Comparison of end-to-side and side-to-side anastomosis techniques in arteriovenous fistula for hemodialysis. A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Autogenous arteriovenous fistula (AVF) is the vascular access of choice for chronic kidney disease to patients requiring hemodialysis. However, there still needs to be more consensus on whether the best surgical approach is an end-of-vein to side-of-artery (ETS) or a side-of-vein to side-of-artery (STS) anastomosis. This study aims to compare venous maturation rates, mid-term patency and post-operative steal syndrome rates between ETS and STS techniques for arteriovenous fistulas.

Oxidative Stress and Histomorphometric Remodeling: Two Key Intestinal Features of Type 2 Diabetes in Goto-Kakizaki Rats.

Gastrointestinal complications of diabetes are often overlooked, despite affecting up to 75% of patients. This study innovatively explores local glutathione levels and morphometric changes in the gut of Goto-Kakizaki (GK) rats, a type 2 diabetes animal model. Segments of the intestine, cecum, and colon were collected for histopathological analysis and glutathione quantification.

Exploring quercetin's protective potential against the pro-inflammatory effects of silver nanoparticles in C57BL/6J mice.

The increasing prevalence of silver nanoparticles (AgNP) in various applications has sparked concerns about their potential adverse effects on human health. Hence, it is crucial to devise strategies to minimize their detrimental effects. Quercetin, a naturally occurring flavonoid present in human diet is known for its broad biological effects, including anti-inflammatory properties.

Profiling of urinary extracellular vesicle protein signatures from patients with cribriform and intraductal prostate carcinoma in a cross-sectional study.

Prognostic tests and treatment approaches for optimized clinical care of prostatic neoplasms are an unmet need. Prostate cancer (PCa) and derived extracellular vesicles (EVs) proteome changes occur during initiation and progression of the disease. PCa tissue proteome has been previously characterized, but screening of tissue samples constitutes an invasive procedure.

A survey on cell nuclei instance segmentation and classification: Leveraging context and attention.

Nuclear-derived morphological features and biomarkers provide relevant insights regarding the tumour microenvironment, while also allowing diagnosis and prognosis in specific cancer types. However, manually annotating nuclei from the gigapixel Haematoxylin and Eosin (H&E)-stained Whole Slide Images (WSIs) is a laborious and costly task, meaning automated algorithms for cell nuclei instance segmentation and classification could alleviate the workload of pathologists and clinical researchers and at the same time facilitate the automatic extraction of clinically interpretable features for artificial intelligence (AI) tools. But due to high intra- and inter-class variability of nuclei morphological and chromatic features, as well as H&E-stains susceptibility to artefacts, state-of-the-art algorithms cannot correctly detect and classify instances with the necessary performance.

Predicting informal dementia caregivers' desire to institutionalize through mining data from an eHealth platform.

Background: Dementia is a leading factor in the institutionalization of older adults. Informal caregivers' desire to institutionalize (DI) their care recipient with dementia (PwD) is a primary predictor of institutionalization. This study aims to develop a prediction model for caregivers' DI by mining data from an eHealth platform in a high-prevalence dementia country.

Anti-tumour activity of Panobinostat in oesophageal adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma cell lines.

Background: Oesophageal cancer remains a challenging disease with high mortality rates and few therapeutic options. In view of these difficulties, epigenetic drugs have emerged as potential alternatives for patient care. The goal of this study was to evaluate the effect and biological consequences of Panobinostat treatment, an HDAC (histone deacetylase) inhibitor already approved for treatment of patients with multiple myeloma, in oesophageal cell lines of normal and malignant origin, with the latter being representative of the two main histological subtypes: adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma.

Pioneering the implementation of a precision oncology strategy in Portugal: the Precision Oncology Platform trial.

Background And Purpose: The Precision Oncology Platform (POP) trial represents the effort of the Portuguese Oncology Institute of Porto (IPO Porto) for joining other leading European institutions in both 'Personalised Cancer Medicine for all EU citizens' (PCM4EU), and 'PRecisIon Cancer MEdicine RepurpOsing SystEm Using Pragmatic Clinical Trials' (PRIME-ROSE) consortia, enabling the development of the Portuguese version of the Drug Rediscovery Protocol (DRUP)-like Clinical Trial (DLCT), based on the experience of the DRUP trial developed in The Netherlands.

Patients/material And Methods: The POP trial is a phase II, pragmatic multicentric, non-randomised, open-label study, designed entirely like the other DLCTs. Its primary objective is to describe anti-tumour activity of targeted anticancer drugs in patients with advanced malignancies harbouring actionable molecular alterations.

Research priorities in veterinary palliative care.

Veterinary palliative care consists of end-of-life care of companion animals suffering from terminal or life-limiting diseases. Despite the growing need for veterinary palliative care, little research has been conducted on this topic. This perspective intends to provide an overview of the existing concerns and identify knowledge gaps to motivate further research.

