The role of maternal diet in metabolic and behavioural programming: review of biologic mechanisms involved

Over the last few years, a considerable amount of studies have focused on the effect of undernutrition and overnutrition during critical periods of offspring development and their risk of developing metabolic diseases later in life. Additionally, inadequate maternal diets have been involved in the malprogramming of brain functions and some behaviours. Several mechanisms have been associated with the process of malprogramming such as epigenetics modifications, excessive oxidative stress or hypothalamic alterations. This evidence supports the idea that nutritional prevention strategies must be considered for offspring during early development stages that include the preconceptional period. Additionally, studying involved mechanisms could be particularly useful in the search of efficient therapies against malprogramming.Este trabajo ha sido financiado por el Ministerio de Economía y competitividad (PSI-2012-35388), Instituto de Salud Carlos III y UE-ERDF (Número proyecto:CP12/03109).YesEn los últimos años, un importante número de investigaciones se han centrado en el estudio de los efectos de la subnutrición y sobrenutrición durante periodos críticos del desarrollo así como en el riesgo de desarrollar enfermedades metabólicas en etapas posteriores. Adicionalmente, las dietas maternas inadecuadas han sido implicadas en la programación errónea de las funciones cerebrales y ciertos comportamientos. Se han asociado con el proceso de una mala programación diferentes mecanismos tales como modificaciones epigenéticas, excesivo estrés oxidativo o alteraciones hipotalámicas. Estas evidencias apoyan la idea de que la prevención nutricional debe ser considerada desde estadios tempranos del desarrollo que incluyan el periodo preconcepcional. Además, la investigación sobre los mecanismos implicados puede resultar particularmente útil en la búsqueda de terapias eficientes para hacer frente a una mala programación

Cyclosporine A in hospitalized COVID-19 pneumonia patients to prevent the development of interstitial lung disease: a pilot randomized clinical trial

Abstract Post-COVID-19 interstitial lung disease (ILD) is a new entity that frequently causes pulmonary fibrosis and can become chronic. We performed a single-center parallel-group open-label pilot randomized clinical trial to investigate the efficacy and safety of cyclosporine A (CsA) in the development of ILD in the medium term among patients hospitalized with COVID-19 pneumonia. Patients were randomized 1:1 to receive CsA plus standard of care or standard of care alone. The primary composite outcome was the percentage of patients without ILD 3 months after diagnosis of pneumonia and not requiring invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) (response without requiring IMV). The key secondary composite outcomes were the percentage of patients who achieve a response requiring IMV or irrespective of the need for IMV, and adverse events. A total of 33 patients received at least one dose of CsA plus standard of care (n = 17) or standard of care alone (n = 16). No differences were found between the groups in the percentage of patients who achieved a response without requiring IMV or a response requiring IMV. A higher percentage of patients achieved a response irrespective of the need for IMV in the CsA plus standard of care group although the RR was almost significant 2.833 (95% CI, 0.908–8.840; p = 0.057). No differences were found between the groups for adverse events. In hospitalized patients with COVID-19 pneumonia, we were unable to demonstrate that CsA achieved a significant effect in preventing the development of ILD. (EU Clinical Trials Register; EudraCT Number: 2020-002123-11; registration date: 08/05/2020)

Experiencias de éxito en innovación educativa

El trabajo obtuvo un premio de la Modalidad B de los Premios Tomás García Verdejo a las buenas prácticas educativas en la Comunidad Autónoma de Extremadura para el curso 2011/2012Se describe el proyecto innovador del Colegio Diocesano San Atón (Badajoz) basado en una serie de iniciativas pedagógicas que buscan la formación integral de la persona y la mejora del rendimiento escolar de los alumnos. Las actividades descritas son: Proyecto Eco-cuídame del Área de Educación Medioambietal y Desarrollo Sostenible; Proyecto Cronopio y periódico escolar 'La chincheta' del Área de Fomento de la Lectura, la Escritura y el Uso de la Biblioteca Escolar; Proyecto Matiz, Proyecto Viva la Música y Taller de Fotografía del Área para el Desarrollo Artístico y Musical; Proyecto Deportivo del Área de Educación para la Salud y el Fomento de la Práctica Deportiva; Aula virtual Moodle del CDSA del Área de las Tecnologías de la Información y de la Comunicación y Aprendizaje Cooperativo del Área para el Desarrollo de las Capacidades Personales y Éxito del AlumnadoExtremaduraES

