This research aims to monitor the conservation status of the lipid and mineral contents of four shelf-stable insect-based products (yellow mealworm, house cricket, mole cricket, and silkworm) marketed online. A total of 32 single-species packs were purchased from various online commercial suppliers. Moisture, lipids, fatty acids, titratable acidity, mineral elements, and primary and secondary lipid oxidation products were determined.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMembers of the genus and lactobacilli are the most commonly used probiotics to promote human health. In this context, genome-based analyses have been demonstrated as a fast and reliable tool for identifying and characterizing health-promoting activities imputed to probiotics. This study is an extension of the Integrated Probiotic Database (IPDB) previously created on probiotics of the genus , facilitating a comprehensive understanding of the genetic characteristics that contribute to the diverse spectrum of beneficial effects of probiotics.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Screening for nasal carriage of Staphylococcus (S.) aureus is associated with a reduction of peritoneal dialysis (PD)-related infections, but conflicting results have questioned the benefit of this practice. This study evaluated the clinical effectiveness of the screening program for nasal carriage of S.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Venous outflow is the favored access for endovascular management of dialysis fistulas. However, transradial access (TRA) offers advantages in specific clinical scenarios. The study aims to compare the efficacy, feasibility, and safety of TRA and transvenous access (TVA) in the endovascular management of malfunctioning dialysis fistulas, addressing the existing gap in comprehensive literature.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough it is common practice to use historically established 'reference strains' or 'type strains' for laboratory experiments, this approach often overlooks how effectively these strains represent the full ecological, genetic and functional diversity of the species within a specific ecological niche. In this context, this study proposes the Optimal Representative Strain (ORS) selector tool (https://zenodo.org/doi/10.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study aimed to identify critical issues in artisanal bakery and pastry production in Italy that could improve food safety and quality. Fifteen voluntary Italian companies underwent on-site inspections and interviews from 2018 to 2021. The inspection concerned the production site characteristics, processing flows, materials, and personnel to pinpoint potential product contamination and record objective data collection through a 126-question demerit scoring system.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe use of self-assembling peptide hydrogels in the treatment of spinal cord and brain injuries, especially when combined with adult neural stem cells, has shown great potential. To advance tissue engineering, it is essential to understand the effect of mechanochemical signaling on cellular differentiation. The elucidation of the molecular interactions at the level of the neuronal membrane still represents a promising area of investigation for many drug delivery and tissue engineering applications.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study investigates auditory localization in children with a diagnosis of hearing impairment rehabilitated with bilateral cochlear implants or hearing aids. Localization accuracy in the anterior horizontal field and its distribution along the angular position of the source were analyzed. Participants performed a localization task in a virtual environment where they could move their heads freely and were asked to point to an invisible sound source.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: This study aims to evaluate the feasibility, efficacy, and safety of distal transradial access (dRA) for the endovascular management of malfunctioning dialysis fistulas. This study also compares dRA with conventional access techniques, such as proximal radial and transvenous access, focusing on technical success, clinical outcomes, and vascular access site complications (VASCs).
Methods: A retrospective multicenter study was conducted across four hospitals, including 292 patients treated between January 2019 and June 2024.
