Finasteride 5 mg/day Treatment of Patterned Hair Loss in Normo-androgenetic Postmenopausal Women

BACKGROUND: There is no consensus on the standard treatment options for female pattern androgenetic alopecia (AGA). Efficacy of finasteride in women is controversial. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the clinical efficacy and safety of 5 mg/day oral finasteride in normoandrogenic postmenopausal woman. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 40 normoandrogenic postmenopausal women with AGA was enrolled in this study. They were treated with oral finasteride 5 mg/day for 18 months. Efficacy was evaluated by patient's satisfaction and global photograph assessment. All the 40 patients completed 18 months of finasteride treatment schedule. RESULTS: After 6 months, 22 patients referred significant improvement, 12 moderate improvement, and 6 no improvement. Regarding to global photo assessment, 8 patients showed no improvement, 16 showed moderate improvement and 16 showed significant improvements at the 6(th) month. A slight improvement was observed over time from 6 to 12 and 18 months observation. Maintained libido reduction was referred by four patients and liver enzymes increase was observed in one patient. Older patients were more prone to worse response. DISCUSSION: Finasteride 5 mg/day is effective and safe for the treatment of female AGA in postmenopausal women in the absence of clinical or laboratory signs of hyper-androgenism

Does early specialization provide an advantage in physical fitness development in youth basketball?

The present study examined the influence of the specialization onset on the magnitude and patterns of changes in basketball-specific physical fitness within a competitive season and developmental fitness trends between 11 and 17 years in young basketball players. Repeated measures of 181 young basketball players (female, n = 40; male, n = 141) were examined. Anthropometry, age, estimated maturity status, and basketball-specific physical fitness (assessed with the countermovement jump, line drill, and yo-yo intermittent recovery level-1 and fitness score) were considered. Players were grouped by the onset of specialization as related to biological maturation milestones (pre-puberty, mid-puberty, and late-puberty specialization). The within-season and developmental changes in physical fitness were fitted using multilevel modeling in a fully Bayesian framework. The fitness outcomes were similar between-player and within-player changes when grouped by specialization across a season. Fitness improvements across a season were apparent for female players, while male players maintained their performance levels. There was no variation in the patterns of physical fitness development between 11 and 17 years associated with the onset of specialization. Conditional on our data and models, the assumption that early sport specialization provides a physical fitness advantage for future athletic success does not hold

Metal-free synthesis of indanes by iodine(III)-mediated ring contraction of 1, 2-dihydronaphthalenes

A metal-free protocol was developed to synthesize indanes by ring contraction of 1, 2-dihydronaphthalenes promoted by PhI(OH)OTs (HTIB or Koser's reagent). This oxidative rearrangement can be performed in several solvents (MeOH, CH3CN, 2 , 2, 2-trifluoroethanol (TFE), 1 , 1, 1, 3, 3, 3-hexafluoroisopropanol (HFIP), and a 1:4 mixture of TFE:CH2Cl2) under mild conditions. The ring contraction diastereoselectively gives functionalized trans-1, 3-disubstituted indanes, which are difficult to obtain in synthetic organic chemistryUm protocolo livre de metais foi desenvolvido para sintetizar indanos através da contração de anel de 1, 2-di-hidronaftalenos promovida por PhI(OH)OTs (HTIB ou reagente de Koser). Este rearranjo oxidativo pode ser realizado em diversos solventes (MeOH, CH3CN, 2 , 2, 2-trifluoroetanol (TFE), 1 , 1, 1, 3, 3, 3-hexafluoroisopropanol (HFIP), e uma mistura 1:4 de TFE:CH2Cl2) em condições brandas. A contração de anel fornece indanos trans-1, 3-dissubstituídos diastereosseletivamente, os quais são difíceis de obter em química orgânica sintéticaFundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)FAPES

Immunosensor for pancreatic cancer based on electrospun nanofibers coated with carbon nanotubes or gold nanoparticles

