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Conflict between co-occurring manipulative parasites? An experimental study of the joint influence of two acanthocephalan parasites on the behaviour …
2000
When two parasite species are manipulators and have different definitive hosts, there is a potential for conflict between them. Selection may then exist for either avoiding hosts infected with conflicting parasites, or for hijacking, i.e. competitive processes to gain control of the intermediate host. The evidence for both phenomena depends largely on the study of the relative competitive abilities of parasites within their common intermediate host. We studied the effects of simultaneous infection by a fish acanthocephalan parasite, Pomphorhynchus laevis, and a bird acanthocephalan parasite, Polymorphus minutus, on the behaviour of their common intermediate host, the amphipod Gammarus pulex…
Group Music Therapy as a Preventive Intervention for Young People at Risk : Cluster-Randomized Trial
2017
Background Music forms an important part of the lives and identities of adolescents and may have positive or negative mental health implications. Music therapy can be effective for mental disorders such as depression, but its preventive potential is unknown. Objective The aim of this study was to examine whether group music therapy (GMT) is an effective intervention for young people who may be at risk of developing mental health problems, as indicated via unhealthy music use. The main question was whether GMT can reduce unhealthy uses of music and increase potentials for healthy uses of music, compared to self-directed music listening (SDML). We were also interested in effects of GMT on dep…
Effects of long-acting bronchodilators in COPD patients according to COPD severity and ICS use
2013
SummaryBackgroundIndacaterol is a once-daily, long-acting β2-agonist bronchodilator that improves dyspnoea and health status in patients with moderate-to-severe COPD. While its bronchodilator effects have been shown to be maintained in different patient subgroups, effects on clinical outcomes in certain subgroups are not yet defined.MethodsPost-hoc analysis of pooled clinical study data to investigate efficacy and safety of indacaterol compared with placebo and other long-acting bronchodilators (formoterol, salmeterol, open-label tiotropium) in patient subgroups defined by COPD severity (GOLD stage II or III; n = 4082) and ICS use at baseline (no/yes; n = 4088). Efficacy outcomes were troug…
Effects of a Classroom Training Program for Promoting Health Literacy Among IT Managers in the Workplace: A Randomized Controlled Trial.
2018
Objective IT managers have received limited attention in health literacy research, although they are subject to special professional demands. The aim of this study was to evaluate a training program designed to promote health literacy among managers. Methods A randomized controlled trial with a sample of 171 industry managers from one IT company was conducted. Effects of classroom training on health literacy, psychological well-being, self-rated health, and cortisol awakening response were investigated using pre- (t0), post- (t1), and follow-up (t2) surveys. Results The intervention effects (time and group) were not significant for the primary outcome of health literacy. At the second measu…
Health-related quality of life in individuals with metabolic syndrome: A cross-sectional study
2020
Abstract Introduction and objectives Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a combination of various cardiovascular risk factors with a major impact on morbidity and premature mortality. However, the impact of MetS on self-reported health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is unknown. This study evaluated the HRQoL in a Spanish adult population aged 55 years and older with MetS. Method A cross-sectional analysis was performed with baseline data from the PREDIMED-Plus multicentre randomized trial. The participants were 6430 men and women aged 55–75 years with overweight/obesity (body mass index ≥27 and ≤40 kg/m2) and MetS. The SF-36 questionnaire was used as a tool to measure HRQoL. Scores were calculate…
Curcumin inhibits in vitro and in vivo chronic myelogenous leukemia cells growth : a possible role for exosomal disposal of miR-21
2015
// Simona Taverna 1 , Marco Giallombardo 1 , Marzia Pucci 1 , Anna Flugy 1 , Mauro Manno 2 , Samuele Raccosta 2 , Christian Rolfo 3 , Giacomo De Leo 1 , Riccardo Alessandro 1, 4 1 Dipartimento di Biopatologia e Metodologie Biomediche, Sezione di Biologia e Genetica, Universita di Palermo, Italy 2 Istituto di Biofisica, CNR, Palermo, Italy 3 Phase I - Early Clinical Trials Unit Oncology Department and Center of Oncological Research (CORE), University Hospital Antwerp & Antwerp University, Belgium 4 Istituto di Biomedicina e Immunologia Molecolare (IBIM), Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Palermo, Italy Correspondence to: Riccardo Alessandro, e-mail: riccardo.alessandro@unipa.it Keywords: e…
Italian Deprivation Index and Dental Caries in 12-Year-Old Children: A Multilevel Bayesian Analysis
2014
Evidence from the literature has shown that people with a lower socioeconomic status enjoy less good health than people with a higher socioeconomic status. The Italian deprivation index (DI) was used with the aim to evaluate the association between the DMFT index and risk factors for dental caries, including city population and DI. The study included 4,305 12-year-old children living in 38 cities classified by demographic size as small, midsize and large. Zero-inflated negative binomial multilevel regression models were used to assess risk factors for DMFT and to address excess of zero DMFT and overdispersion through a Bayesian approach. The difference in the average level of DMFT among chi…
Synergy of features enables detection of texture defined figures
2006
Traditional theories of early visual processing suggest that elementary visual features are handled in parallel by independent neural pathways. We studied the interaction of orientation and spatial frequency in the discrimination of Gabor random fields. Target textures differed from reference textures either in mean feature value, showing an edge-like transition between both textures (edge defined), or in the degree of feature homogeneity with smooth transitions (region defined). Irrespective of the kind of texture definition, we found strong cue summation for targets defined by both cues simultaneously, provided two conditions were fulfilled. First, they were barely discriminable when defi…
Effects on the incidence of cardiovascular events of the addition of pioglitazone versus sulfonylureas in patients with type 2 diabetes inadequately …
2017
Background The best treatment option for patients with type 2 diabetes in whom treatment with metformin alone fails to achieve adequate glycaemic control is debated. We aimed to compare the long-term effects of pioglitazone versus sulfonylureas, given in addition to metformin, on cardiovascular events in patients with type 2 diabetes. Methods TOSCA.IT was a multicentre, randomised, pragmatic clinical trial, in which patients aged 50â75 years with type 2 diabetes inadequately controlled with metformin monotherapy (2â3 g per day) were recruited from 57 diabetes clinics in Italy. Patients were randomly assigned (1:1), by permuted blocks randomisation (block size 10), stratified by site and…
Evaluation of the clinical and histological effectiveness of isoretinoin in the therapy of oral leukoplakia. Ten years of experience: is management s…
2006
Various studies have evaluated the therapeutic effectiveness of vitamin A derivatives in the treatment of oral leukoplakia (OL). Not all the studies have shown concordant results. The aim of our study, which has a 10-year follow-up, was to test the effectiveness of topical therapy based on 0.18% isotretinoin by comparing it with that most frequently used, i.e., at 0.05% concentration. Forty patients with an established diagnosis of OL were involved in the study. The patients were randomly divided into two groups and the drug was administered topically at 0.05% and 0.18% concentrations. The drug was applied twice a day for 3 consecutive months; then it was suspended for 1 month, and the biop…