Prognostication of Soft Tissue Sarcomas Based on Chromosome 17q Gene and Protein Status: Evaluation of TOP2A, HER-2/neu, and Survivin

Topoisomerase 2 alpha (), HER-2/ and are genes that lie on chromosome 17 and correlate with the prognosis and prediction of target-driven therapy against tumors. In a previous study, we showed that TOP2A transcripts levels were significantly higher in soft tissue sarcomas (STS) than in benign tumors and desmoid-type fibromatoses (FM). Because these genes have been insufficiently examined in STS, we aimed to identify alterations in TOP2A and HER-2 expression by fluorescent in situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry, as well as that of survivin, and correlate them with clinicopathologic findings to assess their prognostic value. Eighteen FM and 244 STS were included. Fluorescent in situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry were performed on a tissue microarray. TOP2A and survivin were more highly expressed in sarcomas than in FM. TOP2A was an independent predictor of an unfavorable prognosis; it was combined with formerly established prognostic factors (primarily histologic grade and tumor size at diagnosis) to create a prognostic index that evaluated overall survival. Gene amplification/polysomy (13%) did not correlate with protein overexpression. Survivin and HER-2 expression were not associated with patient outcomes. These findings might become valuable in the management of patients with STS and possibly in the prospective evaluation of responses to new target-driven therapies.

Calcium and magnesium status is not impaired in pregnant women

Deficiencies in calcium (Ca) and magnesium (Mg) are associated with various complications during pregnancy. To test the hypothesis that the status of these minerals is inadequate in pregnancy, a cross-sectional study was conducted of the dietary intake and status of Ca and Mg in pregnant women (n = 50) attending a general public university hospital in Brazil. Dietary intake was assessed from 4-day food records; levels of plasma Mg, erythrocyte Mg, and urinary Ca and Mg excretion were determined by flame atomic absorption spectroscopy; and type I collagen C-telopeptides were evaluated by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Probabilities of inadequate Ca and Mg intake were exhibited by 58 and 98% of the study population, respectively. The mean levels of urinary Ca and Mg excretion were 8.55 and 3.77 mmol/L, respectively. Plasma C-telopeptides, plasma Mg, and erythrocyte Mg were within normal levels. Multiple linear regression analysis revealed positive relationships among urinary Ca excretion, Ca intake (P = .002) and urinary Mg excretion (P < .001) and between erythrocyte Mg and Mg intake (P = .023). It is concluded that the Ca and Mg status of participants was adequate even though the intake of Ca and Mg was lower than the recommended level. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The influence of human papillomavirus type and HIV status on the lymphomononuclear cell profile in patients with cervical intraepithelial lesions of different severity

Abstract Background Immunological alterations are implicated in the increased prevalence of high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions (HG-SIL) and persistent human papillomavirus (HPV) infection. This study evaluated the expression of CD4, CD8, CD25 (IL-2Rα) and CD28 antigens from SIL biopsies, stratified by HIV status and HPV-type. Biopsies specimens from 82 (35 HIV+) women with a normal cervix, low-grade (LG-SIL) or high-grade lesions (HG-SIL) were studied. CD molecule expression was evaluated by immunohistochemistry and HPV detection/typing performed using PCR techniques. Results CD4 stromal staining was increased in patients with HPV18. Women with HPV16 infection showed decreased: a) CD8 and CD25 stromal staining, b) CD25 staining in LG-SIL epithelium and in HG-SIL stroma. In HIV- women samples, CD28 epithelial staining and CD8 stromal staining surrounding metaplastic epithelium were less intense and even absent, as compared to HIV+ women. Both epithelial and stromal CD8 staining was more intense in the HG-SIL/HIV+ group than in the HG-SIL/HIV- group. Positive correlations were observed between CD4/CD25, CD4/CD28 and CD25/CD28 in the stroma and CD25/CD28 in the epithelium. Conclusion HIV status and HPV-type may influence the lymphomononuclear cell profile present in the spectrum of cervical lesions. The knowledge of the infiltrating cell profile in cervical tumours may help the development of specific anti-tumoural strategies.

Dental caries-related quality of life and socioeconomic status of preschool children, Bauru, SP

AIM: To evaluate oral health-related quality of life of preschool children of Bauru, State of São Paulo, Brazil, and associate it with socioeconomic profile of households. METHODS: The sample consisted of 229 preschool children between 3 and 5 years and the dmft (decayed, missing due to caries, filled teeth) index was adopted for assessment children's dental caries in accordance with the standards recommended by the World Health Organization. Questionnaires were used for evaluation oral health-related quality of life (Early Childhood Oral Health Impact Scale) and socioeconomic profile of parents or guardians of the preschool children. Statistical analysis was performed descriptively by relative and absolute frequencies and by Spearman's correlation and Kruskal-Wallis test (p <0.05). RESULTS: A dmft of 1.65 (± 2.87) and a Sic Index 4.88 (± 3.20) were found, indicating the polarization of dental caries in the studied group. It was verified low influence of oral health on quality of life of the children examined. With respect to socioeconomic classification, 66.38% of families were in the lower middle class. Linear and statistically significant correlation was found between dmft and oral health-related quality of life for the overall score and domains of the questionnaire (p<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: It was found low influence of oral health on quality of life of the preschool children and the assessment of socioeconomic conditions of the children's families may guide practices aiming to reducing inequalities in the distribution of dental caries in the population.