Proyecto 'Women's world'

El trabajo obtuvo un Premio Tomás García Verdejo a las buenas prácticas educativas en la Comunidad Autónoma de Extremadura para el curso académico 2015/2016. Modalidad BSe presenta un proyecto llevado a cabo en el Colegio Diocesano San Atón (Badajoz). Siguiendo una metodología de Aprendizaje Basado en Proyectos se pretende trabajar con los alumnos de secundaria y bachillerato la igualdad de sexos y la prevención de la violencia de género. Entre los objetivos del proyecto estaban: reconocer y valorar el papel de la mujer a lo largo de la historia, valorar la educación para prevenir la desigualdad, prevenir en la adolescencia los comportamientos y actitudes que puedan generar situaciones de desigualdad y violencia machista, poner de manifiesto las diferencias existentes en igualdad de oportunidades entre hombres y mujeres, analizar contextos sociales de discriminación hacia la mujer y promover entre la comunidad educativa un compromiso activo y espíritu crítico ante las situaciones de desigualdadExtremaduraES

Discovering HIV related information by means of association rules and machine learning

Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is still one of the main health problems worldwide. It is therefore essential to keep making progress in improving the prognosis and quality of life of affected patients. One way to advance along this pathway is to uncover connections between other disorders associated with HIV/AIDS-so that they can be anticipated and possibly mitigated. We propose to achieve this by using Association Rules (ARs). They allow us to represent the dependencies between a number of diseases and other specific diseases. However, classical techniques systematically generate every AR meeting some minimal conditions on data frequency, hence generating a vast amount of uninteresting ARs, which need to be filtered out. The lack of manually annotated ARs has favored unsupervised filtering, even though they produce limited results. In this paper, we propose a semi-supervised system, able to identify relevant ARs among HIV-related diseases with a minimal amount of annotated training data. Our system has been able to extract a good number of relationships between HIV-related diseases that have been previously detected in the literature but are scattered and are often little known. Furthermore, a number of plausible new relationships have shown up which deserve further investigation by qualified medical experts

Study protocol for a randomized clinical trial to assess 7 versus 14-days of treatment for Pseudomonas aeruginosa bloodstream infections (SHORTEN-2 trial)

Background Research priorities in Antimicrobial Stewardship (AMS) have rapidly evolved in the last decade. The need for a more efficient use of antimicrobials have fueled plenty of studies to define the optimal duration for antibiotic treatments, and yet, there still are large areas of uncertainty in common clinical scenarios. Pseudomonas aeruginosa has been pointed as a priority for clinical research, but it has been unattended by most randomized trials tackling the effectiveness of short treatments. The study protocol of the SHORTEN-2 trial is presented as a practical example of new ways to approach common obstacles for clinical research in AMS. Objective To determine whether a 7-day course of antibiotics is superior to 14-day schemes for treating bloodstream infections by P. aeruginosa (BSI-PA). Methods A superiority, open-label, randomized controlled trial will be performed across 30 Spanish hospitals. Adult patients with uncomplicated BSI-PA will be randomized to receive a 7 versus 14-day course of any active antibiotic. The primary endpoint will be the probability for the 7-day group of achieving better outcomes than the control group, assessing altogether clinical effectiveness, severe adverse events, and antibiotic exposure through a DOOR/RADAR analysis. Main secondary endpoints include treatment failure, BSI-PA relapses, and mortality. A superiority design was set for the primary endpoint and non-inferiority for treatment failure, resulting in a sample size of 304 patients. Conclusions SHORTEN-2 trial aligns with some of the priorities for clinical research in AMS. The implementation of several methodological innovations allowed overcoming common obstacles, like feasible sample sizes or measuring the clinical impact and unintended effects