Protein-conformational diseases in childhood: Naturally-occurring hIAPP amyloid-oligomers and early β-cell damage in obesity and diabetes.

Background And Aims: This is the first time that obesity and diabetes mellitus (DM) as protein conformational diseases (PCD) are reported in children and they are typically diagnosed too late, when β-cell damage is evident. Here we wanted to investigate the level of naturally-ocurring or real (not synthetic) oligomeric aggregates of the human islet amyloid polypeptide (hIAPP) that we called RIAO in sera of pediatric patients with obesity and diabetes. We aimed to reduce the gap between basic biomedical research, clinical practice-health decision making and to explore whether RIAO work as a potential biomarker of early β-cell damage.

Ultrasound your NPO: Effect of body mass index on gastric volume in term pregnant women - Retrospective case series.

Introduction: A common belief has been that obese patients are prone to develop aspiration of gastric contents when general anesthesia is administered. We aimed to determine the correlation between antral cross-sectional area as a surrogate of gastric volume measured by gastric ultrasound, and body mass index (BMI) in term pregnant women scheduled for elective cesarean section.

Methods: A cross-sectional observational study was conducted on forty-two term pregnant patients scheduled for cesarean section.

Autologous tumor lysate/Bacillus Calmette-Guérin immunotherapy as an adjuvant to conventional breast cancer therapy.

Introduction: Autologous tumor cell vaccines rely on the concept of preserving an individual's own tumorigenic makeup, expressing its unique set of tumor-associated antigens as well as antigenic elements from the surrounding stroma. These autologous tumor characteristics are usually presented with an immune adjuvant in the hopes of enhancing an immune response.

Methods: The autologous vaccine we used was composed of tumor cells combined with BCG and formalin.