Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Patient Adherence to Olmesartan/Amlodipine Combinations: Fixed Versus Extemporaneous Combinations

BACKGROUND: Lack of adherence to prescribed therapies is often a cause of suboptimal blood pressure control in patients with hypertension. To enhance patients’ adherence to treatment, fixed-dose combinations of active substances with complementary mechanisms of action have been developed. An angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor or an angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) is often combined with a calcium channel blocker. Olmesartan is the most used ARB in combination therapy. In Italy, in September 2011, a fixed-dose combination of olmesartan/amlodipine (olmesartan/amlodipine 20/5 mg, 40/5 mg, or 40/10 mg) was introduced to treat patients with hypertension for whom control of blood pressure is not reached with either olmesartan or amlodipine alone. Prior research on adherence to olmesartan/amlodipine combinations was carried out in local contexts (e.g., claims databases of Italian regions or local health authorities), and/or it was limited by the fact that adherence was assessed against monotherapies already known for their low compliance profile, such as diuretics. OBJECTIVE: To compare adherence with olmesartan/amlodipine fixed-dose combination (FDC) and extemporaneous combination in primary care in Italy. METHODS: A nationwide, population-based study was conducted by using the Health Search IMS Health Longitudinal Patient Database. Patients aged > 17 years, affected by hypertension and treated with the FDC or extemporaneous combination of olmesartan/amlodipine, were identified. Adherence to these 2 therapeutic regimens was estimated by calculating the proportion of days covered (PDC). Patients were classified into 3 levels of adherence: high (PDC ≥ 80%), intermediate (PDC = 40%-79%), or low (PDC < 40%). RESULTS: In the 6-month follow-up, FDC showed higher adherence compared with an extemporaneous combination (55.1% vs. 15.9%, P < 0.001). This difference was confirmed in a multivariable logistic regression model clustered on patient identifier (odds ratio = 6.65; 95% CI = 3.10-14.26; P < 0.001). The proportion of patients adherent to FDC varied from 60.4% for the 40/5 mg formulation to 47.5% for the 40/10 mg formulation. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that higher adherence may be achieved with FDCs than with extemporaneous combinations. To improve the degree of adherence, general practitioners may consider prescribing fixed combinations of antihypertensive agents as soon as monotherapies fail to achieve the expected therapeutic objective.
Abaloparatide Is an Anabolic, but Does It Spare Resorption?

Abaloparatide is a novel peptide that shares aminoterminal sequence with PTHrP. It has been shown in a clinical trial to reduce vertebral and nonvertebral fracture risk and to promote bone formation in the aged osteopenic rat. It is proposed to produce its anabolic effect with less promotion of resorption than with teriparatide. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
Early Improvement in Glycemic Metabolism after Laparoscopic Sleeve Gastrectomy in Obese Patients - A Prospective Study.

BACKGROUND according to W.H. O. in 2014 more than 600 million adults were obese, (more than doubled since 1980), and face a major risk for the onset of metabolic syndrome, including T2DM. Due to the poor control of glycemic imbalance for the conservative treatment of T2DM, the metabolic surgery was able to gain an important role in modern management of T2DM, with significant reported improvements or remissions for these patients. OBJECTIVE to study the effects of laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy (LSG) on glycemic metabolism in obese patients, with or without T2DM. METHODS 60 consecutive patients were included in a prospective study and were submitted to laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy in Ponderas Hospital between February - March 2013. BMI, waist circumference and glycemic parameters were studied at the moment of entering the study, 10 days after surgery and at 6 months follow up. RESULTS the glycemic control was significantly improved starting with postoperative day 10. Statistically significant improvements were noticed after six months postoperatively in BMI values (p 0,0001), waist circumference (p 0,0001), glycemic levels (p 0,0001), insulin (p 0,0001), C-peptide (p 0,0001) and HOMA. CONCLUSIONS a rapid induced improvement of glucose metabolism in both diabetic and non-diabetic patients occurs before a significant weight loss (POD 10). At 6 months, when associated with an important weight loss, both diabetic and non-diabetic patients present a furthermore improvement in glycemic metabolism, that enables us to consider that sleeve gastrectomy is an efficient method for a sustained improvement in the metabolic status of patients with obesity. These beneficial changes that can explain the remission of T2DM can also explain the prevention of T2DM after metabolic surgery.
Visual feature learning with application to medical image classification

