Computer aided villi morphometric quantification in video-capsule enteroscopy: A newly developed software to quantify small bowel atrophy.

Background And Aims: Small bowel capsule endoscopy (SBCE) has an established role in patients with non-responsive celiac disease (CeD). A non-invasive method to quantify small bowel atrophy is still lacking.

Methods: We analysed SBCE frames from CeD patients from 2018 to 2020.

Predictability in Contemporary Medicine.

Medical practice is increasingly coming under the guidance of statistical-mathematical models that are, undoubtedly, valuable tools but are also only a partial representation of reality. Indeed, given that statistics may be more or less adequate, a model is still a subjective interpretation of the researcher and is also influenced by the historical context in which it operates. From this opinion, I will provide a short historical excursus that retraces the advent of probabilistic medicine as a long process that has a beginning that should be sought in the discovery of the complexity of disease.

PHoral: Effects of carnosine supplementation on quantity/quality of oral salivae in healthy volunteer and in subjects affected by common oral pathologies.

Background: Diseases of the oral cavity (OC) with an infectious trigger such as caries and periodontal disease are extremely common in the general population and can also have effects at the cardiovascular level. The oral salivary flow, with its buffering capacity, is able to regulate the pH of the OC and, therefore, significantly contribute to the ecological balance of the microenvironment in which the oral microbiome (OM) develops. On the other side, when the quality/quantity of salivary flow is altered it is supposed the disruption of this balance with the potential increase in oral pathogens and triggered diseases.

History repeating. The plague of 1630 in Milan and the COVID-19 pandemia.

In western democracies, individual behaviour will be crucial to control the spread of COVID-19, as well as government actions [1] that unfortunately, except China, South Korea and Italy, followed by others,  seems to be generally unconvinced and, speculatively, late. Indeed human history has been marked by epidemics/pandemics which have affected, more or less, large geographical areas [2]. Italy, as well as the rest of Europe, has often been affected by these phenomena and, Lombardy, due to his position, was, as today by COVID-19, severely stroked in Italy that is, after China, the second most affected country [3].

Time arrow in published clinical studies/trials indexed in MEDLINE: a systematic analysis of retrospective vs. prospective study design, from 1960 to 2017.

Clinical studies/trials are experiments or observations on human subjects considered by the scientific community the most appropriate instrument to answer specific research questions on interventions on health outcomes. The time-line of the observations might be focused on a single time point or to follow time, backward or forward, in the so called, respectively, retrospective and prospective study design. Since the retrospective approach has been criticized for the possible sources of errors due to bias and confounding, we aimed this study to assess if there is a prevalence of retrospective vs.

Atrial fibrillation, an epiphenomenon of acute Stanford type-A aortic dissection with suspected intimo-intimal intussusception.

Supraventricular arrhythmias can sometimes be "only" epiphenomena appearing during acute hypoxia, pneumonia, pulmonary embolism, and thrombosis. Indeed, atrial fibrillation is not rare in acute aortic dissection as it is estimated in about one half of patients and may be secondary to a perfusion deficit of the sinoatrial node artery.

Pharmacological Interactions on Blood Pressure Control in Arterial Hypertension, An Issue not to be Overlooked.

Our vision of long-term treatment strategies for the prevention of target organ damage and eventually cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in essential arterial hypertension needs to be continually monitored and updated for at least three issues: 1--the achievement of target pressure required to obtain the expected benefit needs continuous monitoring, a dose adjustment of the drug and, often, the use of combination therapies; 2--the chronic use of certain drugs, even in combination, is associated with the possible onset of side effects; 3--increasing of population life expectancy is inevitably associated with in an increase in drugs use with the unavoidable occurrence of adverse drug reactions, some of which can interfere with blood pressure control. These issues, still poorly studied, pose considerable problems in applying proper strategies for prevention. In this review, we will evaluate the goals of antihypertensive therapy, and its weak spots, such as the frequent side effects, that lead to poor therapy compliance.

Multiple primary synchronous malignant tumors.

Background: Patients with primary multiple malignancies are progressively increasing due to prolonged survival of cancer patients and to the advances in diagnostic techniques and therapeutic options.

Case Presentation: Here we present a 66 year-old caucasian patient with four synchronous primary malignant tumors affecting the lung, oropharynx, large bowel and prostate gland, respectively, treated with multidisciplinary approach.

Conclusions: The increased incidence of multiple malignant tumors is a real challenge to the clinician and clinical attention should be made to avoid a misdiagnosis.

The atherosclerosis of the sinus node artery is associated with an increased history of supra-ventricular arrhythmias: a retrospective study on 541 standard coronary angiograms.

Background. The ischemic damage of the sinus node (SN) is a well known cause of cardiac arrhythmias and can be a consequence of any flow abnormality in the sinus node artery (SNA). Accordingly we aimed this retrospective study to: (1) evaluate the suitability of the standard coronary angiography to study the SNA and (2) determine if the percentage of subjects with a positive retrospective history of supra-ventricular arrhythmias (SVA) differs in patients with normal and diseased SNA ascertained at the time of coronary angiography.

Autonomic dysfunction in mild cognitive impairment: evidence from power spectral analysis of heart rate variability in a cross-sectional case-control study.

Background: Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is set to become a major health problem with the exponential ageing of the world's population. The association between MCI and autonomic dysfunction, supported by indirect evidence and rich with clinical implications in terms of progression to dementia and increased risk of mortality and falls, has never been specifically demonstrated.

Aim: To conduct a comprehensive assessment of autonomic function in subjects with MCI by means of power spectral analysis (PSA) of heart rate variability (HRV) at rest and during provocative manoeuvres.

Assessing cytokines' talking patterns following experimental myocardial damage by applying Shannon's information theory.

Background: The simultaneous measurement of multiple cytokines in parallel by using multiplex proteome arrays (MPA) is of great interest to understanding the inflammatory response following myocardial infarction; however, since cytokines are pleiotropic and redundant, increase of information throughput (IT) attained by measuring multiple cytokines remain to be determined. We aimed this study to assess the IT of an MPA system designed to assess 8 cytokines - commercially available at the time of the study - serum levels, before (control state) and after experimental myocardial cryoinjury (activated state) in rats.

Methods: By assuming that redundant information do not generally increase the IT, we derived Entropy (H) and Redundancy (R) of information by using formulas of Shannon modified accordingly, where a high IT (high H and low R) corresponds to a low level of correlation between cytokines and vice versa for a low IT.