Decreased apoptosis in fatty livers submitted to subnormothermic machine-perfusion respect to cold storage.

Machine perfusion at subnormothermic temperature (20°C), MP20, was developed by Vairetti et al. and showed to afford a better preservation of fatty livers respect to traditional cold storage (CS) in terms of enzyme release into the perfusate and bile, glycogen stores, energy charge and oxidative stress. Here we investigated whether it also caused decreased cell death by apoptosis.

Galectin-3 plasma levels and coronary artery disease: a new possible biomarker of acute coronary syndrome.

Inflammation plays a key role in atherosclerosis. Galectin-3 is a macrophage- and endothelium-derived mediator actively involved in the regulation of many aspects of inflammatory cell behaviour. The aim of this study is to quantify plasma Galectin-3 in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) and different clinical manifestation at the moment of observation in order to verify whether Galectin-3 could be a useful biomarker of atherosclerotic state.

Minimally invasive video-assisted cardiac surgery: operative techniques, application fields and clinical outcomes.

Minimally invasive video-assisted surgery through a right minithoracotomy has become the standard surgical approach for several cardiac diseases at many major centers worldwide. In this article we review the existing literature on the subject and describe different operative techniques, application fields and clinical outcomes.

Food components with anticaries activity.

Caries is the most common oral infectious disease in the world. Its development is influenced also by diet components that interfere with pathogen mutans group Streptococci (MGS) activity. A very active research to identify functional foods and their components that are generally recognised as safe has been ongoing, with the aim of developing alternative approaches, to the use of synthetic chlorhexidine, and at the reduction or prevention of caries.

Isolation and characterization of antimicrobial food components.

Nowadays there is an evident growing interest in natural antimicrobial compounds isolated from food matrices. According to the type of matrix, different isolation and purification steps are needed and as these active compounds belong to different chemical classes, also different chromatographic and electrophoretic methods coupled with various detectors (the most used diode array detector and mass spectrometer) have to be performed. This review covers recent steps made in the fundamental understanding of sample preparation methods as well as of analytical tools useful for the complete characterization of bioactive food compounds.

Attachment mental states and inferred pathways of development in borderline personality disorder: a study using the Adult Attachment Interview.

We report the outcome of an investigation on how specific attachment states of mind and corresponding risk factors related to different DSM Axis I comorbidities in subjects with BPD. Mental representations of attachment in four BPD sub-groups (BPD and Anxiety/Mood Disorders, BPD and Substance Use and Abuse Disorders, BPD and Alcohol Use and Abuse Disorders, and BPD and Eating Disorders) were assessed in 140 BPD subjects using the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). In addition to the global attachment picture in which Insecure organized (Dismissing 51% and Enmeshed 35%) and Insecure disorganized categories (40%) were overrepresented, significant differences in attachment category were found between the four BPD sub-groups.

Attachment and emotional understanding: a study on late-adopted pre-schoolers and their parents.

Objective: The aim of this study was to characterize the role of attachment in adoption, first by assessing the influence of adoptive parents on their late-adopted children and second by investigating the role of children's attachment on an emotional understanding task.

Design: On children's arrival into adoptive families, parents' attachment was evaluated. After 12-18 months, children's attachment towards mothers and fathers was assessed.

Participation of protein sequence termini in crystal contacts.

The analysis of the crystal packing interactions, in a nonredundant set of high resolution and monomeric globular protein crystal structures, shows that the residues located at the N- and C-termini of the sequence tend to participate in packing interaction more often than expected and that often they interact with each other. Since the sequence termini are, in general, conformationally very flexible and since they host electrical charges of opposite sign, it can be hypothesized that they play a crucial role in the early formation of the nonphysiological contacts that bring to protein crystallization. It is thus not surprising that modest lengthening/shortening of the sequence termini have often a dramatic effect on protein crystallogenesis.

In vitro calcified matrix deposition by human osteoblasts onto a zinc-containing bioactive glass.

Bioactive glasses synthesized by the sol-gel technique possess many of the qualities associated with an ideal scaffold material for a bone graft substitute. In view of the potential clinical applications, we performed a detailed in vitro study of the biological reactivity of synthesized 58S bioactive glass containing-zinc, in terms of osteoblast morphology, proliferation, and deposition of a mineralized extracellular matrix (ECM). Human Sarcoma Osteoblast (SAOS-2) cells were used to i) assess cytotoxicity by lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) release and ii) evaluate the deposition of a calcified extracellular matrix by ELISA assay and quantitative RT-PCR (qRT-PCR).

Detectability of the Eurasian otter by standard surveys: an approach using marking intensity to estimate false negative rates.

False negative detections may bias the surveys for rare species and reduce the reliability of models based on the proportion of occupied patches. We assessed the detectability of the Eurasian otter Lutra lutra through the standard survey method by analysing the detection history of 28 sampling stretches surveyed monthly between March 2001 and January 2003. Each survey negative for otter spraints was considered as a false negative if the otter had been recorded in the previous and/or following month (respectively, cFN and FN).

Flip-flop kinetics of ropivacaine during continuous epidural infusion influences its accumulation rate.

Background: Ropivacaine has an optimal toxicity profile for epidural anesthesia in adults, but there are currently no studies concerning its pharmacokinetics during continuous infusion. The primary objective of this study was to evaluate the pharmacokinetics and safety of ropivacaine in adults during a 48-h continuous epidural infusion.

Materials And Methods: We enrolled 43 adults (ASA I-II) scheduled for major abdominal or urologic surgery with postoperative continuous epidural analgesia with ropivacaine 0.

Clustering tendency in the protein fold space.

