Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Validation of tumor‐associated macrophage ferritin light chain as a prognostic biomarker in node‐negative breast cancer tumors: A multicentric 2004 national PHRC study

Novel prognostic biomarkers are imperatively needed to help direct treatment decisions by typing subgroups of node‐negative breast cancer patients. Large screening of different biological compartments, such as the proteome, by means of high throughput techniques may greatly help scientists to find such markers. The present retrospective multicentric study included 268 node‐negative breast cancer patients. We used a proteomic approach of SELDI‐TOF‐MS screening to identify differentially expressed cytosolic proteins with prognostic impact. The screening cohort was composed of 198 patients. Seventy supplementary patients were included for validation. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) and immunoassay (IA) were run to confirm the prognostic role of the marker identified by SELDI‐TOF‐MS screening. IHC was also used to explore links between selected marker and epithelial‐mesenchymal transition (EMT)‐like, proliferation and macrophage markers. Ferritin light chain (FTL) was identified as an independent prognostic marker (HR = 1.30–95% CI: 1.10–1.50, p = 0.001). Validation step by means of IHC and IA confirmed the prognostic value of FTL level. CD68 IHC showed that FTL was stored in tumor‐associated macrophages (TAM), which exhibit an M2‐like phenotype. We report here, first, the validation of FTL as a breast tumor prognostic biomarker in node‐negative patients, and second, the fact that FTL is stored in TAM.
Histoplasmosis of the Central Nervous System

Histoplasmosis of the central nervous system (CNS) is not an uncommon complication of Histoplasma capsulatum infection since it occurs in ∼2% to 20% of disseminated cases. CNS histoplasmosis carries a mortality rate that ranges from 11.1% to 100%, and the risk factors for dissemination to the brain have yet to be determined. Diagnosis is often difficult and time consuming, which can result in delayed initiation of treatment. The recommended treatment for CNS histoplasmosis involves a high dose liposomal amphotericin B followed by maintenance azole therapy, usually for at least a year; however no comparative trials have been performed to prove efficacy of one regimen over another. Further, prospective and in vivo studies are necessary to more effectively combat this disease.
A “latent niche” mechanism for tumor initiation

Stem cells, their niches, and their relationship to cancer are under intense investigation. Because tumors and metastases acquire self-renewing capacity, mechanisms for their establishment may involve cell–cell interactions similar to those between stem cells and stem cell niches. On the basis of our studies in Caenorhabditis elegans, we introduce the concept of a “latent niche” as a differentiated cell type that does not normally contact stem cells nor act as a niche but that can, under certain conditions, promote the ectopic self-renewal, proliferation, or survival of competent cells that it inappropriately contacts. Here, we show that ectopic germ-line stem cell proliferation in C. elegans is driven by a latent niche mechanism and that the molecular basis for this mechanism is inappropriate Notch activation. Furthermore, we show that continuous Notch signaling is required to maintain ectopic germ-line proliferation. We highlight the latent niche concept by distinguishing it from a normal stem cell niche, a premetastatic niche and an ectopic niche. One of the important distinguishing features of this mechanism for tumor initiation is that it could operate in the absence of genetic changes to the tumor cell or the tumor-promoting cell. We propose that a latent niche mechanism may underlie tumorigenesis and metastasis in humans.
The role of statin therapy in the prevention of atrial fibrillation: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.

