Search results for " Methods"
showing 10 items of 4102 documents
Candida blood stream infections observed between 2011 and 2016 in a large Italian University Hospital: A time-based retrospective analysis on epidemi…
2019
Candida bloodstream infection (BSI) represents a growing infective problem frequently associated to biofilm production due to the utilization of intravascular devices. Candida species distribution (n = 612 strains), their biofilm production and hospital antifungal drug consumption were evaluated in different wards of a tertiary care academic hospital in Italy during the years 2011–2016. In the considered time window, an increasing number of Candida BSI (p = 0.005) and of biofilm producing strains were observed (p<0.0001). Although C. albicans was the species more frequently isolated in BSI with a major biofilm production, an increased involvement of non-albicans species was reported, partic…
Anticancer, antioxidant, and antibacterial activities of low molecular weight bioactive subfractions isolated from cultures of wood degrading fungus …
2017
The aim of this study is to investigate in vitro the anticancer, antioxidant, and antibacterial activities of three low molecular weight subfractions I, II and III isolated from secondary metabolites produced by the wood degrading fungus Cerrena unicolor. The present study demonstrated that the low molecular weight subfractions III exhibited the strongest inhibitory activity towards breast carcinoma cells MDA-MB-231, prostatic carcinoma cells PC3, and breast cancer cells MCF7 with the half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) value of 52,25 μg/mL, 60,66 μg/mL, and 54,92 μg/mL, respectively. The highest percentage of inhibition was noted at a concentration of 300 μg/mL in all the examined…
Effect of chronic exercise on myocardial electrophysiological heterogeneity and stability. Role of intrinsic cholinergic neurons: A study in the isol…
2018
[EN] A study has been made of the effect of chronic exercise on myocardial electrophysiological heterogeneity and stability, as well as of the role of cholinergic neurons in these changes. Determinations in hearts from untrained and trained rabbits on a treadmill were performed. The hearts were isolated and perfused. A pacing electrode and a recording multielectrode were located in the left ventricle. The parameters determined during induced VF, before and after atropine (1 mu M), were: fibrillatory cycle length (VV), ventricular functional refractory period (FRPVF), normalized energy (NE) of the fibrillatory signal and its coefficient of variation (CV), and electrical ventricular activatio…
A versatile bioreactor for dynamic suspension cell culture. Application to the culture of cancer cell spheroids.
2016
A versatile bioreactor suitable for dynamic suspension cell culture under tunable shear stress conditions has been developed and preliminarily tested culturing cancer cell spheroids. By adopting simple technological solutions and avoiding rotating components, the bioreactor exploits the laminar hydrodynamics establishing within the culture chamber enabling dynamic cell suspension in an environment favourable to mass transport, under a wide range of tunable shear stress conditions. The design phase of the device has been supported by multiphysics modelling and has provided a comprehensive analysis of the operating principles of the bioreactor. Moreover, an explanatory example is herein prese…
Direct and Inverse Comorbidities Between Complex Disorders
2016
Comorbidity and multimorbidity, defined as the presence of more than one disease in individuals, have emerged as a major challenge in the last decade (Valderas et al., 2009). Indeed, researchers, health professionals, healthcare managers and policy makers, and patients and citizens are lagging behind considering the comorbidity scenario, as illustrated by the paucity of documentation concerning interventions in people with multiple conditions (Smith et al., 2012). There is a clear need to better understand disease-disease relationships, in order to better organize and provide care, but also to develop appropriate research models. We can first characterize direct multimorbidity (higher-than-…
Circulating exosomes deliver free fatty acids from the bloodstream to cardiac cells: Possible role of CD36
2019
Regulation of circulating free fatty acid (FFA) levels and delivery is crucial to maintain tissue homeostasis. Exosomes are nanomembranous vesicles that are released from diverse cell types and mediate intercellular communication by delivering bioactive molecules. Here, we sought to investigate the uptake of FFAs by circulating exosomes, the delivery of FFA-loaded exosomes to cardiac cells and the possible role of the FFA transporter CD36 in these processes. Circulating exosomes were purified from the serum of healthy donors after an overnight fast (F) or 20 minutes after a high caloric breakfast (postprandial, PP). Western blotting, Immunogold Electron Microscopy and FACS analysis of circu…
Prediabetes is associated with the modulation of antigen-specific Th1/Tc1 and Th17/Tc17 responses in latent Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection.
2017
Type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) is associated with the down modulation of Th1, Th2 and Th17 responses in latent Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection but the role of prediabetes (PDM) in this setting is not well understood. To examine the role of CD4+ and CD8+ T cell cytokines in latent tuberculosis (LTB) with coincident PDM, we studied the baseline, mycobacterial, control antigen and mitogen-stimulated T cell cytokine responses in LTB individuals with (LTB-PDM; n = 20) or without (LTB-NDM; n = 20) concomitant prediabetes. LTB-PDM is characterized by diminished frequencies of mono-and dual-functional CD4+ Th1 and Th17 cells and mono-functional Th2 cells at baseline and/or following mycobacteri…
Yeast Cth2 protein represses the translation of ARE-containing mRNAs in response to iron deficiency
2018
In response to iron deficiency, the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae undergoes a metabolic remodeling in order to optimize iron utilization. The tandem zinc finger (TZF)-containing protein Cth2 plays a critical role in this adaptation by binding and promoting the degradation of multiple mRNAs that contain AU-rich elements (AREs). Here, we demonstrate that Cth2 also functions as a translational repressor of its target mRNAs. By complementary approaches, we demonstrate that Cth2 protein inhibits the translation of SDH4, which encodes a subunit of succinate dehydrogenase, and CTH2 mRNAs in response to iron depletion. Both the AREs within SDH4 and CTH2 transcripts, and the Cth2 TZF are es…
Lack of a peroxiredoxin suppresses the lethality of cells devoid of electron donors by channelling electrons to oxidized ribonucleotide reductase
2017
The thioredoxin and glutaredoxin pathways are responsible of recycling several enzymes which undergo intramolecular disulfide bond formation as part of their catalytic cycles such as the peroxide scavengers peroxiredoxins or the enzyme ribonucleotide reductase (RNR). RNR, the rate-limiting enzyme of deoxyribonucleotide synthesis, is an essential enzyme relying on these electron flow cascades for recycling. RNR is tightly regulated in a cell cycle-dependent manner at different levels, but little is known about the participation of electron donors in such regulation. Here, we show that cytosolic thioredoxins Trx1 and Trx3 are the primary electron donors for RNR in fission yeast. Unexpectedly,…
Identification of loci of functional relevance to Barrett's esophagus and esophageal adenocarcinoma: Cross-referencing of expression quantitative tra…
2019
Esophageal adenocarcinoma (EA) and its precancerous condition Barrett's esophagus (BE) are multifactorial diseases with rising prevalence rates in Western populations. A recent meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) data identified 14 BE/EA risk loci located in non-coding genomic regions. Knowledge about the impact of non-coding variation on disease pathology is incomplete and needs further investigation. The aim of the present study was (i) to identify candidate genes of functional relevance to BE/EA at known risk loci and (ii) to find novel risk loci among the suggestively associated variants through the integration of expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) and genetic…