Search results for "OBS"
showing 10 items of 6542 documents
Mitochondrial DNA Replacement Techniques to Prevent Human Mitochondrial Diseases.
2021
Background: Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) diseases are a group of maternally inherited genetic disorders caused by a lack of energy production. Currently, mtDNA diseases have a poor prognosis and no known cure. The chance to have unaffected offspring with a genetic link is important for the affected families, and mitochondrial replacement techniques (MRTs) allow them to do so. MRTs consist of transferring the nuclear DNA from an oocyte with pathogenic mtDNA to an enucleated donor oocyte without pathogenic mtDNA. This paper aims to determine the efficacy, associated risks, and main ethical and legal issues related to MRTs. Methods: A bibliographic review was performed on the MEDLINE and Web of S…
Understanding illnesses through a film festival: an observational study
2019
Abstract Audio-visual materials play a fundamental role in the context of education, care and clinical treatment, as they seem to have a high impact on public awareness. This study aims to describe what messages are perceived by the society at an International Festival of Short Films and Art on Diseases that may help to understand difficult topics, such as illness, dying and suffering. Through an observational, descriptive, cross-sectional study, using full participant observation and an open, self-administered questionnaire, 32 short films were analysed during a healthcare art festival. Categories were developed using inductive content analysis. The message perceived by the participants, a…
Evidence that the endometrial microbiota has an effect on implantation success or failure
2016
Background Bacterial cells in the human body account for 1–3% of total body weight and are at least equal in number to human cells. Recent research has focused on understanding how the different bacterial communities in the body (eg, gut, respiratory, skin, and vaginal microbiomes) predispose to health and disease. The microbiota of the reproductive tract has been inferred from the vaginal bacterial communities, and the uterus has been classically considered a sterile cavity. However, while the vaginal microbiota has been investigated in depth, there is a paucity of consistent data regarding the existence of an endometrial microbiota and its possible impact in reproductive function. Objecti…
Embryo morphokinetics analysis and reproductive outcomes with assisted oocyte activation by a calcium ionophore after prior fertilization failure. A …
2020
Abstract Background Fertilization failure or low fertilization rate after ICSI is around 1–3% in IVF treatments. Several strategies have been studied in order to bypass the lack of activation. The aim of this study is to evaluate embryo morphokinetics and reproductive outcomes after intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) with assisted oocyte activation (AOA) using a calcium ionophore (CaI) in patients with previous fertilization failure or low fertilization rate (under 30%) and severe male factor. Methods Multicentric retrospective cohort study including 70 patients with fertilization failure or low fertilization rate and severe male factor (sperm concentration under 1 million/mL) who unde…
Introduction
2019
Timely and appropriate medical care can significantly influence the health of a newborn. When considering how to best deliver such care, we must first note that each human represents the result of a balance between nature (genetics) and nurture (environment). Importantly, while most of our care is centered on in utero development, the preconception period is also a time at which genetic and environmental factors can interact to exert effects that ultimately influence the health of the future offspring. In this issue's Views and Reviews, we provide data to suggest that modern preconceptional care should become a key component of reproductive medicine, not only to improve implantation and pre…
The microbiome in respiratory medicine: current challenges and future perspectives
2017
The healthy lung has previously been considered to be a sterile organ because standard microbiological culture techniques consistently yield negative results. However, culture-independent techniques report that large numbers of microorganisms coexist in the lung. There are many unknown aspects in the field, but available reports show that the lower respiratory tract microbiota: 1) is similar in healthy subjects to the oropharyngeal microbiota and dominated by members of the Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes and Proteobacteria phyla; 2) shows changes in smokers and well-defined differences in chronic respiratory diseases, although the temporal and spatial kinetics of these changes are only partially…
P285 The ‘real-life’ copd patient in the age of laba/lamas: an expansion of the daccord study
2016
Introduction The prospective, non-interventional DACCORD study collects data from a representative cohort of COPD out-patients across Germany who either initiated or changed COPD maintenance medication prior to entry. Initially, DACCORD consisted of two treatment groups (Glycopyrronium-based therapy vs. any other COPD maintenance medication with the exception of Glycopyrronium). Following the approval of LABA/LAMA fixed-dose combinations (FDC) in 2013, DACCORD was extended to follow an additional cohort of patients receiving any LABA/LAMA FDC over a period of 2 years. Methods 5223 patients with complete baseline data (3815 LAMA/LABA FDC vs. 1408 standard treatment group) were analysed here.…
Bacterial-viral load and the immune response in stable and exacerbated COPD: significance and therapeutic prospects.
2016
Silvestro Ennio D’Anna,1 Bruno Balbi,2 Francesco Cappello,3,4 Mauro Carone,2 Antonino Di Stefano21Department of Rehabilitation, Cardiorespiratory Unit, Fondazione Istituto G. Giglio di Cefalù, 2Pneumology Unit and Laboratory of Cytoimmunopathology of Heart and Lung, Fondazione Salvatore Maugeri, IRCCS, Veruno (NO) and Cassano delle Murge (BA), 3Human Anatomy Section, Department of Experimental Biomedicine and Clinical Neuroscience, University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy; 4Euro-Mediterranean Institute of Science and Technology, Palermo, ItalyAbstract: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is characterized by persistent airflow limitation and an abnormal inflammatory respon…
Innovations in assisted reproductive technologies: impact on contemporary donor egg practice and future advances.
2018
Innovations in assisted reproductive technologies (ART) have driven progress in the donor egg field since the birth of the first baby derived from a donor egg in 1983. Over time, donor oocytes have become an increasingly used option for patients unable to conceive with autologous oocytes. In donor egg, the unique separation of the oocyte source and recipient uterus has created a model that has propelled advances in ART. Progressive ART innovations that have optimized the oocyte donor and resulting embryo include the following: evaluation of ovarian reserve, controlled ovarian hyperstimulation regimens that reduce the risk of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, blastocyst culture, oocyte cryo…
MSAProbs-MPI: parallel multiple sequence aligner for distributed-memory systems
2016
This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Bioinformatics following peer review. The version of recordJorge González-Domínguez, Yongchao Liu, Juan Touriño, Bertil Schmidt; MSAProbs-MPI: parallel multiple sequence aligner for distributed-memory systems, Bioinformatics, Volume 32, Issue 24, 15 December 2016, Pages 3826–3828, https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btw558is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btw558 [Abstracts] MSAProbs is a state-of-the-art protein multiple sequence alignment tool based on hidden Markov models. It can achieve high alignment accuracy at the expense of relatively long runtimes for large-sca…