Assessment of iodine importance and needs for supplementation in school-aged children in Portugal.

Background: Micronutrients are essential for child proper growth and development. Nutritional deficiencies of these elements have increasingly been a concern in Europe, as they are often related to the cognitive potential and physical lifelong consequences. However, being an essential trace element for thyroid function, iodine intake in the desired quantities becomes also very important for neurodevelopment, including for school-aged children.

Soap production: A green prospective.

A green prospective based on the reuse of waste materials such as almond shells, orange peel and used cooking oil to manufacture soap is presented. In Portugal, thousands of tons of waste are generated from used cooking oil and production of nut shells' residues is growing every year. In addition, the high consumption of citrus fruits, oranges in particular, generates large amounts of citrus peel.

Rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder symptomatic of a brain stem cavernoma.

A 75-year-old man complained of excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS), difficulty falling asleep and nocturnal agitation during sleep. Restless legs syndrome (RLS) was diagnosed and treated. Because of persistent EDS, snoring and nycturia, a nocturnal polysomnography (PSG) was performed.

A 24-month open-label study of canakinumab in neonatal-onset multisystem inflammatory disease.

Objective: To study efficacy and safety of escalating doses of canakinumab, a fully human anti-IL-1β monoclonal antibody in the severe cryopyrin-associated periodic syndrome, neonatal-onset multisystem inflammatory disease (NOMID).

Methods: 6 patients were enrolled in this 24-month, open-label phase I/II study. All underwent anakinra withdrawal.

Canakinumab (ACZ885, a fully human IgG1 anti-IL-1β mAb) induces sustained remission in pediatric patients with cryopyrin-associated periodic syndrome (CAPS).

Introduction: Cryopyrin-associated periodic syndrome (CAPS) represents a spectrum of three auto-inflammatory syndromes, familial cold auto-inflammatory syndrome (FCAS), Muckle-Wells syndrome (MWS), and neonatal-onset multisystem inflammatory disease/chronic infantile neurological cutaneous and articular syndrome (NOMID/CINCA) with etiology linked to mutations in the NLRP3 gene resulting in elevated interleukin-1β (IL-1β) release. CAPS is a rare hereditary auto-inflammatory disease, which may start early in childhood and requires a life-long treatment. Canakinumab, a fully human anti-IL-1β antibody, produces sustained selective inhibition of IL-1β.

In vivo regulation of interleukin 1beta in patients with cryopyrin-associated periodic syndromes.

The investigation of interleukin 1beta (IL-1beta) in human inflammatory diseases is hampered by the fact that it is virtually undetectable in human plasma. We demonstrate that by administering the anti-human IL-1beta antibody canakinumab (ACZ885) to humans, the resulting formation of IL-1beta-antibody complexes allowed the detection of in vivo-produced IL-1beta. A two-compartment mathematical model was generated that predicted a constitutive production rate of 6 ng/d IL-1beta in healthy subjects.