'We deliberately set high demands for the gold standard'… Inclusive and exclusive pronouns in two social science cultures

[EN] This study analyses the use of inclusive and exclusive pronominal signals in English and Spanish research articles and investigates whether there are differences between the two languages in terms of pronominal signals frequency and usage.

Well-being, distress and health status in a population of adolescent students

The present work explores the psychosocial issues emerging from a large cross-sectional study aimed to assess the prevalence, clinical manifestations, and psychosocial correlates of hyperandrogenism in a population of Italian high school students. Participants were 1804 adolescents, aged between 15 and 19 years, who volunteered to fill in a package of self-report questionnaires (including the Psychosocial Index, the Symptom Questionnaire and Ryff’s Psychological Well-Being scales for the assessment of psychological aspects) and undergo a comprehensive physical examination. Significant gender differences were found with regard to psychological distress, with females reporting higher scores compared with males, but not on well-being dimensions. The relationships of well-being to distress were found to be complex. Although inversely associated, well-being and ill-being appeared to be distinct domains of mental functioning. The evaluation of the moderating effects of well-being in the association between stress and psychological distress indicated that well-being may act as a protective factor, contributing to less pronounced psychological distress as stress levels increased. Higher rates of somatic complaints were found among current smokers. However, substance use (i.e., smoking and drug use) was also found to be positively associated with some well-being dimensions. A considerable number of participants were found to present with disordered eating symptoms, particularly females, and associated higher stress levels and lower quality of life. Sport activities were found to favourably affect psychological health. As to clinical signs of hyperandrogenism, a significant impairment in psychosocial functioning was found among females, whereas no effects on psychological measures could be detected among males. Subgroups of adolescents with distinct clinical and psychological characteristics could be identified by means of cluster analysis. The present study provides new insights into better understanding of the complex relationships between well-being, distress and health status in the adolescent population, with important clinical implications.

Banking Regulation in Turkey and Russia: An Economic Analysis

The importance of the banks and financial markets relies on the fact that they promote economic efficiency by allocating savings efficiently to profitable investment opportunities.An efficient banking system is a key determinant for the financial stability.The theory of market failure forms the basis for understanding financial regulation.Following the detrimental economic and financial consequences in theaftermath of the crisis, academics and policymakers started to focus their attention on the construction of an appropriate regulatory and supervisory framework of the banking sector. This dissertation aims at understanding the impact of regulations and supervision on banks’ performance focusing on two emerging market economies, Turkey and Russia. It aims at examining the way in which regulations matter for financial stability and banking performance from a law & economics perspective. A review of the theory of banking regulation, particularly as applied to emerging economies, shows that the efficiency of certain solutions regarding banking regulation is open to debate. Therefore, in the context of emerging countries, whether a certain approach is efficient or not will be presented as an empirical question to which this dissertation will try to find an answer.

A regional environmental accounting matrix and integrated environmental economic analyses to support regional planning

This research deals with the deepening and use of an environmental accounting matrix in Emilia-Romagna, RAMEA air emissions (regional NAMEA), carried out by the Regional Environment Agency (Arpa) in an European project. After a depiction of the international context regarding the widespread needing to integrate economic indicators and go beyond conventional reporting system, this study explains the structure, update and development of the tool. The overall aim is to outline the matrix for environmental assessments of regional plans, draw up sustainable reports and monitor effects of regional policies in a sustainable development perspective. The work focused on an application of a Shift-Share model, on the integration with eco-taxes, industrial waste production, energy consumptions, on applications of the extended RAMEA as a policy tool, following Eurostat guidelines. The common thread is the eco-efficiency (economic-environmental efficiency) index. The first part, in English, treats the methodology used to build a more complete tool; in the second part RAMEA has been applied on two regional case studies, in Italian, to support decision makers regarding Strategic Environmental Assessments’ processes (2001/42/EC). The aim is to support an evidence-based policy making by integrating sustainable development concerns at all levels. The first case study regards integrated environmental-economic analyses in support to the SEA of the Regional Waste management plan. For the industrial waste production an extended and updated RAMEA has been developed as a useful policy tool, to help in analysing and monitoring the state of environmental-economic performances. The second case study deals with the environmental report for the SEA of the Regional Program concerning productive activities. RAMEA has been applied aiming to an integrated environmental-economic analysis of the context, to investigate the performances of the regional production chains and to depict and monitor the area where the program should be carried out, from an integrated environmental-economic perspective.