Various hand-crafted features have been explored for medical image classification, which include SIFT and Local Binary Patterns (LBP). However, hand-crafted features may not be optimally discriminative for classifying images from particular domains (e.g. colonoscopy), as not necessarily tuned to the domain’s characteristics. In this work, I give emphasis on learning highly discriminative local features and image representations to achieve the best possible classification performance for medical images, particularly for colonoscopy and histology (cell) images. I propose approaches to learn local features using unsupervised and weakly-supervised methods, and an approach to improve the feature encoding methods such as bag-of-words. Unlike the existing work, the proposed weakly-supervised approach uses image-level labels to learn the local features. Requiring image-labels instead of region-level labels makes annotations less expensive, and closer to the data normally available from normal clinical practice, hence more feasible in practice. In this thesis, first, I propose a generalised version of the LBP descriptor called the Generalised Local Ternary Patterns (gLTP), which is inspired by the success of LBP and its variants for colonoscopy image classification. gLTP is robust to both noise and illumination changes, and I demonstrate its competitive performance compared to the best performing LBP-based descriptors on two different datasets (colonoscopy and histology). However LBP-based descriptors (including gLTP) lose information due to the binarisation step involved in their construction. Therefore, I then propose a descriptor called the Extended Multi-Resolution Local Patterns (xMRLP), which is real-valued and reduces information loss. I propose unsupervised and weakly-supervised learning approaches to learn the set of parameters in xMRLP. I show that the learned descriptors give competitive or better performance compared to other descriptors such as root-SIFT and Random Projections. Finally, I propose an approach to improve feature encoding methods. The approach captures inter-cluster features, providing context information in the feature as well as in the image spaces, in addition to the intra-cluster features often captured by conventional feature encoding approaches. The proposed approaches have been evaluated on three datasets, 2-class colonoscopy (2, 100 images), 3-class colonoscopy (2, 800 images) and histology (public dataset, containing 13, 596 images). Some experiments on radiology images (IRMA dataset, public) also were given. I show state-of-the-art or superior classification performance on colonoscopy and histology datasets.
Coupling Statistical Machine Translation with Rule-based Transfer and Generation

In this paper, we present the insights gained from a detailed study of coupling a highly modular English-Hindi RBMT system with a standard phrase-based SMT system. Coupling the RBMT and SMT systems at various stages in the RBMT pipeline, we observe the effects of the source transformations at each stage on the performance of the coupled MT system. We propose an architecture that systematically exploits the structural transfer and robust generation capabilities of the RBMT system. Working with the English-Hindi language pair, we show that the coupling configurations explored in our experiments help address different aspects of the typological divergence between these languages. In spite of working with very small datasets, we report significant improvements both in terms of BLEU (7.14 and 0.87 over the RBMT and the SMT baselines respectively) and subjective evaluation (relative decrease of 17% in SSER).
AKT Isoforms 1 and 3 Regulate Basal and Epidermal Growth Factor-Stimulated SGHPL-5 Trophoblast Cell Migration in Humans1

ABSTRACT Protein kinase B/AKT is critically involved in murine placental development and migration of human placental trophoblasts into maternal uterine tissue. However, localization of the three AKT isoforms within human placenta and their roles in extravillous trophoblasts have not been elucidated. Therefore, we analyzed the expression pattern and function of AKT1, AKT2, and AKT3 in migratory human trophoblasts using SGHPL-5 cell pools stably expressing small-hairpin microRNA (shRNAmir) against AKT1, AKT2, or AKT3 as a model. Western blot analyses using isoform-specific antibodies revealed ubiquitous expression of AKT1, AKT2, and AKT3 in primary villous and extravillous trophoblasts and the trophoblastic cell lines JEG-3, HTR-8/SVneo, and SGHPL-5. Immunofluorescence of first-trimester placentae localized AKT2 and AKT3 to the cytoplasm and nucleus, respectively, in all subtypes of cytotrophoblasts, whereas AKT1 was detected in both cellular compartments. A similar distribution of AKT isoforms was detectable in SGHPL-5 cells. Gene silencing using shRNAmir decreased protein expression of AKT1, AKT2, and AKT3 to 16%, 8%, and 11%, respectively, in SGHPL-5 cells. Compared with shRNAmir controls, proliferation and camptothecin-induced apoptosis were not affected in the different AKT knockdown cells. However, basal and epidermal growth factor (EGF)-induced trophoblast migration was significantly reduced in AKT1 and AKT3 gene-silenced cells, whereas downregulation of AKT2 was not effective. Accordingly, a decrease in EGF-stimulated phosphorylation of AKT (Ser473 and Thr308) and its downstream target mTORC1 (Ser2448) was noticed in AKT1 and AKT3 shRNAmir cell pools. In summary, the results suggest that the AKT isoforms 1 and 3 promote basal as well as EGF-induced trophoblast migration.
Diabetes Mellitus and Retinal Vein Occlusion as Risk Factors for Open Angle Glaucoma and Neuroprotective Therapies for Retinal Ganglion Cell Neuropathy

Glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy (DR), and retinal vein occlusion (RVO) are major diseases that can lead to blindness and affect mainly the elderly population worldwide. The results of recent investigations have demonstrated that the death of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) and their axons is the common pathological change in these three disease processes. The exact mechanism that is responsible for the onset and progression of RGC death and axonal degeneration in patients with glaucoma, DR and RVO has not been definitively determined. Thus, identifying the risk factors for the onset and the progression of RGC neuropathy can help in deciding not only the specific treatments but also whether the treatments should be initiated, withheld, or augmented in individuals with glaucoma, DR, and RVO. This review describes the major risk factors for the onset of glaucoma, and the factors associated with the progression of glaucoma that have been obtained from large population-based prevalence and incidence studies. In addition, the potential risk factors for glaucoma, diabetes mellitus, and RVO are discussed in terms of the results obtained by both clinical and laboratory studies. This review introduces potential neuroprotective therapies for damaged RGC in eyes with RGC neuropathy, and the factors that should be considered for a complete therapy for the RGC neuropathy involved in glaucoma, DR and RVO. Neuroprotective therapies combined with a reduction of the IOP should be considered for the complete management of RGC neuropathy involved in glaucoma, DR and RVO.
Correlation Between Optical, Morphological, and Compositional Properties of Aluminum Nitride Thin Films by Pulsed Laser Deposition

Aluminum nitride (AlN) thin films were grown in a N2 atmosphere onto a Si/Si3N4 substrate by pulsed laser ablation. We have varied the substrate temperature for the thin film growth, using X-ray reflectometry analysis, we have characterized the thickness and density of the thin layer and the interface roughness from the X-ray reflectivity profiles. Experimental data showed that the root-mean-square roughness was in the range of 0.3 nm. The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) was employed to characterize the chemical composition of the films. These measurements detected carbon and oxygen contamination at the surface. In the high-resolution XPS Al2p data, binding energies for Al-N and Al-O species were identified but no Al-Al species were present. In the N1s data, N-O species were not detected, but chemically bonded O was present in the films as Al-O species. Furthermore, the value of optical energy gap, Eg was ~5.3 (±0.1) eV. The composition varied with process conditions, and the nitrogen content decreased in AlN films processed above 500 °C.
Phase Information for Classification Between Clench Speed and Clench Force Motor Imagery

In this paper, we investigate the phase information for classification between clench speed and clench force motor imagery for BCI applications. The multivariate extensions of empirical mode decomposition (MEMD) are used to decompose EEG data into intrinsic mode functions (IMFs). Then, the phase information is got by transforming IMFs into analytic signal using Hiblert transforms. Six feature types are compared in the paper for channel C3, Cz and C4: the amplitude of IMFs, the power of IMFs, the amplitude of the corresponding analytic signal, the instantaneous phase of the analytic signal, the instantaneous frequency of the analytic signal and the phase-locking value (PLV) between two channels. The support vector machine with 5-fold crossvalidation is used to classify clench speed motor imagery from clench force motor imagery. The results show that for some subjects the instantaneous phase can get the best results, while PLV never performs best compared with other features. The minimum classification error rate of 0.25 is reached in our research.
Spectral theory for linear operators on $L^1$ or $C(K)$ spaces