WHAT IS ALREADY KNOWN ABOUT THIS SUBJECT Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common clinically significant cardiac arrhythmia, and AF is associated with relatively higher all-cause mortality in both men and women. However, there are limited treatment options for AF. Statins are hypothesized to have a benefit against arrhythmias in addition to well-established secondary prevention benefit for atherosclerotic coronary artery disease, yet the data are inconsistent WHAT THIS STUDY ADDS Statin therapy was significantly associated with a decreased risk of incidence or recurrence of AF. The benefit of statin therapy seemed more markedly in secondary prevention than primary prevention. These results provided some evidence for the benefit of statins beyond their lipid-lowering activity AIMS The use of statins has been suggested to protect against atrial fibrillation (AF) in some clinical observational and experimental studies but has remained inadequately explored. This study was designed to examine whether statins can reduce the risk of AF. METHODS Meta-analysis of randomized, controlled trials with use of statins on incidence or recurrence of AF was performed. RESULTS Twenty studies with 23,577 patients were included in the analysis. Seven studies investigated the use of statins in patients with AF, 11 studies investigated the primary prevention of statins in patients without AF, and two studies investigated mixed populations of patients. The incidence or recurrence of AF occurred in 1543 patients. Overall, statin therapy was significantly associated with a decreased risk of AF compared with control (odds ratio 0.49, 95% confidence interval 0.37-0.65; P < 0.00001). A beneficial effect was found in the atorvastatin subgroup and the simvastatin subgroup, but not in the pravastatin subgroup or the rosuvastatin subgroup. The benefit of statin therapy appeared to be more pronounced in secondary prevention (odds ratio 0.34, 95% confidence interval 0.18-0.64; P < 0.0008) than in primary prevention (odds ratio 0.54, 95% confidence interval 0.40-0.74; P < 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS Statin therapy was significantly associated with a decreased risk of incidence or recurrence of AF. Heterogeneity was explained by differences in statin types, patient populations and surgery types. The benefit of statin therapy seemed more pronounced in secondary than in primary prevention.
Use of a Social Story Intervention to Improve Mealtime Skills of an Adolescent with Asperger Syndrome

This study assessed the utility of a Social Story intervention to improve the lunchtime eating behaviors of an adolescent diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. Using an ABAB design, the Social Story program appeared to result in a decrease in the number of food and drink spills and an increase in the frequency of appropriate mouth- wiping during lunch at school.
An Investigation of the Perceived Stress, Coping Strategies, and Physical Health of Childhood Maltreatment Survivors

This study investigated links between childhood maltreatment (CM), perceived stress, coping strategies, and physical health problems among adult women. There is mounting evidence to suggest that perceived stress and coping strategies help to explain the association between CM and physical health outcomes. However, research has yet to clarify the precise mechanisms through which stress and coping independently, and in combination, predict the health concerns of victimized women. Through the use of structural equation modeling (SEM), support was found for a model in which perceived stress partially mediated the association between CM and physical health problems. While emotion-focused coping was also found to partially mediate the CM-health relationship, problem-focused and avoidance coping did not. A moderated mediation model revealed that each coping strategy moderated the impact of maltreatment, but not of perceived stress, on physical health. Multi-mediation model testing indicated that Child Maltreatment, Stress, Coping, and Health iv emotion-focused coping and perceived stress better explain the relationship between CM and health than either variable on its own, and that this coping strategy fully accounted for the link between CM and subsequent stress. Finally, multivariate regression analyses revealed that child physical abuse was uniquely associated with greater physical symptoms, and child psychological maltreatment had a unique link with functional impairment; however, no form of abuse uniquely explained health care utilization. Findings suggest that child maltreatment is a risk factor for adverse health outcomes in later life and that stress and coping strategies are important mechanisms in this relationship. Implications for clinicians, medical professionals, and researchers are discussed. Child Maltreatment, Stress, Coping, and Health v Table of
Given Names Structure and Performance in Standardized Test Scores: The Colombian Case

This paper studies the relationship between the structure of given names (specificletters composition) and the performance of students in a standardized test. We estimate a model where students’ test results are explained by usual variables and whether the child has a unique name or not; the model controls for previous performance of the student in the test. Our results show that having a unique name is associated to lower results in math and language particularly for males.
Evolution of raltegravir resistance during therapy.

