A clinical informatics approach to bronchopulmonary dysplasia: current barriers and future possibilities.

Bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) is a complex, multifactorial lung disease affecting preterm neonates that can result in long-term pulmonary and non-pulmonary complications. Current therapies mainly focus on symptom management after the development of BPD, indicating a need for innovative approaches to predict and identify neonates who would benefit most from targeted or earlier interventions. Clinical informatics, a subfield of biomedical informatics, is transforming healthcare by integrating computational methods with patient data to improve patient outcomes.

Holobionts: Ecological communities, hybrids, or biological individuals? A metaphysical perspective on multispecies systems.

Holobionts are symbiotic assemblages composed by a macrobe host (animal or plant) plus its symbiotic microbiota. In recent years, the ontological status of holobionts has created a great amount of controversy among philosophers and biologists: are holobionts biological individuals or are they rather ecological communities of independent individuals that interact together? Chiu and Eberl have recently developed an eco-immunity account of the holobiont wherein holobionts are neither biological individuals nor ecological communities, but hybrids between a host and its microbiota. According to their account, the microbiota is not a proper part of the holobiont.

What Is a Hologenomic Adaptation? Emergent Individuality and Inter-Identity in Multispecies Systems.

Contemporary biological research has suggested that some host-microbiome multispecies systems (referred to as "holobionts") can in certain circumstances evolve as unique biological individual, thus being a unit of selection in evolution. If this is so, then it is arguably the case that some biological adaptations have evolved at the level of the multispecies system, what we call . However, no research has yet been devoted to investigating their nature, or how these adaptations can be distinguished from adaptations at the species-level (genomic adaptations).

Giant Non-Functioning Pituitary Adenoma: Clinical Characteristics and Therapeutic Outcomes.

Background: Giant pituitary adenoma (≥4 cm) is a rare tumor whose clinical features and prognosis are not well known.

Aim: To evaluate the clinical characteristics and therapeutic outcomes of giant non-functioning PA (gNFPA).

Patients And Methods: A retrospective multicenter study of gNFPA patients diagnosed in a 12-year period was performed.

Gonadotrophin-releasing hormone agonist-induced pituitary adenoma apoplexy and casual finding of a parathyroid carcinoma: A case report and review of literature.

Background: Pituitary apoplexy represents one of the most serious, life threatening endocrine emergencies that requires immediate management. Gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist (GnRHa) can induce pituitary apoplexy in those patients who have insidious pituitary adenoma coincidentally.

Case Summary: A 46-year-old woman, with a history of hypertension and menorrhagia was transferred to our hospital from a secondary care hospital after complaints of headache and vomiting, with loss of consciousness 5 min after an injection of GnRHa.

Prevalence, Clinical Features, and Natural History of Incidental Clinically Non-Functioning Pituitary Adenomas.

The objective of the study was to assess the prevalence and clinical features of incidentally discovered clinically non-functioning pituitary adenoma (CNFPA) and to analyze its natural history. A multicenter retrospective study in patients diagnosed with incidental CNFPA periodically followed-up in 3 specialized neuroendocrinology units from 1992 to 2015 was performed. Out of a total of 189 CNFPA patients, 57 cases (30.

Non-functioning pituitary adenoma underwent surgery: A multicenter retrospective study over the last four decades (1977-2015).

Objective: To assess clinical features, diagnostic procedures, therapies and outcomes in patients with clinically non-functioning pituitary adenomas (NFPAs) surgically treated over the last four decades.

Design And Methods: A multicenter retrospective study in NFPA patients periodically followed up in specialized neuroendocrinology units who underwent surgery in the period 1977-2015 was performed.

Results: A total of 131 patients were studied [66 women (50.

A causal dispositional account of fitness.

The notion of fitness is usually equated to reproductive success. However, this actualist approach presents some difficulties, mainly the explanatory circularity problem, which have lead philosophers of biology to offer alternative definitions in which fitness and reproductive success are distinguished. In this paper, we argue  that none of these alternatives is satisfactory and, inspired by Mumford and Anjum's dispositional theory of causation, we offer a definition of fitness as a causal dispositional property.