It is known that on a Hilbert space, the sum of a real scalartype operator and a commuting well-bounded operator is well-bounded. The corresponding property has been shown to be fail on L spaces, for 1 < p 6= 2 < ∞. We show that it does hold however on every Banach space X such that X or X∗ is a Grothendieck space. This class notably includes L and C(K) spaces.
An improved stability criterion of networked control systems

The stability criterion of networked control systems with both the network-induced delays and data packet dropouts is investigated. A Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional candidate, which makes use of the information of the lower, upper bounds and the middle point of the time-varying network-induced delay interval simultaneously, is proposed and a tighter bounding for an integral term of the delay is estimated to drive a less conservative stability condition for networked control systems. No redundant matrix variable is introduced. Finally, two numerical examples are given to show the effectiveness of the proposed stability criterion.
Absorption of lead from dust and soil

The lead burdens for children and mothers exposed to lead-contaminated soils and dusts have been investigated in a rural district with minimal atmospheric pollution. A significant relationship was observed between the lead content of blood and hair of children exposed to soils of mean lead content in the range 420-13,969 p.p.m. The blood lead concentration of children was consistently greater than that of their mothers. No consistent relationship was found between blood lead values and pica for soil. In this situation, lead in soil provided a small additional burden for children but in itself was insufficient to constitute a hazard.
Ultrasmall Supraparamagnetic Iron Oxide-Enhanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Antigen-Induced Arthritis: A Comparative Study Between SHU 555 C, Ferumoxtran-10, and Ferumoxytol

Objectives:We sought to compare the ability of 3 ultrasmall superparamagnetic iron oxides (USPIOs) to detect and characterize antigen-induced arthritis with MR imaging. Materials and Methods:A monoarthritis was induced in the right knee of 18 rats. The left knee served as a normal control. Knees underwent magnetic resonance (MR) imaging before, up to 2 hours, and 24 hours after injection (p.i.) of 200 μmol Fe/kg SHU 555 C (n= 6), ferumoxtran-10 (n = 6), or ferumoxytol (n = 6), using T2-2D-SE 100/20,40,60,80/90 (TR/TE/flipangle), T2*-3D-spoiled gradient recalled (SPGR) 100/15/38, and T1-3D-SPGR 50/1,7/60 sequences. Results:Quantitative signal to noise ratio and ΔSI data of arthritic knees on T1- and T2*-weighted MR images showed no significant differences between the 3 USPIOs (P > 0.05). At 2 hours p.i. , SNR and ΔSI data were significantly increased from baseline on T1-weighted images and significantly decreased on T2*-weighted images (P < 0.001). At 24 hours p.i. , the T1-enhancement returned to baseline, whereas the T2*-enhancement remained significantly elevated (P < 0.001). Immunostains demonstrated an USPIO compartmentalization in macrophages in the arthritic synovium. Conclusions:Based on the relatively small number of animals in our study group, inflammation in antigen-induced arthritis can be equally detected and characterized with any of the three USPIOs evaluated.
Type II Secretion Is Necessary for Optimal Association of the Legionella-Containing Vacuole with Macrophage Rab1B but Enhances Intracellular Replication Mainly by Rab1B-Independent Mechanisms

ABSTRACT Previously, we documented that type II secretion (T2S) promotes intracellular infection of macrophages by Legionella pneumophila. In the present study, we identified infection events that are modulated by T2S by comparing the behaviors of wild-type and T2S mutant bacteria in murine bone marrow-derived macrophages and human U937 cells. Although the two strains behaved similarly for entry into the host cells and evasion of lysosomal fusion, the mutant was impaired in the ability to initiate replication between 4 and 8 h postentry and to grow to large numbers in the Legionella-containing vacuole (LCV), as evident at 12 h. At 4 h postinoculation, mutant LCVs had a significantly reduced association with Rab1B, a host GTPase that facilitates the tethering of endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-derived vesicles to LCVs. The mutant did not lose expression or translocation of six type IV secretion effectors (e.g., SidM) that are well known for mediating Rab1B association with the LCV, indicating that T2S promotes the interaction between the LCV and Rab1B via a novel mechanism. Interestingly, the mutant's growth defect was exacerbated in macrophages that had been depleted of Rab1B by short hairpin RNA (shRNA) treatment, indicating that T2S also potentiates events beyond Rab1B association. In support of this, a sidM lspF double mutant had an intracellular growth defect that was more dramatic than that of the lspF mutant (and a sidM mutant) and showed a growth difference of as much as a 400-fold compared to the wild type. Together, these data reveal a new role for T2S in intracellular infection that involves both Rab1B-dependent and Rab1B-independent processes.
Revised sequence of the Porphyromonas gingivalis prtT cysteine protease/hemagglutinin gene: homology with streptococcal pyrogenic exotoxin B/streptococcal proteinase