Profiling early adopters of 'iSupport-Portugal': a country-specific version of a worldwide adapted digital support program for informal caregivers of people with dementia.

Introduction: Informal caregivers are the backbone of dementia care. iSupport is a World Health Organization digital support program for caregivers of people with dementia (PwD) that has been culturally adapted in several countries. iSupport was previously assessed for its feasibility in Portugal, and this country-specific version is now being utilized as a remote measurement tool (RMT).

Improved recovery of urinary small extracellular vesicles by differential ultracentrifugation.

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are lipid-membrane enclosed structures that are associated with several diseases, including those of genitourinary tract. Urine contains EVs derived from urinary tract cells. Owing to its non-invasive collection, urine represents a promising source of biomarkers for genitourinary disorders, including cancer.

Decoding in poultry chain: unveiling genetic landscape, antibiotic resistance, and biocide tolerance in non-clinical reservoirs.

The rise of antibiotic resistance in the food chain is influenced by the use of antimicrobial agents, such as antibiotics, metals, and biocides, throughout the entire farm-to-fork continuum. Besides, non-clinical reservoirs potentially contribute to the transmission of critical pathogens such as multidrug-resistant (MDR) . However, limited knowledge exists about the population structure and genomic diversity of circulating in conventional poultry production.

Raw meat-based diet for pets: a neglected source of human exposure to and pathogenic clones carrying , Portugal, September 2019 to January 2020.

BackgroundThe pet industry is expanding worldwide, particularly raw meat-based diets (RMBDs). There are concerns regarding the safety of RMBDs, especially their potential to spread clinically relevant antibiotic-resistant bacteria or zoonotic pathogens.AimWe aimed to investigate whether dog food, including RMBD, commercially available in Portugal can be a source of and/or other strains resistant to last-line antibiotics such as colistin.

Greater tuberosity fractures of the humerus: complications and long-term outcomes after surgical treatment.

Background: Isolated greater tuberosity (GT) fractures typically occur in younger patients following high-energy trauma compared to humeral neck fractures. Surgical treatment is indicated when superior displacement is > 5 mm. This study aimed to assess the complications and long-term outcomes of surgically-treated GT fractures.

Unveiling a Outbreak in a Rabbit Farm: Clinical Manifestation, Antimicrobial Resistance, Genomic Insights and Environmental Investigation.

poses a threat to both human and animal health. This work describes an outbreak in a Portuguese rabbit farm, detailing the isolates' clinical manifestations, necropsy findings, and phenotypic and genomic profiles. Clinical signs, exclusively observed in does, included lethargy and reproductive signs.

Cervical cytology and HPV distribution in Cape Verde: A snapshot of a country taken during its first HPV nation-wide vaccination campaign.

Cervical cancer ranks as the third most common female cancer in Cape Verde and is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths among women in the country. While Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination, which started in 2021, is anticipated to significantly reduce disease incidence, cervical screening remains crucial for non-vaccinated women. We retrospectively reviewed gynecologic cytology exams and HPV tests performed in Cape Verde between 2017 and April 2023 and processed at IMP Diagnostics.

Biomarkers for Pre-Treatment Risk Stratification of Prostate Cancer Patients: A Systematic Review.

Background: Prostate cancer (PCa) is one of the most frequently occurring malignancies. Although most cases are not life-threatening, approximately 20% endure an unfavorable outcome. PSA-based screening reduced mortality but at the cost of an increased overdiagnosis/overtreatment of low-risk (lrPCa) and favorable intermediate-risk (firPCa) PCa.

Extraskeletal myxoid chondrosarcoma metastasis to a Meckel's diverticulum adenocarcinoma.

Extraskeletal myxoid chondrosarcoma is a rare soft tissue tumour with a high local and distant metastasis rate and limited response to chemotherapy. Meckel's diverticulum is the most frequent congenital anomaly, and it is associated with a considerable risk of malignant transformation. In this case report, we describe a 50-year-old female patient with a history of extraskeletal myxoid chondrosarcoma of the lower limb and metastasis to the forearm who went to the emergency department with abdominal pain.

An interpretable machine learning system for colorectal cancer diagnosis from pathology slides.

Considering the profound transformation affecting pathology practice, we aimed to develop a scalable artificial intelligence (AI) system to diagnose colorectal cancer from whole-slide images (WSI). For this, we propose a deep learning (DL) system that learns from weak labels, a sampling strategy that reduces the number of training samples by a factor of six without compromising performance, an approach to leverage a small subset of fully annotated samples, and a prototype with explainable predictions, active learning features and parallelisation. Noting some problems in the literature, this study is conducted with one of the largest WSI colorectal samples dataset with approximately 10,500 WSIs.