality worldwide in winter seasonal outbreaks and in flu pandemics. Influenza viruses have a high rate of evolution, requiring annual vaccine updates and severely diminishing the effectiveness of the available antivirals. Identifying novel viral targets and developing new effective antivirals is an urgent need.

Nursing workload assessment in an intensive care unit: A retrospective observational study using the Nursing Activities Score.

Background: Nursing Activities Score (NAS) is a promising tool for calculating the nursing workload in intensive care units (ICU). However, data on intensive care nursing activities in Portugal are practically non-existent.

Aim: To assess the nursing workload in a Portuguese ICU using the NAS.

Designing optimized drug candidates with Generative Adversarial Network.

Drug design is an important area of study for pharmaceutical businesses. However, low efficacy, off-target delivery, time consumption, and high cost are challenges and can create barriers that impact this process. Deep Learning models are emerging as a promising solution to perform de novo drug design, i.

Explainable deep drug-target representations for binding affinity prediction.

Background: Several computational advances have been achieved in the drug discovery field, promoting the identification of novel drug-target interactions and new leads. However, most of these methodologies have been overlooking the importance of providing explanations to the decision-making process of deep learning architectures. In this research study, we explore the reliability of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) at identifying relevant regions for binding, specifically binding sites and motifs, and the significance of the deep representations extracted by providing explanations to the model's decisions based on the identification of the input regions that contributed the most to the prediction.

Human forager response to abrupt climate change at 8.2 ka on the Atlantic coast of Europe.

The cooling and drying associated with the so-called '8.2 ka event' have long been hypothesized as having sweeping implications for human societies in the Early Holocene, including some of the last Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in Atlantic Europe. Nevertheless, detailed 'on-site' records with which the impacts of broader climate changes on human-relevant environments can be explored have been lacking.

Conformational Dynamics of the Soluble and Membrane-Bound Forms of Interleukin-1 Receptor Type-1: Insights into Linker Flexibility and Domain Orientation.

Interleukin-1 receptor type 1 (IL-1R1) is a key player in inflammation and immune responses. This receptor regulates IL-1 activity in two forms: as a membrane-bound form and as a soluble ectodomain. The details and differences between the conformational dynamics of the membrane-bound and the soluble IL-1R1 ectodomains (ECDs) remain largely elusive.

The Therapeutic Prospects of Targeting IL-1R1 for the Modulation of Neuroinflammation in Central Nervous System Disorders.

The interleukin-1 receptor type 1 (IL-1R1) holds pivotal roles in the immune system, as it is positioned at the "epicenter" of the inflammatory signaling networks. Increased levels of the cytokine IL-1 are a recognized feature of the immune response in the central nervous system (CNS) during injury and disease, i.e.

Synthesis and structure-activity relationships of new chiral spiro-β-lactams highly active against HIV-1 and Plasmodium.

The synthesis and antimicrobial activity of new spiro-β-lactams is reported. The design of the new molecules was based on the structural modulation of two previously identified lead spiro-penicillanates with dual activity against HIV and Plasmodium. The spiro-β-lactams synthesized were assayed for their in vitro activity against HIV-1, providing relevant structure-activity relationship information.

Stroke in patients infected by the novel coronavirus and its causal mechanisms: A narrative review.

Objective: The current study aimed to evaluate the mechanisms of stroke development during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and analyze the related characteristics, such as etiology, age group, associated comorbidities, and prognosis.

Methods: A narrative was performed using the descriptors ["novel coronavirus"] AND ["stroke"] in the PubMed, Science Direct, Google Scholar, Lilacs, and Biblioteca Virtual em Saúde (BVS) databases, including studies published between December 1, 2019, and April 28, 2020.

Results: A total of 142 articles were identified, with 89 of them in the PubMed database, 46 in Science Direct, and 7 in Google Scholar.

Spiro-β-lactam BSS-730A Displays Potent Activity against HIV and Plasmodium.

The high burden of malaria and HIV/AIDS prevents economic and social progress in developing countries. A continuing need exists for development of novel drugs and treatment regimens for both diseases in order to address the tolerability and long-term safety concerns associated with current treatment options and the emergence of drug resistance. We describe new spiro-β-lactam derivatives with potent (nM) activity against HIV and and no activity against bacteria and yeast.

Nursing workload assessment in an intensive care unit: A 5-year retrospective analysis.

Aims: To study the correlation between the workload of intensive care nursing teams and the sociodemographic, anthropometric and clinical characteristics of patients in critical condition in a Portuguese Intensive Care Unit (ICU) during a 5-year period.

Background: Currently, indices of nursing workload quantification are one of the resources used for planning and evaluating ICUs. Evidence shows that there are several factors related to critical patients and their hospitalisation which potentially influence the nursing workload.