The prtT gene from Porphyromonas gingivalis ATCC 53977 was previously isolated from an Escherichia coli clone possessing trypsinlike protease activity upstream of a region encoding hemagglutinin activity (J. Otogoto and H. Kuramitsu, Infect. Immun. 61;117-123, 1993). Subsequent molecular analysis of this gene has revealed that the PrtT protein is larger than originally reported, encompassing the hemagglutination region. Results of primer extension experiments indicate that the translation start site was originally misidentified. An alternate open reading frame of nearly 2.7 kb, which encodes a protein in the size range of 96 to 99 kDa, was identified. In vitro transcription-translation experiments confirm this size, and Northern (RNA) blot experiments indicate that the protease is translated from a 3.3-kb mRNA. Searching the EMBL protein database revealed that the amino acid sequence of the revised PrtT is similar to sequences of two related proteins from Streptococcus pyogenes. PrtT is 31% identical and 73% similar over 401 amino acids to streptococcal pyrogenic exotoxin B. In addition, it is 36% identical and 74% similar over 244 amino acids with streptococcal proteinase, which is closely related to streptococcal pyrogenic exotoxin B. The similarity is particularly high at the putative active site of streptococcal proteinase, which is similar to the active sites of the family of cysteine proteases. Thus, we conclude that PrtT is a 96- to 99-kDa cysteine protease and hemagglutinin with significant similarity to streptococcal enzymes.
Synovial sarcomas of the head and neck: MR findings.

OBJECTIVE MR images of six synovial sarcomas of the head and neck were evaluated to determine their characteristic sites of origin, size, extent, intensity, and contrast enhancement. It was hoped that specific MR characteristics could be defined to suggest this entity. CONCLUSION A nonmucosal head and neck mass that is isointense to gray matter on T1-weighted images and is well defined yet heterogeneous, with septations, hemorrhage, cysts, calcification, or multilocularity, should raise suspicion of a synovial sarcoma. Because the appearance of synovial sarcomas varies and other masses may appear similar, no specific imaging characteristics define the entity.
Ceftriaxone, a beta-lactam antibiotic, reduces ethanol consumption in alcohol-preferring rats.

AIMS Changes in glutamatergic transmission affect many aspects of neuroplasticity associated with ethanol and drug addiction. For instance, ethanol- and drug-seeking behavior is promoted by increased glutamate transmission in key regions of the motive circuit. We hypothesized that because glutamate transporter 1 (GLT1) is responsible for the removal of most extracellular glutamate, up-regulation or activation of GLT1 would attenuate ethanol consumption. METHODS Alcohol-preferring (P) rats were given 24 h/day concurrent access to 15 and 30% ethanol, water and food for 7 weeks. During Week 6, P rats received either 25, 50, 100 or 200 mg/kg ceftriaxone (CEF, i.p.), a β-lactam antibiotic known to elevate GLT1 expression, or a saline vehicle for five consecutive days. Water intake, ethanol consumption and body weight were measured daily for 15 days starting on Day 1 of injections. We also tested the effects of CEF (100 and 200 mg/kg, i.p.) on daily sucrose (10%) consumption as a control for motivated behavioral drinking. RESULTS Statistical analyses revealed a significant reduction in daily ethanol, but not sucrose, consumption following CEF treatment. During the post treatment period, there was a recovery of ethanol intake across days. Dose-dependent increases in water intake were manifest concurrent with the CEF-induced decreases in ethanol intake. Nevertheless, CEF did not affect body weight. An examination of a subset of the CEF-treated ethanol-drinking rats, on the third day post CEF treatment, revealed increases in GTL1 expression levels within the prefrontal cortex and nucleus accumbens. CONCLUSIONS These results indicate that CEF effectively reduces ethanol intake, possibly through activation of GLT1, and may be a potential therapeutic drug for alcohol addiction treatment.