Interação competitiva do zinco e ferro após administração oral e venosa de zinco em crianças eutróficas

The aim of this study was to assess the acute and chronic effects of zinc in serum iron profile of children aged 6-9 years in relation to nutritional status and dietary intake. The study participants were 11 children regardless of sex, aged 6-9 years. They were selected from three public schools of the city of Natal, Brazil. Body mass index was used to assess nutritional status. In order to determine the patterns of childhood growth and ideal weight we used the standards of the World Health Organization. The dietary intake assessment was based on information from a three-day prospective food survey. The variables were energy intake, protein, lipids, carbohydrates, fiber, calcium, iron and zinc. All children underwent an intravenous administration of zinc (IVAZn) before and after oral administration of zinc (OAZn) (5 mg Zn / day) for three months. We measured serum iron, hematocrit, hemoglobin and total protein, before and after the use of oral zinc. The analysis of hematocrit, hemoglobin and total protein was performed using standard methods of clinical laboratory. Zinc levels and serum iron were measured by atomic absorption spectrophotometry. The project was evaluated and approved by the Ethics in Research Committee of Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte. Results: All children had normal weight. The consumption of energy, fat, fiber, calcium and iron were below recommended levels. However, the levels of protein and carbohydrates were high. Protein and zinc increased significantly after OAZn. Carbohydrate and protein were elevated in the blood. After OAZn, both protein and zinc increased, being statistically significant. Conclusion: The potential inhibitory effect of physiological or pharmacological doses of zinc on the profile of serum iron was observed in children with healthy weight and aged between 6 and 9 years. This negative effect of zinc did not affect the levels of hematocrit or hemoglobin, and therefore did not cause anemia. This was a multidisciplinary study, involving researchers from medicine, nutrition and pharmacy. This met the requirements of multidisciplinarity of the Post Graduate Program in Health Sciences of Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte.

Associação da frequência alélica dos polimorfismos dos genes do sistema renina angiotensina com a força muscular e pressão arterial de idosas

Physiological changes induced by the aging process is dynamic and progressive, reducing the adaptability and independence of older people and may be influenced by genetic and environmental factors. Thus the aim of this thesis was to investigate the association between polymorphism of the ACE gene ID and the phenotypes of muscular strength and blood pressure of 62 elderly Brazilian (67.35 ± 5.66 years) during a 16-week program of supervised training. The elderly women were stratified by age, with the group 1 (G1, n = 34) <70 years and group 2 (G2 n = 28) ≥ 70 years, and in three groups by ACE, ACE-II (n = 8) ACE- DD (n = 35) and ACE-ID (n = 19). The level of muscle strength was evaluated by the method of maximum repetitions and measures of blood pressure (BP) were measured before and after training (PAPré1 and PAPós1) and before and after each training session (PAPre2 and PAPós2), in place of training. DNA samples were isolated from peripheral blood leukocytes polymorphism and insertion / deletion (ID) of the ACE gene (rs1800795) was genotyped by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) plus PCR-confirmatory. The genotype distribution of the polymorphism ID attended the prerogatives of Hardy-Weitíherg. There was variation in power levels before and after training and the age between groups (t-test) and the ACE polymorphism (ANOVA) (p <0.05). Depending on the results it was concluded that resistance training helps to reduce SBP and increased muscle strength of upper and lower limbs when considering the age and ACE polymorphism. In this study the Elderly carriers of the D allele were more reactive to changes in BP resistance training. This study was multidisciplinary project involving researchers in the areas Medical, Physical Education, Pharmacy, Nutrition, Gerontology and Statistics. This fulfilled the requirements of the multidisciplinary Graduate Program in Health Sciences

Model-Driven requirements engineering process aided by ontologies and natural controlled languages

Researches in Requirements Engineering have been growing in the latest few years. Researchers are concerned with a set of open issues such as: communication between several user profiles involved in software engineering; scope definition; volatility and traceability issues. To cope with these issues a set of works are concentrated in (i) defining processes to collect client s specifications in order to solve scope issues; (ii) defining models to represent requirements to address communication and traceability issues; and (iii) working on mechanisms and processes to be applied to requirements modeling in order to facilitate requirements evolution and maintenance, addressing volatility and traceability issues. We propose an iterative Model-Driven process to solve these issues, based on a double layered CIM to communicate requirements related knowledge to a wider amount of stakeholders. We also present a tool to help requirements engineer through the RE process. Finally we present a case study to illustrate the process and tool s benefits and usage