Several non-redundant ensembles of protein three-dimensional structures were analyzed in order to estimate their natural clustering tendency by means of the Cox-Lewis coefficient. It was observed that, despite proteins tend to aggregate into different and well separated groups, some overlap between different clusters occurs. This suggests that classifications bases only on structural data cannot allow a systematic classification of proteins.

Minimally invasive aortic valve replacement in a transplanted heart.

Heart transplantation is subject to a number of chronic complications that may limit graft survival and be detrimental to the patient's quality of life. Aortic valve stenosis is a rare complication found after cardiac transplantation, which we believe has never been described on a tricuspid normal aortic valve. In the present study, we report a case of successful aortic valve replacement performed 16 years after cardiac transplantation on an extensively calcified tricuspid valve.

Branched-chain amino acid supplementation promotes survival and supports cardiac and skeletal muscle mitochondrial biogenesis in middle-aged mice.

Recent evidence points to a strong relationship between increased mitochondrial biogenesis and increased survival in eukaryotes. Branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) have been shown to extend chronological life span in yeast. However, the role of these amino acids in mitochondrial biogenesis and longevity in mammals is unknown.

New method to measure and improve consistency of baroreflex sensitivity values.

Objective: Baroreflex sensitivity (BRS) is an important prognostic index in cardiovascular diseases, however, its use is complicated by different methods difficult to compare and standardize, often providing conflicting results. We tested whether the simple ratio of RR interval to systolic blood pressure global variabilities (assessed by standard deviations) is a reliable measure of BRS, by measuring the agreement with six established methods. In addition, we tested whether high-pass filtering of data, by removing slow non-baroreflex-mediated fluctuations, could improve the agreement between different BRS methods.

Clustering criteria and algorithms.

Cluster analysis is an unsupervised pattern recognition frequently used in biology, where large amounts of data must often be classified. Hierarchical agglomerative approaches, the most commonly used techniques in biology, are described in this chapter. Particular attention is put on techniques for validating the optimal cluster number and the clustering quality.

Proximity measures for cluster analysis.

The present chapter provides the basic information about the measures of proximity between two subjects or groups of subjects. It is obvious that these concepts must be clear in order to apply them to any pattern recognition analysis, both supervised and unsupervised.

Serum eosinophilic cationic protein: is there a role in respiratory disorders?

Background: Eosinophilic cationic protein (ECP) has been widely investigated in the clinical practice as a potential biomarker for asthma. However, there are conflicting data concerning its validity in other respiratory disorders.

Methods: Serum ECP levels were retrospectively analyzed in 441 patients (227 males and 214 females) suffering from respiratory disease and visited for the first time, and in 33 healthy subjects (17 males and 16 females).

CR1 genotype and haplotype involvement in coronary artery disease: the pivotal role of hypertension and dyslipidemia.

Inflammation plays a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis and coronary syndromes. Atherosclerosis is a complex multifactorial disorder. Data indicate that the complement proteins play a crucial role in the link between inflammation and atherogenesis.

Dynamic interactions between musical, cardiovascular, and cerebral rhythms in humans.

Background: Reactions to music are considered subjective, but previous studies suggested that cardiorespiratory variables increase with faster tempo independent of individual preference. We tested whether compositions characterized by variable emphasis could produce parallel instantaneous cardiovascular/respiratory responses and whether these changes mirrored music profiles.

Methods And Results: Twenty-four young healthy subjects, 12 musicians (choristers) and 12 nonmusician control subjects, listened (in random order) to music with vocal (Puccini's "Turandot") or orchestral (Beethoven's 9th Symphony adagio) progressive crescendos, more uniform emphasis (Bach cantata), 10-second period (ie, similar to Mayer waves) rhythmic phrases (Giuseppe Verdi's arias "Va pensiero" and "Libiam nei lieti calici"), or silence while heart rate, respiration, blood pressures, middle cerebral artery flow velocity, and skin vasomotion were recorded.

Hair testing is superior to urine to disclose cocaine consumption in driver's licence regranting.

In driver licence regranting, subjects with a history of cocaine use are requested to undergo laboratory testing to verify both current and past abstinence from the drug. Identification of cocaine use based only on urinalysis may miss some cases because of the short elimination half-life of the drug. Moreover, many abusers know how to time their cocaine consumption in such a way that they can "beat" the urinalysis, having a series of negative urine tests.

Amino acid composition and protein dimension.

There is indirect evidence that the amino acid composition of proteins depends on their dimension. The amino acid composition of a nonredundant set of about 550,000 proteins was determined and it was observed that, in the range of 50-200 residues, the percentage of occurrence of most of the residue types significantly depends on protein dimension. This result should prove useful in analyzing protein sequences and genomics.

Anaesthesia for MRI in the paediatric patient.

Purpose Of Review: The purpose of the present review is to focus on the literature in the past year and specifically the development of recent guidelines, the debate on who does the sedation anaesthesia for MRI in a paediatric patient, the use of medications and techniques, and the use of monitors and equipment.

Recent Findings: The revised guidelines of American Academy of Pediatrics and American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry underline the serious risks associated with the sedation of paediatric patients and emphasize the need for proper preparation and proper evaluation. Most children require deep sedation for MRI and the practitioner must have appropriate skills to rescue the patient from general anaesthesia.

Detailed estimation of bioinformatics prediction reliability through the Fragmented Prediction Performance Plots.

Background: An important and yet rather neglected question related to bioinformatics predictions is the estimation of the amount of data that is needed to allow reliable predictions. Bioinformatics predictions are usually validated through a series of figures of merit, like for example sensitivity and precision, and little attention is paid to the fact that their performance may depend on the amount of data used to make the predictions themselves.

Results: Here I describe a tool, named Fragmented Prediction Performance Plot (FPPP), which monitors the relationship between the prediction reliability and the amount of information underling the prediction themselves.