We report the fabrication of immunosensors based on nanostructured mats of electrospun nanofibers of polyamide 6 and poly(allylamine hydrochloride) coated either with multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) or gold nanoparticles (AuNPs), whose three-dimensional structure was suitable for the immobilization of anti-CA19-9 antibodies to detect the pancreatic cancer biomarker CA19-9. Using impedance spectroscopy, the sensing platform was able to detect CA19-9 with a detection limit of 1.84 and 1.57 U mL-1 for the nanostructured architectures containing MWCNTs and AuNPs, respectively. The high sensitivity achieved can be attributed to the irreversible adsorption between antibodies and antigens, as confirmed with polarization-modulated infrared reflection absorption spectroscopy. The adsorption mechanism was typical Langmuir-Freundlich processes. The high sensitivity and selectivity of the immunosensors were also explored in tests with blood serum from patients with distinct concentrations of CA19-9, for which the impedance spectra data were processed with a multidimensional projection technique. The robustness of the immunosensors in dealing with patient samples without suffering interference from analytes present in biological fluids is promising for a simple, effective diagnosis of pancreatic cancer at early stages.This work was supported by FAPESP (Grant 2013/14262-7), CNPq, and CAPES (Brazil). D.S.C. also thanks FAPESP (Grant 2014/16789-5), Embrapa−Rede Agronano, and MCTI SisNano for financial support.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

INTERNET DAS COISAS APLICADA AO GERENCIAMENTO DE PRESENÇA E ENCONTROS DE PESSOAS EM PRÉDIOS INTELIGENTES

With technological advances and the popularization of the Internet of Things (IoT), more concepts of Smart Cities have been adopted in large urban centers,in particular, in smart buildings, that use sensors to better control their facilities. One of the areas of smart buildings is the presence and meeting management that manages the displacement and location of occupants in the building. The detection of people in indoor environments is becoming increasingly useful, espe- cially in times of pandemic, when it is important to identify which people were close to each other in the same place and for how long. Considering this scenario, this study presents a distributed software architecture that uses four components that provide services for storing and consulting data, meeting notifications, and identifying the devices involved. In a flexible way, beacons and Android devices can be used to represent both people and physical spaces. In addition, the proposed architecture enables to determine attendances in real time, calculate the total time of stay, and check meetings of people. The effectiveness of the proposed solution was demonstrated through an experimental evaluation simulating its use.Com o avanço tecnológico e a popularização da Internet das Coisas (IoT), aplicações para Cidades Inteligentes tem sido mais frequentes, em particular, nos prédios inteligentes, que utilizam sensores para melhor gerir seus recursos. Uma das áreas de atuação da IoT, no contexto de prédios inteligentes, consiste na gestão de presença e encontros de pessoas em ambientes fechados. A detecção de pessoas em ambientes internos torna-se relevante, especialmente em tempos de pandemia, em que é fundamental identificar os locais que uma pessoa esteve, por quanto tempo e se houve encontro entre pessoas. Este trabalho apresenta uma arquitetura de software distribuída que serve de base para o desenvolvimento de aplicações que requeiram a gestão de presenças e encontros de pessoas em ambientes internos. Composta por quatro componentes, a arquitetura proposta utiliza beacons Bluetooth e dispositivos Android para representar pessoas e espaços físicos. Com a integração dos componentes, a arquitetura pode detectar presença de pessoas em tempo real, calcular o tempo total de permanência, e verificar encontros de pessoas. A efetividade da solução proposta foi demonstrada através da obtenção de resultados promissores em uma avaliação experimental que comparou o tempo real de permanência de uma pessoa em um espaço físico com o tempo computado pela arquitetura

Natural selection shaped the rise and fall of passenger pigeon genomic diversity.

The extinct passenger pigeon was once the most abundant bird in North America, and possibly the world. Although theory predicts that large populations will be more genetically diverse, passenger pigeon genetic diversity was surprisingly low. To investigate this disconnect, we analyzed 41 mitochondrial and 4 nuclear genomes from passenger pigeons and 2 genomes from band-tailed pigeons, which are passenger pigeons' closest living relatives. Passenger pigeons' large population size appears to have allowed for faster adaptive evolution and removal of harmful mutations, driving a huge loss in their neutral genetic diversity. These results demonstrate the effect that selection can have on a vertebrate genome and contradict results that suggested that population instability contributed to this species's surprisingly rapid extinction