OBJECTIVES We investigated the prevalence of raltegravir resistance-associated mutations at baseline and their evolution during raltegravir therapy in patients infected with different HIV-1 subtypes. METHODS At pre-treatment screening, the integrase gene from plasma samples from patients infected with subtype B and non-B viruses was analysed. Raltegravir resistance evolution was further evaluated in 10 heavily pre-treated patients. RESULTS Two hundred and nine plasma samples from 94 subtype B and 115 non-B patients were sequenced. No signature/primary raltegravir resistance mutations were detected at baseline. The secondary mutations L74M, T97A, V151I and G163R were observed with a frequency of <4%. The primary mutations N155H, Q148R/H or Q143R were observed during raltegravir therapy. The Q148R/H was detected only in subtype B. A switch of the primary mutation during raltegravir treatment was not restricted to the subtype B viruses. The prevalence of each primary mutation varied depending on the length of the raltegravir therapy. The Q148R/H was mostly detected after short exposure to raltegravir, while the Y143R was observed only after prolonged raltegravir exposure. We detected an association between the presence of the T206S in the baseline genotype and the absence of the primary Q148R/H mutation or any secondary mutation accompanying the N155H following raltegravir failure. CONCLUSIONS A number of secondary and additional mutations were found in baseline genotypes. During therapy, when the virus was not optimally suppressed, resistance mutations developed, which were dependent on subtype and time on raltegravir.
Phonetic description of alveolar phones using electropalatography.

PURPOSE To describe the articulation of the Brazilian Portuguese, by examining the tongue-palate contact in the production of consonantal phones. METHODS The electropalatography (EPG) of the alveolar consonants of the Brazilian Portuguese produced by an individual with typical speech was used, considering the alveolar, post-alveolar, palatal, and velar rates, as well as the percentage of activated contacts at the point of maximum constriction, and the visual inspection of palatograms. RESULTS As expected, it was observed that all the examined phones have more contact in the alveolar region at the point of maximum constriction. The phones /t/, /d/ and /n/ showed more alveolar contact, with total obstruction of the air stream; the fricative phones /s/ and /z/ were characterized by the absence of contact at the central longitudinal axis; the lateral phone /l/ did not present contact at the lateral longitudinal axis, and the tap /[symbol: see text]/ showed not only few tongue-palate contacts but it was also produced in the shortest duration time. CONCLUSION The electopalatography allowed a detailed description of the extension of the tongue-palate contact in the different alveolar phones of the Brazilian Portuguese and how they occur.
Do Differences in School Quality Matter More Than We Thought? New Evidence on Educational Opportunity in the Twenty-first Century

Do schools reduce or perpetuate inequality by race and family income? Most studies conclude that schools play only a small role in explaining socioeconomic and racial disparities in educational outcomes, but they usually draw this conclusion based solely on test scores. We reconsider this finding using longitudinal data on test scores and four-year college attendance among high school students in Massachusetts and Texas. We show that unexplained differences between high schools are larger for college attendance than for test scores. These differences are arguably caused by differences between the schools themselves. Furthermore, while these apparent differences in high school effectiveness increase income disparities in college attendance, they reduce racial disparities. Social scientists concerned with schools’ role in transmitting inequality across generations should reconsider the assumption that schools either increase or reduce all disparities and should direct attention to explaining why high schools’ effects on specific outcomes and groups of students appear to vary so much.
Practice-based Design of a Neighborhood Portal: Focusing on Elderly Tenants in a City Quarter Living Lab