An Innovative Sequence-to-Structure-Based Approach to Drug Resistance Interpretation and Prediction: The Use of Molecular Interaction Fields to Detect HIV-1 Protease Binding-Site Dissimilarities.

methodologies have opened new avenues of research to understanding and predicting drug resistance, a pressing health issue that keeps rising at alarming pace. Sequence-based interpretation systems are routinely applied in clinical context in an attempt to predict mutation-based drug resistance and thus aid the choice of the most adequate antibiotic and antiviral therapy. An important limitation of approaches based on genotypic data exclusively is that mutations are not considered in the context of the three-dimensional (3D) structure of the target.

Predicting hydrophobic solvation by molecular simulation: 1. Testing united-atom alkane models.

We present a systematic test of the performance of three popular united-atom force fields-OPLS-UA, GROMOS and TraPPE-at predicting hydrophobic solvation, more precisely at describing the solvation of alkanes in alkanes. Gibbs free energies of solvation were calculated for 52 solute/solvent pairs from Molecular Dynamics simulations and thermodynamic integration making use of the IBERCIVIS volunteer computing platform. Our results show that all force fields yield good predictions when both solute and solvent are small linear or branched alkanes (up to pentane).

A novel bis-furan scaffold for transthyretin stabilization and amyloid inhibition.

The design and synthesis of a novel bis-furan scaffold tailored for high efficiency at inhibiting transthyretin amyloid formation is reported. In vitro results show that the discovered compounds are more efficient inhibitors of amyloid formation than tafamidis, a drug currently used in the treatment of familial amyloid polyneuropathy (FAP), despite their lower molecular weight and lipophilicity. Moreover, ex vivo experiments with the strongest inhibitor in the series, conducted in human blood plasma from normal and FAP Val30Met-transthyretin carriers, disclose remarkable affinity and selectivity profiles.

Analyses of pressure ulcer point prevalence at the first skin assessment in a Portuguese hospital.

Aim: To analyze the first pressure ulcer risk and skin assessment records of hospitalized adult patients in medical and surgical areas of Aveiro Hospital during 2012 in association with their demographic and clinical characteristics.

Material And Methods: Retrospective cohort analysis of electronic health record database from 7132 adult patients admitted to medical and surgical areas in a Portuguese hospital during 2012. The presence of (at least) one pressure ulcer at the first skin assessment in inpatient setting was associated with age, gender, type of admission, specialty units, length of stay, patient discharge and ICD-9 diagnosis.

Pressure ulcer risk assessment: retrospective analysis of Braden Scale scores in Portuguese hospitalised adult patients.

Aims And Objectives: To analyse the Braden Scale scores and sub-scores assessed in Portuguese hospitalised adult patients in association with their characteristics, diagnoses and length of stay.

Background: The Braden Scale is used worldwide for pressure ulcer risk assessment and supports nurses in the implementation of preventive interventions.

Design: Retrospective cohort analysis of electronic health record database from adult patients admitted to medical and surgical areas during 2012.

A relational learning approach to Structure-Activity Relationships in drug design toxicity studies.

It has been recognized that the development of new therapeutic drugs is a complex and expensive process. A large number of factors affect the activity in vivo of putative candidate molecules and the propensity for causing adverse and toxic effects is recognized as one of the major hurdles behind the current "target-rich, lead-poor" scenario. Structure-Activity Relationship (SAR) studies, using relational Machine Learning (ML) algorithms, have already been shown to be very useful in the complex process of rational drug design.

Toward the discovery of functional transthyretin amyloid inhibitors: application of virtual screening methods.

Inhibition of amyloid fibril formation by stabilization of the native form of the protein transthyretin (TTR) is a viable approach for the treatment of familial amyloid polyneuropathy that has been gaining momentum in the field of amyloid research. The TTR stabilizer molecules discovered to date have shown efficacy at inhibiting fibrilization in vitro but display impairing issues of solubility, affinity for TTR in the blood plasma and/or adverse effects. In this study we present a benchmark of four protein- and ligand-based virtual screening (VS) methods for identifying novel TTR stabilizers: (i) two-dimensional (2D) similarity searches with chemical hashed, pharmacophore, and UNITY fingerprints, (ii) 3D searches based on shape, chemical, and electrostatic similarity, (iii) LigMatch, a new ligand-based method which uses multiple templates and combines 3D geometric hashing with a 2D preselection process, and (iv) molecular docking to consensus X-ray crystal structures of TTR.

Potentially amyloidogenic conformational intermediates populate the unfolding landscape of transthyretin: insights from molecular dynamics simulations.

Protein aggregation into insoluble fibrillar structures known as amyloid characterizes several neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's, Huntington's and Creutzfeldt-Jakob. Transthyretin (TTR), a homotetrameric plasma protein, is known to be the causative agent of amyloid pathologies such as FAP (familial amyloid polyneuropathy), FAC (familial amyloid cardiomiopathy) and SSA (senile systemic amyloidosis). It is generally accepted that TTR tetramer dissociation and monomer partial unfolding precedes amyloid fibril formation.