Search results for "Priority journal"
showing 10 items of 74 documents
Population structure in the Méditerranean basin: a Y chromosome perspective
2006
The Mediterranean region has been characterised by a number of pre-historical and historical demographic events whose legacy on the current genetic landscape is still a matter of debate. In order to investigate the degree of population structure across the Mediterranean, we have investigated Y chromosome variation in a large dataset of Mediterranean populations, 11 of which are first described here. Our analyses identify four main clusters in the Mediterranean that can be labelled as North Africa, Arab, Central-East and West Mediterranean. In particular, Near Eastern samples tend to separate according to the presence of Arab Y chromosome lineages, suggesting that the Arab expansion played a…
Multidrug and broad-spectrum cephalosporin resistance among Salmonella enterica serotype enteritidis clinical isolates in southern Italy.
2002
ABSTRACT From 1992 to 1997, only six sporadic isolates of Salmonella enterica serotype Enteritidis from patients with cases of gastroenteritis in southern Italy exhibited resistance to broad-spectrum cephalosporins. Five isolates produced SHV-12, and one isolate encoded a class C β-lactamase. The bla SHV-12 gene was located in at least two different self-transferable plasmids, one of which also carried a novel class 1 integron.
Structure of Rhodococcus erythropolis limonene-1,2-epoxide hydrolase reveals a novel active site
2003
Epoxide hydrolases are essential for the processing of epoxide-containing compounds in detoxification or metabolism. The classic epoxide hydrolases have an alpha/beta hydrolase fold and act via a two-step reaction mechanism including an enzyme-substrate intermediate. We report here the structure of the limonene-1,2-epoxide hydrolase from Rhodococcus erythropolis, solved using single-wavelength anomalous dispersion from a selenomethionine-substituted protein and refined at 1.2 A resolution. This enzyme represents a completely different structure and a novel one-step mechanism. The fold features a highly curved six-stranded mixed beta-sheet, with four alpha-helices packed onto it to create a …
Novel 3D bio-macromolecular bilinear descriptors for protein science: Predicting protein structural classes
2015
In the present study, we introduce novel 3D protein descriptors based on the bilinear algebraic form in the ℝn space on the coulombic matrix. For the calculation of these descriptors, macromolecular vectors belonging to ℝn space, whose components represent certain amino acid side-chain properties, were used as weighting schemes. Generalization approaches for the calculation of inter-amino acidic residue spatial distances based on Minkowski metrics are proposed. The simple- and double-stochastic schemes were defined as approaches to normalize the coulombic matrix. The local-fragment indices for both amino acid-types and amino acid-groups are presented in order to permit characterizing fragme…
Prevalence and severity of anaemia in patients with type 2 diabetic nephropathy and different degrees of chronic renal insufficiency.
2007
<i>Background/Aim:</i> Type 2 diabetes mellitus is the single most common cause of chronic kidney disease (CKD); however its real impact on renal anaemia has not been established. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether onset, severity, and prevalence of anaemia during the course of CKD is different between type 2 diabetic and non-diabetic patients. <i>Methods:</i> We enrolled 281 patients with: (1) type 2 diabetes and no CKD (n = 75); (2) type 2 diabetes plus CKD (n = 106), and (3) CKD without type 2 diabetes (n = 100). According to K/DOQI guidelines, the patients with renal insufficiency (i.e., those with a glomerular filtration rate <60 ml/min) were subgr…
Open Radical Nephrectomy: 35 Years of Experience at the “Luciano Giuliani” Urological Department of the University of Genoa
2006
Objective: Radical nephrectomy remains the gold standard for surgically resectable kidney neoplasms > 4 cm and, in selected cases, also in presence of metastatic disease. We reviewed the records of the patients having surgery at the University of Genoa in the last 35 yr. Methods: We have retrospectively assessed all the radical nephrectomies performed between 1970 and 2005. Among tumours of the kidney subjected to surgical treatment during this period, we found 1105 cases of histologically proven renal cell carcinoma (RCC), 965 of which had records available for the study. The number of cases per year, symptoms at diagnosis, surgical strategy, staging of the tumour, and survival were rev…
Intracellular signalling via the AKT axis and downstream effectors is active and prognostically significant in cancer of unknown primary (CUP): a stu…
2012
Background: Hypothesising that cancer of unknown primary (CUP) may harbour unique characteristics, we present a translational study of the immunohistochemical expression and clinical correlation of key PTEN/AKT pathway molecules. Patients and methods: We collected 100 paraffin-embedded CUP tissue blocks. We studied using tissue microarrays the expression of PTEN, phospho-AKT, Cyclin D1, p21, phospho-RPS6. From the percentage of staining tumour cells and the literature, we selected cut-offs to classify the expression of each biomolecule. We correlated IHC expression with clinical data. Results: PTEN, pAKT, and pRPS6 showed frequent expression. At univariate analysis, high IHC expression of p…
Genome-wide association studies identify four ER negative-specific breast cancer risk loci
2013
Estrogen receptor (ER)-negative tumors represent 20-30% of all breast cancers, with a higher proportion occurring in younger women and women of African ancestry. The etiology and clinical behavior of ER-negative tumors are different from those of tumors expressing ER (ER positive), including differences in genetic predisposition. To identify susceptibility loci specific to ER-negative disease, we combined in a metaanalysis 3 genome-wide association studies of 4,193 ER-negative breast cancer cases and 35,194 controls with a series of 40 follow-up studies (6,514 cases and 41,455 controls), genotyped using a custom Illumina array, iCOGS, developed by the Collaborative Oncological Gene-environm…
Erratum: Validation of the 2009 TNM version in a large multi-institutional cohort of patients treated for renal cell carcinoma: Are further improveme…
2011
A new edition of the TNM was recently released that includes modifications for the staging system of kidney cancers. Specifically, T2 cancers were subclassified into T2a and T2b (10 cm), tumors with renal vein involvement or perinephric fat involvement were classified as T3a cancers, and those with adrenal involvement were classified as T4 cancers. OBJECTIVE: Our aim was to validate the recently released edition of the TNM staging system for primary tumor classification in kidney cancer. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: Our multicenter retrospective study consisted of 5339 patients treated in 16 academic Italian centers. INTERVENTION: Patients underwent either radical or partial nephrecto…
Validity of needle core biopsy in the histological characterisation of mammary lesions
2006
Summary Over the last few years, there has been an enormous increase in the use of needle core biopsy (CB) for the histopathological characterisation of suspect lesions of the breast. The aim of this study was to verify the diagnostic reliability of CB by comparing the histological results obtained with the use of this technique with those obtained from the whole of the surgically resected specimen. We studied 198 out of 426 patients with clinically and/or radiologically suspect breast lesions. We found correspondence between the histological examination of the whole of the excised specimen and that of the CB in 94.9% of the cases of infiltrating carcinoma and in 71.4% of those involving du…