Int J Neural Syst
November 2024
This study presents a Subject-Aware Transformer-based neural network designed for the Electroencephalogram (EEG) Emotion Recognition task (SATEER), which entails the analysis of EEG signals to classify and interpret human emotional states. SATEER processes the EEG waveforms by transforming them into Mel spectrograms, which can be seen as particular cases of images with the number of channels equal to the number of electrodes used during the recording process; this type of data can thus be processed using a Computer Vision pipeline. Distinct from preceding approaches, this model addresses the variability in individual responses to identical stimuli by incorporating a User Embedder module.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCancer immunotherapy is focused on stimulating the immune system against cancer cells by exploiting immune checkpoint mechanisms. PD-1/PD-L1 is one of the most known immune checkpoints due to the widespread upregulation of the Programmed Death Ligand 1 (PD-L1) transmembrane protein in cancer tissues. Accordingly, taking advantage of the ability of oncolytic adenoviruses (OAd) to specifically infect and kill tumor cells over healthy ones, here, we developed a targeted delivery platform based on OAd to selectively deliver in cancer cells an antisense peptide nucleic acid (PNA) targeting the PD-L1 mRNA.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Epigravettian human remains from Riparo Tagliente in northern Italy represent some of the earliest evidence of human occupation in the southern Alpine slopes after the Last Glacial Maximum. Genomic analyses of the 17,000-year-old Tagliente 2 mandible revealed the oldest presence of a genetic profile with affinities to the Near East in the Italian peninsula, which later became the most widespread hunter-gatherer ancestry across Europe. However, a comparable biomolecular characterization of the Tagliente 1 burial remains unavailable, preventing us from defining its biological relationships with Tagliente 2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: The study investigated the association between cell-stent area and cerebrovascular events incidence in asymptomatic patients undergoing carotid artery stenting (CAS).
Materials And Methods: This is an observational, retrospective, multicenter, cohort study. Between 2012 and 2022, all patients undergoing primary CAS for severe asymptomatic carotid artery stenosis were evaluated.
Elucidation of the role of gut microbiota in the metabolism of orally administered drugs may improve therapeutic effectiveness and contribute to the development of personalized medicine. In this study, ten different artificial gut microbiota (AGM), obtained by culturing fecal samples in a continuous fermentation system, were challenged for their metabolizing capacity on a panel of six glucocorticoids selected from either prodrugs or drugs. Data from metabolic stability assays highlighted that, while the hydrolysis-mediated conversion of prodrugs to drugs represented only a minor metabolic pathway, significant differences in the stability of parent compounds and in their conversion rates to multiple reductive metabolites were obtained for the selected drugs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe post-pandemic context has changed the modes for collecting data in sensory and consumer science. The objectives of this research were to analyze consumers' associations of food consistency and to study two virtual modes of the Free Word Association test (FWA). This test was administered to 209 consumers (180 women, 29 men, 18-45 years old) asynchronously (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The aim of this study was to examine the association between bullying victimization and health risk behaviors in adolescents.
Methods: A representative sample of 1020 adolescents participated in the study. The variables such as bullying, health risk behaviors (tobacco, drugs, alcohol, sedentary behavior, smartphone use, level of physical activity, and sleep), and economic status were assessed using self-reported questionnaires.
Selenium (Se) is an element crucial for human health, known for its anticancer properties. Although selenium nanoparticles (SeNPs) have shown lower toxicity and higher biocompatibility than other Se compounds, bare SeNPs are unstable in aqueous solutions. In this study, several materials, including bovine serum albumin (BSA), chitosan, polymethyl vinyl ether-alt-maleic anhydride, and tocopherol polyethylene glycol succinate, are explored to develop stable SeNPs and further evaluate their potential as candidates for cancer treatment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe microbial ecology of raw milk cheeses is determined by bacteria originating from milk and milk-producing animals. Recently, it has been shown that members of the species may become transmitted along the Parmigiano Reggiano cheese production chain and ultimately may colonize the consumer intestine. However, there is a lack of knowledge regarding the molecular mechanisms that mediate the interaction between and the human gut.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInflammation-based scores are biomarkers of the crosstalk between the tumor microenvironment and the immune response. Investigating the intricate relationship between the tumor stromal microenvironment, biomarkers, and the response to transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE) is essential for early identification of TACE refractoriness or failure, providing insights into tumor biology and facilitating personalized therapeutic interventions. This study addresses a dearth of recent literature exploring the prognostic significance of the preoperative LMR in individuals from western countries diagnosed with stage B hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) undergoing drug eluting microspheres TACE (DEM-TACE) or conventional TACE (cTACE).
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