Nat Rev Nephrol
December 2019
Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) affects an estimated 1 in 1,000 people and slowly progresses to end-stage renal disease (ESRD) in about half of these individuals. Tolvaptan, a vasopressin 2 receptor blocker, has been approved by regulatory authorities in many countries as a therapy to slow cyst growth, but additional treatments that target dysregulated signalling pathways in cystic kidney and liver are needed. Metabolic reprogramming is a prominent feature of cystic cells and a potentially important contributor to the pathophysiology of ADPKD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTropical forests store large amounts of carbon and high biodiversity, but are being degraded at alarming rates. The emerging global Forest and Landscape Restoration (FLR) agenda seeks to limit global climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through the growth of trees. In doing so, it may also protect biodiversity as a free cobenefit, which is vital given the massive shortfall in funding for biodiversity conservation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChanges in cardiac autonomic regulation, expressed by increased sympathetic activity and decreased heart rate variability, have an important relationship with the onset of lethal cardiac phenomena. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the cardiac autonomic behaviour in young people according to their level of physical activity. Through the International Physical Activity Questionnaire, 55 healthy young non-smokers with no history of previous diseases and whose parents did not suffer from metabolic syndrome were assessed and divided into groups: sedentary (n=12), insufficiently active (n=16), active (n=14), and very active (n=13).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBaCuSiTe was prepared from the elements in a solid-state reaction at 973 K, followed by slow cooling to room temperature. This telluride adopts a new, hitherto unknown structure type, crystallizing in the noncentrosymmetric space group with = 7.5824(1) Å, = 8.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe report an alternative random laser (RL) architecture based on a flexible and ZnO-enriched cellulose acetate (CA) fiber matrix prepared by electrospinning. The electrospun fibers, mechanically reinforced by polyethylene oxide and impregnated with zinc oxide powder, were applied as an adsorbent surface to incorporate plasmonic centers (silver nanoprisms). The resulting structures - prepared in the absence (CA-ZnO) and in the presence of silver nanoparticles (CA-ZnO-Ag) - were developed to support light excitation, guiding and scattering prototypes of a RL.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEarly detection and treatment of cardiotoxicity from cancer therapies is key to preventing a rise in adverse cardiovascular outcomes in cancer patients. Over-diagnosis of cardiotoxicity in this context is however equally hazardous, leading to patients receiving suboptimal cancer treatment, thereby impacting cancer outcomes. Accurate screening therefore depends on the widespread availability of sensitive and reproducible biomarkers of cardiotoxicity, which can clearly discriminate early disease.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTuberculosis (Edinb)
July 2019
This manuscript reports, at the first time, the photoinactivation evaluation of tetra-cationic and anionic porphyrins as photosensitizers (PS) for the photodynamic inactivation (PDI) of rapidly growing mycobacteria strains. Two different charged porphyrin groups were obtained commercially. PDI experiments in the strains Mycobacterium massiliense e Mycobacterium fortuitum conducted with adequate concentration (without aggregation) of photosensitizer under white light at a fluence rate of 50 mW/cm over 90 min showed that the most effective PS caused a 100 times reduction in the concentration of viable mycobacteria.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Whole-body MRI is used for staging paediatric Hodgkin lymphoma, commonly using size thresholds, which fail to detect disease in normal-size lymph nodes.
Objective: To investigate quantitative whole-body MRI metrics for nodal characterisation.
Materials And Methods: Thirty-seven children with Hodgkin lymphoma underwent 1.
Background: Cervical cancer screening might contribute to the prevention of anal cancer in women. We aimed to investigate if routine cervical cancer screening results-namely high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) infection and cytohistopathology-predict anal HPV16 infection, anal high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions (HSIL) and, hence, anal cancer.
Methods: We did a systematic review of MEDLINE, Embase, and the Cochrane library for studies of cervical determinants of anal HPV and HSIL published up to Aug 31, 2018.
Introduction: Drug interaction is an important cause of global morbidity. It is of particular importance in cancer patients since they are often in use of polypharmacy, related to interactions between the drugs and the chemotherapeutics used.
Objective: To evaluate the drug interaction between chemotherapy and other drugs in cancer patients.
