Search results for "Original Research article"
showing 10 items of 137 documents
Urology practice during the COVID-19 vaccination campaign
2021
Introduction: The current scenario of the COVID-19 pandemic is significantly different from that of the first, emergency phase. Several countries in the world are experiencing a second, or even a third, wave of contagion, while awaiting the effects of mass vaccination campaigns. The aim of this report was to provide an update of previously released recommendations on prioritization and restructuring of urological activities. Methods: A large group of Italian urologists directly involved in the reorganization of their urological wards during the first and second phase of the pandemic agreed on a set of updated recommendations for current urology practice. Results: The updated recommendations…
Paediatric Emergencies During the COVID-19 Pandemic
2021
The state of alarm decreed by the Spanish Government, due to the Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic, has demanded the lockdown of children and has conditioned a new organization of the Emergency Departments (ED). A pre-triage station and 2 independent circuits were established: suspected COVID-19 and not suspected COVID-19. The ED visits decreased 84,5% from pre-alarm with no increase in the level of urgencies. During the alarm state, 40.97% of the children were classified as suspected COVID-19. Fever and respiratory symptoms, used as discriminators, generated 2 groups of patients with different characteristics. Although the interruption of sports activities and isolation of childr…
Biochemical quantitation of the eIF5A hypusination in Arabidopsis thaliana uncovers ABA-dependent regulation.
2014
The eukaryotic translation elongation factor eIF5A is the only protein known to contain the unusual amino acid hypusine which is essential for its biological activity. This post-translational modification is achieved by the sequential action of the enzymes deoxyhypusine synthase (DHS) and deoxyhypusine hydroxylase (DOHH). The crucial molecular function of eIF5A during translation has been recently elucidated in yeast and it is expected to be fully conserved in every eukaryotic cell, however the functional description of this pathway in plants is still sparse. The genetic approaches with transgenic plants for either eIF5A overexpression or antisense have revealed some activities related to t…
International BEAT-PCD Consensus Statement for Infection Prevention and Control for Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia in collaboration with ERN-LUNG PCD Cor…
2021
Introduction In primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) impaired mucociliary clearance leads to recurrent airway infections and progressive lung destruction, and concern over chronic airway infection and patient-to-patient transmission is considerable. So far, there has been no defined consensus on how to control infection across centres caring for patients with PCD. Within the BEAT-PCD network, COST Action and ERS CRC together with the ERN-Lung PCD core a first initiative has now been taken towards creating such a consensus statement. Methods A multidisciplinary international PCD expert panel was set up to create a consensus statement for infection prevention and control (IP&C) for PCD, covering …
Neural-level associations of non-verbal pragmatic comprehension in young Finnish autistic adults
2021
This video-based study examines the pragmatic non-verbal comprehension skills and corresponding neural-level findings in young Finnish autistic adults, and controls. Items from the Assessment Battery of Communication (ABaCo) were chosen to evaluate the comprehension of non-verbal communication. Inter-subject correlation (ISC) analysis of the functional magnetic resonance imaging data was used to reveal the synchrony of brain activation across participants during the viewing of pragmatically complex scenes of ABaCo videos. The results showed a significant difference between the ISC maps of the autistic and control groups in tasks involving the comprehension of non-verbal communication, there…
Alfa-lipoic acid and superoxide dismutase in the management of chronic neck pain: a prospective randomized study
2014
Background and Objective Since oxidative stress plays a pathogenetic role in chronic neck pain (CNP), we investigated whether a combination of α-lipoic acid (ALA) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) might improve pain control and the efficacy of physiotherapy (“multimodal therapy”) in patients with CNP. Setting This study was conducted in the Rehabilitation Unit of the Department of Surgical and Oncological Sciences at the University Policlinic in Palermo, Italy. Design and Patients This was a prospective, randomized, open study in outpatients. Intervention Patients randomly received either physiotherapy alone (group 2; n = 45) or a combination of ALA 600 mg and SOD 140 IU daily in addition to p…
A combined electrophysiological and morphological examination of episodic memory decline in amnestic mild cognitive impairment.
2013
Early stages of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are characterized by neuropathological changes within the medial temporal lobe cortex (MTLC), which lead to characteristic impairments in episodic memory, i.e., amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). Here, we tested the neural correlates of this memory impairment using event-related potentials (ERPs) and voxel-based morphometry. Twenty-four participants were instructed to encode lists of words and were tested in a yes/no recognition memory task. The dual-process model of recognition memory dissociates between acontextual familiarity and recollection of contextual details. The early frontal ERP old/new-effect, which is thought to represent a neura…
A low cortisol response to acute stress is related to worse basal memory performance in older people
2014
Age-related memory decline has been associated with a faulty regulation of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA-axis). The aim of this study was to investigate whether the magnitude of the stress-induced cortisol increase is related to memory performance when memory is measured in non-stressful conditions. To do so, declarative and working memory performance were measured in 31 men and 35 women between 55 and 77 years of age. On a different day, the magnitude of their cortisol response to acute psychosocial stress was measured. The relationship between the cortisol response and memory performance was U shaped: a low cortisol response to stress was related to poorer declarative and w…
Both attention and prediction are necessary for adaptive neuronal tuning in sensory processing
2014
International audience; The brain as a proactive system processes sensory information under the top-down influence of attention and prediction. However, the relation between attention and prediction remains undetermined given the conflation of these two mechanisms in the literature. To evaluate whether attention and prediction are dependent of each other, and if so, how these two top-down mechanisms may interact in sensory processing, we orthogonally manipulated attention and prediction in a target detection task. Participants were instructed to pay attention to one of two interleaved stimulus streams of predictable/unpredictable tone frequency. We found that attention and prediction intera…
Heart rate variability changes at 2400 m altitude predicts acute mountain sickness on further ascent at 3000-4300 m altitudes
2012
Objective: If the body fails to acclimatize at high altitude, acute mountain sickness (AMS) may result. For the early detection of AMS, changes in cardiac autonomic function measured by heart rate variability (HRV) may be more sensitive than clinical symptoms alone. The purpose of this study was to ascertain if the changes in HRV during ascent are related to AMS. Methods: We followed Lake Louise Score (LLS), arterial oxygen saturation at rest (R-SpO2) and exercise (Ex-SpO2) and HRV parameters daily in 36 different healthy climbers ascending from 2400 m to 6300 m altitudes during five different expeditions. Results: After an ascent to 2400 m, root mean square successive differences, high-fre…