Low thoracic skeletal muscle index is associated with negative outcomes in 244 patients with respiratory COVID-19.

Background: Sarcopenia is associated with negative outcomes in intensive care unit (ICU) patients and during chronic diseases. We aimed to evaluate if low skeletal muscle index (SMI) measured by computed tomography (CT) at the thoracic level is associated with poor outcomes in hospitalized patients with respiratory COVID-19.

Methods: Patients admitted to the hospital between March 1st and June 9, 2020 with a confirmed diagnosis of respiratory COVID-19 in the Emergency Department were included in this retrospective cohort study.

Validity of Bioimpedance Equations to Evaluate Fat-Free Mass and Muscle Mass in Severely Malnourished Anorectic Patients.

Background: Bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) is a simple and rapid technique to measure body composition (BC). Validity of BIA in patients with low body mass index (BMI) remains controversial. We assessed the validity of several BIA equations to evaluate fat-free mass (FFM), fat mass (FM) and muscle mass in patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) by using dual X ray absorptiometry (DXA) as reference.

Maternal parenting behaviors and adolescent depression: the mediating role of rumination.

Substantial evidence suggests that rumination is an important vulnerability factor for adolescent depression. Despite this, few studies have examined environmental risk factors that might lead to rumination and, subsequently, depression in adolescence. This study examined the hypothesis that an adverse family environment is a risk factor for rumination, such that the tendency to ruminate mediates the longitudinal association between a negative family environment and adolescent depressive symptoms.

[Isolation of "Brucella suis" biotype 5 from a bitch, in Madagascar. Validity of the species name "Brucella canis" (author's transl)].

A Gram-negative organism isolated from a btich, in Madagascar, was examined by bacteriologic, immunologic and metabolic methods, in parallel with cultures representative of the Brucella species. The organism fits well into the genus Brucella on the basis of its growth, biochemical and antigenic characteristics and was found to have the metabolic pattern on L-asparagine (-), L-arginine (+) and DL-ornithine (+) that identifies and defines the species Brucella suis. It is of rough colonial morphology and electron microscopy showed a cell wall structure similar to that of other rough Brucella.