The ground breaking extension of the key concept of phase structure to nonequilibrium regimes was only recently achieved in Floquet systems, characterized by a time-dependent quantum Hamiltonian with a periodic driving source. However, despite the theoretical advances, only very few systems are known to display experimental Floquet phases, not one of them employing a laser emission-based mechanism. Here we report the first experimental observation of a Floquet phase in a photonic system, a disordered fiber laser with spatial eigenmode localization.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThere are regions in the world oceans where oxygen saturation is at its lowest, evident at depths between shelf to upper bathyal zone. These regions are known as Oxygen Minimum Zones (OMZs), which reportedly support phylogenetically diverse microbes. In this study, we aimed to characterize prokaryotic diversity in the water samples collected from 43, 200 and 1000 m depth of the Bay of Bengal Time Series location (BoBTS-18.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To compare the analgesic effects of stimulation of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) or the posterior superior insula (PSI) against sham deep (d) repetitive (r) transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in patients with central neuropathic pain (CNP) after stroke or spinal cord injury in a randomized, double-blinded, sham-controlled, 3-arm parallel study.
Methods: Participants were randomly allocated into the active PSI-rTMS, ACC-rTMS, sham-PSI-rTMS, or sham-ACC-rTMS arms. Stimulations were performed for 12 weeks, and a comprehensive clinical and pain assessment, psychophysics, and cortical excitability measurements were performed at baseline and during treatment.
Introduction: The heat treatment of stainless steel wires is a routine clinical procedure adopted by many dentists in order to relieve the stress caused after performing bends in the archwire.
Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the influence of heat treatment of stainless steel archwires with a rectangular section of 0.016 x 0.
Doxorubicin (DOX) is a cytostatic antibiotic from the class of anthracyclines widely used in chemotherapeutic cancer treatments. Despite the efficiency against several types of cancer, the use of DOX remains limited due to the side effects, especially cardiotoxicity. Among the DOX administration strategies, there are the "classic players" such as nanoparticles and polymers, which are capable of DOX delivery directly to interesting neoplastic regions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGuidelines recommend true whole-body F-FDG PET/CT scans from vertex to toes in pediatric lymphoma patients, although this suggestion has not been validated in large clinical trials. The objective of the study was to evaluate the incidence and clinical impact of lesions outside the "eyes to thighs" regular field of view (R-FOV) in F-FDG PET/CT staging (sPET) and interim (iPET) scans in pediatric lymphoma patients. True whole-body sPET and iPET scans were prospectively obtained in pediatric lymphoma patients (11 worldwide centers).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this study, Chlorella vulgaris NIOCCV was cultivated in seafood processing industry wastewater with continuous supply of 5%, 10%, and 20% CO. The optimum CO fixation efficiency ( [Formula: see text] ), biomass productivity, specific growth rate (SGR), and lipid content recorded were 0.43 mg L d, 264.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The aim was to evaluate backgrounding beef steers on oat + ryegrass pastures mixed with vetch and/or using energy supplementation.
Methods: A randomized block design with three treatments and three replications was used. The treatments were: grass + supplement (oat + ryegrass + supplementation), legume + supplement (oat + ryegrass + vetch + supplementation) and grass + legume (oat + ryegrass + vetch).
Background: Arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC) is a heritable heart muscle disease that causes sudden cardiac death in the young. Inflammatory myocardial infiltrates have been described at autopsy and on biopsy, but there are few data on the presence of myocarditis in living patients with ARVC using non-invasive imaging techniques. FDG-PET is a validated technique for detecting myocardial inflammation in clinically suspected myocarditis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: To investigate if there is difficulty in introducing complementary feeding in premature infants.
Methods: This is an exploratory, cross-sectional study performed in premature infants between six and twenty-four months of gestationally corrected age, using complementary feeding. Thirty-eight infants born prematurely were included.
A procedure using ICP OES for sample preparation for the determination of copper, iron and manganese in cashew nuts was developed. Constrained simplex-centroid design was applied in the optimization of the digestion in microwave oven procedure, and the results evaluated from topological maps of the Kohonen network. The best proportion evaluated for the digestion of the sample with HNO, HO and HO was 10:45:45 (%).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe evolution of the symbiotic association with microbes allowed termites to decompose ingested lignocellulose from plant-derived substrates, including herbivore dung and soil humus. Representatives of the Syntermitinae (Termitidae) range in their feeding habits from wood and litter-feeding to humus-feeding species. However, only limited information is available about their feeding ecology and associated microbial communities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyols (FODMAPs) are an heterogeneous group of compounds that can be poorly digested and may have a range of effects on gastrointestinal processes. FODMAPs are found in a wide variety of foods, including bread. FODMAPs' intake is associated with the onset of symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The aim of this study was to assess and compare color changes in esthetic elastomeric ligatures after 30 days using a spectrophotometer and the Commission Internationale d'Éclairage (CIE) color system.
Materials And Methods: The sample comprised elastomeric ligatures of four color groups ( = 42): blue pearl (BP); colorless; white pearl (WP); and pearl. Four samples from each group were allocated in for quadrants of seven patients in a split-mouth model.