Dent Mater
December 2024
Objective: This in situ study aimed to evaluate a new toothpaste formulation containing fluoride (F), casein phosphopeptide amorphous calcium phosphate (CPP-ACP) and sodium trimetaphosphate (TMP) on the process of dental demineralization and biofilm composition.
Methods: This crossover double-blind study consisted of five phases, in which 10 volunteers wore intraoral appliances containing four bovine enamel specimens. The cariogenic challenge was performed using 30 % sucrose solution.
This study assessed the effects of different prepartum supplementation plans on Nellore cows' performance, metabolic responses, and early offspring development. Thirty-nine pregnant Nellore cows (224 ± 2.67 days of pregnancy, 5.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA bacterial strain was isolated from a brackish water sample of Tagus river, Alcochete, Portugal and was designated TO1_6. It forms light pink colonies on M13 medium supplemented with N-acetylglucosamine. Cells are pear-shaped to spherical, form rosettes and divide by budding.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe deep-sea covers over 70% of the Earth's surface and harbors predominantly uncharacterized bacterial communities. Actinobacteria are the major prokaryotic source of bioactive natural products that find their way into drug discovery programs, and the deep-sea is a promising source of biotechnologically relevant actinobacteria. Previous studies on actinobacteria in deep-sea sediments were either regionally restricted or did not combine a community characterization with the analysis of their bioactive potential.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAppl Neuropsychol Adult
August 2024
The ability of the Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT) to lateralize hippocampal sclerosis (HS) in mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) was explored in a sample of 50 patients with MTLE-HS (23 right and 27 left). Patients' AVLT scores were adjusted to the demographic characteristics of each individual in accordance with the Portuguese normative data. The laterality of the HS was determined by consensus by two neuroradiologists.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The high salt concentration is the major factor limiting microbial growth at salterns, along with solar radiation, temperature, and pH. These environmental factors play key roles in the acquisition of unique genetic adaptations for the survival of microorganisms in salterns, which can result in the production of interesting secondary metabolites. The main goal of the present work was to isolate and compare the culturable microbiota from two geographically distant salterns in Portugal and access their biotechnological potential.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis article analyses the use of facial recognition technology (FRT) in (semi-)public spaces with a focus in the Brazilian context. Therefore, the operation of the FRT processing chain is addressed, as well as the juridical nature of the facial signature, focusing mainly in the Brazilian data protection framework. FRT has been used in everyday life for several purposes, such as security, digital ranking, targeted marketing and health protection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAntonie Van Leeuwenhoek
April 2020
Salterns are extreme environments, where the high salt concentration is the main limitation to microbial growth, along with solar radiation, temperature and pH. These selective pressures might lead to the acquisition of unique genetic adaptations that can manifest in the production of interesting natural products. The present study aimed at obtaining the culturable microbial diversity from two Portuguese salterns located in different geographic regions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe gastrointestinal microbiota plays a critical role on host health and metabolism. This is particularly important in teleost nutrition, because fish do not possess some of the necessary enzymes to cope with the dietary challenges of aquaculture production. A main difficulty within fish nutrition is its dependence on fish meal, an unsustainable commodity and a source of organic pollutants.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe increase of many deadly diseases like infections by multidrug-resistant bacteria implies re-inventing the wheel on drug discovery. A better comprehension of the metabolisms and regulation of diseases, the increase in knowledge based on the study of disease-born microorganisms' genomes, the development of more representative disease models and improvement of techniques, technologies, and computation applied to biology are advances that will foster drug discovery in upcoming years. In this paper, several aspects of current methodologies for drug discovery of antibacterial and antifungals, anti-tropical diseases, antibiofilm and antiquorum sensing, anticancer and neuroprotectors are considered.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRev Bras Ter Intensiva
March 2018
Objective: To investigate the longterm psychological outcome in survivors of critical illness after intensive care unit discharge.
Methods: A prospective cohort of survivors admitted to a mixed intensive care unit between January and September 2010 was evaluated six months and five years after hospital discharge. The Dementia Rating Scale-2, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, the Posttraumatic stress syndrome 14-questions inventory, the Euro Quality of Life 5 Dimensions (EQ-5-D), and the Visual Analogue Scale (EQ VAS) were assessed at both follow-up periods.
Probiotics benefits in fish farming have been usually inferred appraising the effects observed on the host and not through the direct assessment of probiotic dynamics in the host gut microbiota. To overcome this gap, quantitative PCR (qPCR) can be a powerful approach to study the bacterial dynamics in fish gut microbiota. The presented work proposes four B.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAppl Neuropsychol Adult
June 2016
This study aimed to produce adjusted normative data for the Portuguese version of the Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT). The study included 1,068 community-dwelling individuals (736 women, 332 men) aged 18 to 93 years old (Mage = 56 years, SD = 18) who had educational backgrounds ranging from 0 to 24 years (M = 9.8 years, SD = 5.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe main goal of this study was to produce adjusted normative data for the Portuguese population on two verbal fluency measures: the semantic fluency test (animals category) and the phonemic fluency test (letters M, R, and P). The study included 950 community-dwelling individuals (624 women and 326 men) aged between 18 and 98 (mean = 57.8, SD = 19.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArch Clin Neuropsychol
March 2013
The main goal of this study was to produce normative data for the Portuguese population on the Trail Making Test (TMT). The study included 1,038 community-dwelling individuals aged between 18 and 93 years, who had educational backgrounds ranging from 3 to 22 years. The results showed that sex, age, and education were significantly associated with TMT performance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: We investigated functional reorganization mechanisms of the human medial temporal lobe (MTL) for episodic memory, in patients suffering from medial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) with hippocampal sclerosis (HS).
Methods: We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity changes during matched episodic encoding tasks of abstract words (Verbal) and line drawings (Visual), in patients with unilateral right MTLE undergoing presurgical evaluation and healthy controls.
Results: As expected, a significant interaction between material type and the side of MTL activity was present in the control group, with preferential involvement of the left hippocampus in verbal encoding and the right parahippocampal region in visual encoding.