Very High Resolution Projections over Italy under different CMIP5 IPCC scenarios.

This paper introduces VHR-PRO_IT (Very High-Resolution PROjections for ITaly), an open access hourly climate projection with a resolution of ≃2.2 km (i.e.

Clinical and microbiological characteristics of bacterial infections in patients with cirrhosis. A prospective cohort study from Argentina and Uruguay.

Introduction And Objectives: there is insufficient data regarding bacterial infections in patients with cirrhosis to support recommendations for empiric antibiotic treatments, particularly in Latin America. This study aimed to evaluate bacterial infection's clinical impact and microbiological characteristics, intending to serve as a platform to revise current practices.

Materials And Methods: multicenter prospective cohort study of patients with cirrhosis and bacterial infections from Argentina and Uruguay.

Norfloxacin prophylaxis effect on multidrug resistance in patients with cirrhosis and bacterial infections.

It is unclear whether norfloxacin predisposes to infections by multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs). We aimed to evaluate if patients with cirrhosis receiving norfloxacin prophylaxis at the time of the diagnosis of bacterial infections were more likely to present a multidrug-resistant isolate than those without prophylaxis. This is a cross-sectional study of hospitalized patients with cirrhosis and bacterial infections from Argentina and Uruguay (NCT03919032) from September 2018 to December 2020.

Numerical Assessment of Damage Parameters for a Hard Interface Model.

Adhesive interfaces are suitable modelling tools to describe very thin elastic layers and the related occurring phenomena (such as damage, viscosity, friction, etc.), without using a volumetric description, which is often computationally prohibitive in a large-scale numerical simulation. A major drawback of these kinds of models is the identification of free parameters, because of the smallness of a direct observation scale.

Introducing intense rainfall and snowmelt variables to implement a process-related non-stationary shallow landslide susceptibility analysis.

The study objective was to derive a susceptibility model for shallow landslides that could include process-related non-stationary variables, to be adaptable to climate changes. We selected the territory of the Mont-Emilius and Mont-Cervin Mountain Communities (northern Italy) as the study area. To define summary variables related to landslide predisposing and triggering processes, we investigated the relationships between landslide occurrences and intense rainfall and snowmelt events (period 1991-2020).

[Plasmatic glutathione levels and their relationships with clinical and therapeutic features in patients with schizophrenia].

Introduction: Altered glutathione systems (GSH) are suggested to participate in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. The purpose of this study was to determine the plasmatic glutathione levels of patients with schizophrenia compared to healthy controls and to examine their relationships with clinical and therapeutic features.

Methods: It was a case-control study carried out on 100 patients with schizophrenia according to DSM-IV-TR criteria and 95 healthy controls.

Stress shielding at the bone-implant interface: Influence of surface roughness and of the bone-implant contact ratio.

Short and long-term stabilities of cementless implants are strongly determined by the interfacial load transfer between implants and bone tissue. Stress-shielding effects arise from shear stresses due to the difference of material properties between bone and the implant. It remains difficult to measure the stress field in periprosthetic bone tissue.

Micromechanical modeling of the contact stiffness of an osseointegrated bone-implant interface.

Background: The surgical success of cementless implants is determined by the evolution of the biomechanical properties of the bone-implant interface (BII). One difficulty to model the biomechanical behavior of the BII comes from the implant surface roughness and from the partial contact between bone tissue and the implant. The determination of the constitutive law of the BII would be of interest in the context of implant finite element (FE) modeling to take into account the imperfect characteristics of the BII.

Dependence of the primary stability of cementless acetabular cup implants on the biomechanical environment.

Biomechanical phenomena occurring at the bone-implant interface during the press-fit insertion of acetabular cup implants are still poorly understood. This article presents a nonlinear geometrical two-dimensional axisymmetric finite element model aiming at describing the biomechanical behavior of the acetabular cup implant as a function of the bone Young's modulus , the diametric interference fit (), and the friction coefficient . The numerical model was compared with experimental results obtained from an test, which allows to determine a reference configuration with the parameter set:   0.

Influence of anisotropic bone properties on the biomechanical behavior of the acetabular cup implant: a multiscale finite element study.

Although the biomechanical behavior of the acetabular cup (AC) implant is determinant for the surgical success, it remains difficult to be assessed due to the multiscale and anisotropic nature of bone tissue. The aim of the present study was to investigate the influence of the anisotropic properties of peri-implant trabecular bone tissue on the biomechanical behavior of the AC implant at the macroscopic scale. Thirteen bovine trabecular bone samples were imaged using micro-computed tomography (μCT) with a resolution of 18 μm.

Therapeutic Strategies and Clinical Outcome in Papillary Thyroid Microcarcinoma: A Multicenter Observational Study.

Purpose: Papillary thyroid microcarcinoma (MPTC) has an excellent prognosis. We aimed to evaluate the evolution of therapeutic strategies over time and the clinical outcome of MPTC.

Methods: In this retrospective multicenter observational study in a northwest Italian region, patients with intrathyroidal, unifocal tumor ≤1 cm in size, incidentally found at histology or preoperative cytology diagnosis, were included.

The use of proton pump inhibitors in an Italian hospital: focus on oncologic and critical non-ICU patients.

Background: Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) are among the most misused drugs both at the community and hospital level. Recently, possible risks have been underscored, suggesting the importance of limiting PPI use to proven indications.