This paper contributes to the current discourse on practice-based research in HCI paying particular attention to the overall temporal and situational conditions which frame an R&D project. We present a Living Lab study situated in an arbitrary neighborhood of a German city which develops ICT support to foster informal help and social interaction with a special, but not exclusive, focus on elderly tenants. We demonstrate that practice-based, long-term research in a city quarter goes beyond those challenges already described in the current Living Lab and PD literature. The long-term study's positioning in a real-world context is contoured not only by a high diversity of stakeholders and their individual interests and motivation for participation but also by their individual skill sets and learning needs. These distinct and often contradictive perspectives have to be permanently counterbalanced. Thus attention has to be focused on how related strategies and decisions impact on the design of the project as well as on the final ICT product. To enable all tenants, irrespective of age and technical skill, to participate in a long-term ICT-based community development project, we applied the format of 'experience-based PD workshops' to foster confidence in ICT usage and encourage the competency of the elderly and non-tech-savvy tenants.
Civil War Diffusion and Regional Motivations for Intervention

Third-party states consider the regional destabilization consequences of civil wars when deciding to intervene. However, previous work implicitly assumes that potential interveners base their intervention decisions solely on their links to the civil war country. This approach is unlikely to reflect the regional concerns of interested parties. When a civil war is increasingly likely to infect its surrounding region, potential interveners with strong interests in those states neighboring the conflict will be more likely to intervene to contain the violence. Thus, relationships outside the civil war state—intervener dyad are causally associated with intervention. To test these arguments, the author accounts for the contagious properties of civil wars and the regional interests of third parties, constructing dynamic measures to represent the contagion threat posed to third party regional interests. Analyses of these measures support the argument that third parties are increasingly likely to intervene as the risk of diffusion increasingly threatens their regional interests.
Expressions of HSP70 and HSP27 in Hepatocellular Carcinoma

The heat shock proteins (HSPs) are ubiquitous molecules induced in cells exposed to various stress conditions, including carcinogenesis. The HSP70 and HSP27 among HSPs are of special relevance in human cancer inhibiting apoptosis. The aim of this study is to investigate the expressions of HSP70 and HSP27 in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in association to tumor cell proliferation and apoptosis. We examined the expressions of HSP70 and HSP27 by immunohistochemical staining in 71 cases of HCC, and then related their expressions to clinicopathologic parameters and expressions of p53, Ki-67 and Apotag. HSP70 and HSP27 were frequently stained in the cytoplasm and nuclei of tumor cells, but not in the non-neoplastic hepatocytes. Immunoreactivities of HSP70 and HSP27 were observed in 56.3% and 61.9% of HCCs, respectively. HSP70 immunoreactivity correlated with high Ki-67 labeling indices (LIs) (p=0.0159), large tumor size (p=0.0129), presence of portal vein invasion (p=0.0231), and high tumor stage (p=0.0392). HSP27 immunoreactivity significantly related with the subgroup of HBV-associated HCCs (p=0.0003), but not with the others. Both HSP70 and HSP27 immunoreactivities showed no relation to Apotag LIs or p53 immunoreactivity. In conclusion, expressions of HSP70 and HSP27 may play an important role in hepatocarcinogenesis, and especially HSP70 showed a close relationship to the pathological parameters associated with tumor progression and high Ki-67 LIs. Our results could be additional evidence that HSP70 expressions can contribute to not only hepatocarcinogenesis but also tumor progression by promoting tumor cell proliferation.
Fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) in the diagnosis of granulomatous lymphadenitis

Objective To determine the final histological and clinical diagnosis of patients with granulomatous lymphadenitis on fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC). Method A retrospective cohort study was carried out over a five year period in a tertiary referral hospital. FNAC of 22 patients with granulomatous lymphadenitis was reviewed and correlated with the final histological diagnosis and clinical outcome. Results Fourteen cases (64%) underwent surgical biopsy for histological assessment. a definitive diagnosis on FNAC with ancillary investigations was achieved in 82% (18 out of 22) of the cases: four Hodgkin's lymphoma, two non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL), five tuberculosis (TB), two toxoplasmosis, one sarcoidosis and four benign reactive changes. Conclusion A significant number of cases of FNAC diagnosed granulomatous lymphadenitis have an identifiable underlying cause. Patients with reactive cytological changes, who clinically appear benign, can avoid unnecessary surgery.
A Review of Non-Medication Interventions to Improve the Academic Performance of Children and Youth With ADHD

Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are at risk for academic failure. Although studies have evaluated the effects of medication on academic outcomes, the literature on non-medication interventions has not received equal attention. This review examined 41 studies that evaluated the impact of non-medication interventions on the academic functioning of students with ADHD. The findings revealed that a broad range of traditional and nontraditional interventions has been used to improve students' academic outcomes, yet systematic lines of research were clearly missing. Moreover, important demographic and descriptive information, such as participant characteristics and classroom settings, were often poorly defined and generally did not reflect the current population of students with ADHD. Despite some indications of promise, significant limitations in the literature allow for few conclusions about intervention effects and generalization. Further systematic research is needed to determine which academic intervention methods hold the most promise for children and youth with ADHD.
Evidence for cardioembolic stroke in a case of Kearns-Sayre syndrome.

BACKGROUND Cerebral infarction is a known complication in patients with mitochondrial encephalomyopathies (MELAS, MERRF, Kearns-Sayre syndrome), but the etiology in the different types remains uncertain. CASE DESCRIPTION A 33-year-old woman who had suffered from ophthalmoplegia, bilateral ptosis, ataxia, retinitis pigmentosa, and epilepsy since childhood was diagnosed to have Kearns-Sayre syndrome. The diagnosis was confirmed by muscle biopsy when she was 17 years old. A pacemaker was implanted because of the occurrence of bradyarrhythmias when she was 24 years old. The patient was admitted to the hospital with left-sided hemiparesis of sudden onset due to right striatocapsular infarction. Results of Doppler sonography of the carotid arteries were normal; however, transesophageal echocardiography revealed a thrombus in the left atrial appendage. CONCLUSIONS Stroke in Kearns-Sayre syndrome is likely to be due to cardiac embolism. Anticoagulant therapy should be considered even for mild forms of cardiomyopathies leading to left ventricular dysfunction.
Type 1 Diabetes: Clinical and Experimental

The continuous rise in the incidence of type 1 diabetes (T1D), particularly in younger children, has been a constant theme highlighted in all previous Yearbook chapters on T1D. It is impossible not to reiterate this concept this year, given that it represents a major epidemiological issue and the driving force for the studies reported in this chapter. Several interesting basic and clinical studies have been published in 2011–2012 and some of the most interesting ones, dealing with a wide range of aspects associated with T1D, from pathogenesis to treatment, are presented. Progress has been made in terms of the understanding of the pathogenesis of T1D and how changes in environmental factors can interact with the individual genetic background in explaining the rising number of new cases of T1D. Changes in the immunophenotype of patients with T1D seem to have occurred over time, moving towards a more mature and aggressive immune response. Peripheral blood monocyte expression profiles have emerged to be a clinical useful marker to stratify patients with recent- onset T1D. New - cell- specific markers, which could be invaluable for diagnostic and intervention purposes, have also been identified. Clinical trials have been assessing new potential treatment strategies, such as immune treatments as well as new insulin analogues. Genetic studies have become more and more complex, by including interaction models which allow a better understanding of the role of genetic changes at single or multiple loci. In addition, the potential role of epigenetic changes has also been explored. Exciting has been the discovery of genetic manipulations which can influence insulin secretion, or even turn some gut cells into insulin- producing cells. From a clinical point of view, interesting findings have been the higher risk of T1D associated with cesarean section in combination with genetic susceptibility, the beneficial effect of intensive insulin treatment on glomerular filtration rate and the feasibility of behavioral interventions in the management of adolescents with T1D. Last but not least, the ‘new hope’ section is, as last year, dedicated to the progress in the field of islet transplantation. Many articles presented in this chapter will be followed by new studies aiming at confirming specific findings or extending them and leading to more discoveries, which will hopefully help prevent T1D or at least improve management, reducing complication risks and improving the prognosis of people affected by this disease.