Efficient certification of feasibility and objective value of linear programs and its applications

The use of linear programming in various areas has increased with the significant improvement of specialized solvers. Linear programs are used as such to model practical problems, or as subroutines in algorithms such as formal proofs or branch-and-cut frameworks. In many situations a certified answer is needed, for example the guarantee that the linear program is feasible or infeasible, or a provably safe bound on its objective value. Most of the available solvers work with floating-point arithmetic and are thus subject to its shortcomings such as rounding errors or underflow, therefore they can deliver incorrect answers. While adequate for some applications, this is unacceptable for critical applications like flight controlling or nuclear plant management due to the potential catastrophic consequences. We propose a method that gives a certified answer whether a linear program is feasible or infeasible, or returns unknown'. The advantage of our method is that it is reasonably fast and rarely answers unknown'. It works by computing a safe solution that is in some way the best possible in the relative interior of the feasible set. To certify the relative interior, we employ exact arithmetic, whose use is nevertheless limited in general to critical places, allowing us to rnremain computationally efficient. Moreover, when certain conditions are fulfilled, our method is able to deliver a provable bound on the objective value of the linear program. We test our algorithm on typical benchmark sets and obtain higher rates of success compared to previous approaches for this problem, while keeping the running times acceptably small. The computed objective value bounds are in most of the cases very close to the known exact objective values. We prove the usability of the method we developed by additionally employing a variant of it in a different scenario, namely to improve the results of a Satisfiability Modulo Theories solver. Our method is used as a black box in the nodes of a branch-and-bound tree to implement conflict learning based on the certificate of infeasibility for linear programs consisting of subsets of linear constraints. The generated conflict clauses are in general small and give good rnprospects for reducing the search space. Compared to other methods we obtain significant improvements in the running time, especially on the large instances.

Resting state cerebral blood flow and objective motor activity reveal basal ganglia dysfunction in schizophrenia

Reduced motor activity has been reported in schizophrenia and was associated with subtype, psychopathology and medication. Still, little is known about the neurobiology of motor retardation. To identify neural correlates of motor activity, resting state cerebral blood flow (CBF) was correlated with objective motor activity of the same day. Participants comprised 11 schizophrenia patients and 14 controls who underwent magnetic resonance imaging with arterial spin labeling and wrist actigraphy. Patients had reduced activity levels and reduced perfusion of the left parahippocampal gyrus, left middle temporal gyrus, right thalamus, and right prefrontal cortex. In controls, but not in schizophrenia, CBF was correlated with activity in the right thalamic ventral anterior (VA) nucleus, a key module within basal ganglia-cortical motor circuits. In contrast, only in schizophrenia patients positive correlations of CBF and motor activity were found in bilateral prefrontal areas and in the right rostral cingulate motor area (rCMA). Grey matter volume correlated with motor activity only in the left posterior cingulate cortex of the patients. The findings suggest that basal ganglia motor control is impaired in schizophrenia. In addition, CBF of cortical areas critical for motor control was associated with volitional motor behavior, which may be a compensatory mechanism for basal ganglia dysfunction.

Simple and objective method for routine detection of the macular pigment xanthophyll

A new simple method for two-dimensional determination of optical density of macular pigment xanthophyll (ODx) in clinical routine is based on a single blue-reflection fundus image. Individual different vignetting is corrected by a shading function. For its construction, nodes are automatically found in structureless image regions. The influence of stray light in elderly crystalline lenses is compensated by a correction function that depends on age. The reproducibility of parameters in a one-wavelength reflection method determined for three subjects (47, 61, and 78 years old) was: maxODx = 6.3%, meanODx = 4.6%, volume = 6%, and area = 6% already before stray-light correction. ODx was comparable in pseudophakic and in an eye with a crystalline lens of the same 11 subjects after stray-light correction. Significant correlation in ODx was found between the one-wavelength reflection method and the two-wavelength autofluorescence method for pseudophakic and cataract eyes of 19 patients suffering from dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD) (R(2) = 0.855). In pseudophakic eyes, maxODx was significantly lower for dry AMD (n = 45) (ODx = 0.491±0.102 ODU) than in eyes with healthy fundus (n = 22) (ODx = 0.615±0.103 ODU) (p = 0.000033). Also in eyes with crystalline lens, maxODx was lower in AMD (n = 125) (ODx = 0.610±0.093 ODU) than in healthy subjects (n = 45) (ODx = 0.674±0.098 ODU) (p = 0.00019). No dependence on age was found in the pseudophakic eyes both of healthy subjects and AMD patients.