Objective: To survey the appropriateness of PPI use in a University hospital in Italy.

Cardiac Transplantation in the New Era.

The prevalence of heart failure continues to rise due to the aging population and longer survival of people with conditions that lead to heart failure, eg, hypertension, diabetes, and coronary artery disease. Although medical therapy has had an important impact on survival of patients and improving quality of life, heart transplantation remains the definitive therapy for patients that eventually deteriorate. Since the first successful heart transplantation in 1967, significant improvements have been made regarding donor and recipient selection, surgical techniques, and postoperative care.

Neurological events after liver transplantation: a single-center experience.

The aim of this study was to identify potential risk factors linked to neurologic events (NE) occurring after liver transplantation (LT) and use them to construct a model to predict such events. From odds ratios (OR) of risk factors, a scoring system was assessed using multivariate regression analysis. Forty-one of 307 LT patients presented NE (13.

Relationship between GSTM1 and GSTT1 polymorphisms and schizophrenia: a case-control study in a Tunisian population.

There is substantial evidence found in the literature that supports the fact that the presence of oxidative stress may play an important role in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. The glutathione S-transferases (GSTs) forms one of the major detoxifying groups of enzymes responsible for eliminating products of oxidative stress. Interindividual differences observed in the metabolism of xenobiotics have been attributed to the genetic polymorphism of genes coding for enzymes involved in detoxification.

Reduced antioxidant defense systems in schizophrenia and bipolar I disorder.

Numerous evidence and proofs suggest that the oxidative stress contributes to the pathogenesis of schizophrenia (SZ) and bipolar disorder (BD). The aim of this study is to determine the glutathione levels and the antioxidant enzyme activities in blood samples of patients suffering from SZ and patients with bipolar disorder in comparison with the healthy controlled subjects. It was a case-controlled study carried on upon three groups: forty-six SZ patients (41 men and 5 women, mean age=33.

The reduction of superoxide dismutase activity is associated with the severity of neurological soft signs in patients with schizophrenia.

This study aimed to explore the relationship between antioxidant enzyme activities and neurological soft signs (NSS) in a sample of patients with schizophrenia. Sixty clinically stable patients with schizophrenia treated mostly by first-generation antipsychotics and 30 matched healthy controls were recruited. NSS were assessed in two groups by a standardized neurological examination (Krebs et al.

Impact of seminal trace element and glutathione levels on semen quality of Tunisian infertile men.

Background: Growing evidence indicates that oxidative stress can be a primary cause of male infertility. Non-enzymatic antioxidants play an important protective role against oxidative damages and lipid peroxidation. Human seminal plasma is a natural reservoir of antioxidants.

Altered antioxidant status and increased lipid per-oxidation in seminal plasma of tunisian infertile men.

Human seminal plasma is a natural reservoir of antioxidants that protect spermatozoa from oxidative damages. There is evidence in literature supports the fact that impairments in seminal antioxidant and lipid per-oxidation status play important roles in the physiopathology of male infertility. Our present study forms the first one which was carried out in Tunisia.

Decreased glutathione levels and impaired antioxidant enzyme activities in drug-naive first-episode schizophrenic patients.

Background: The aim of this study was to determine glutathione levels and antioxidant enzyme activities in the drug-naive first-episode patients with schizophrenia in comparison with healthy control subjects.

Methods: It was a case-controlled study carried on twenty-three patients (20 men and 3 women, mean age = 29.3 ± 7.

Decreased glutathione levels and antioxidant enzyme activities in untreated and treated schizophrenic patients.

There is substantial evidence found in the literature that supports the fact that the presence of oxidative stress may play an important role in the physiopathology of schizophrenia. Previous studies have reported the occurrence of impairments in the glutathione levels and the activities of the antioxidant enzymes in patients suffering from schizophrenia. However, most of these studies were performed on treated patients.

HLA class I and class II polymorphism in three Sicilian populations.

Two human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class I loci (HLA-A and HLA-B) and one class II locus (HLA-DR) were typed at the DNA level in the Sicilian population. Study participants were of Sicilian origin (183 for class I loci and 260 for class II loci) and live in three towns, chosen on the basis of geographic position and different historical events. These towns are Sciacca (southwest Sicily, located at sea level, conquered by Arabs in A.

Endoscopic management of symptomatic choledocholithiasis in pregnancy without the use of radiations.

We report a case of 26-year-old woman at 10th week of gestation with cholestatic jaundice due to a common bile duct (CBD) stone managed by endoscopical retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP). The procedure was successfully carried out without the use of ionizing radiations and under trans-abdominal ultrasonographical (US) control. A few cases are reported in literature in which ERCP was performed without fluoroscopy examination.

High prevalence of infection with a single hepatitis C virus genotype in a small rural community of Argentina.

Background: During the years preceding this study, we noticed a relatively unusual high number of individuals with elevated alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels in O'Brien, a small rural town in Argentina. Moreover, four individuals from this town underwent liver transplantation owing to hepatitis C virus (HCV)-induced liver cirrhosis. These findings prompted us to conduct a large population-based survey to evaluate the prevalence of HCV in this community.

Permeability properties of a three-cell type in vitro model of blood-brain barrier.

We previously found that RBE4.B brain capillary endothelial cells (BCECs) form a layer with blood-brain barrier (BBB) properties if co-cultured with neurons for at least one week. As astrocytes are known to modulate BBB functions, we further set a culture system that included RBE4.