The management of acute venous thromboembolism in clinical practice. Results from the European PREFER in VTE Registry

Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in Europe. Data from real-world registries are necessary, as clinical trials do not represent the full spectrum of VTE patients seen in clinical practice. We aimed to document the epidemiology, management and outcomes of VTE using data from a large, observational database. PREFER in VTE was an international, non-interventional disease registry conducted between January 2013 and July 2015 in primary and secondary care across seven European countries. Consecutive patients with acute VTE were documented and followed up over 12 months. PREFER in VTE included 3,455 patients with a mean age of 60.8 ± 17.0 years. Overall, 53.0 % were male. The majority of patients were assessed in the hospital setting as inpatients or outpatients (78.5 %). The diagnosis was deep-vein thrombosis (DVT) in 59.5 % and pulmonary embolism (PE) in 40.5 %. The most common comorbidities were the various types of cardiovascular disease (excluding hypertension; 45.5 %), hypertension (42.3 %) and dyslipidaemia (21.1 %). Following the index VTE, a large proportion of patients received initial therapy with heparin (73.2 %), almost half received a vitamin K antagonist (48.7 %) and nearly a quarter received a DOAC (24.5 %). Almost a quarter of all presentations were for recurrent VTE, with >80 % of previous episodes having occurred more than 12 months prior to baseline. In conclusion, PREFER in VTE has provided contemporary insights into VTE patients and their real-world management, including their baseline characteristics, risk factors, disease history, symptoms and signs, initial therapy and outcomes

Physical and antibacterial properties of PLA electrospun mats loaded with carvacrol and nisin

Functional, biopolymeric electrospun structures for the controlled release of antimicrobial agents are gaining in-creasing interest in food packaging applications. In this study, the physical and antibacterial performances of ternary systems composed of polylactic acid (PLA) electrospun mats loaded with 20 wt% of different relative amounts of carvacrol (CRV) and a commercial nisin formulation (Nis) were assessed. Scanning electron micrographs displayed micro-scaled fibers with different diameter size distributions depending on the relative concentrations of the additives. The PLA/CRV/Nis membranes??? wettability was affected by the relative amount of CRV and Nis loaded, switching from hydrophobic to hydrophilic at the highest Nis concentrations. Thermal and tensile tests assessed the plasticizer action of CRV on PLA, while the Nis formulation was found to modify the mechanical behavior of the membranes from ductile to brittle. The release profiles of CRV and Nis from PLA/CRV/Nis structures, assessed via spectroscopical measurements and fitted with a power-law model, permitted to investigate of the different release mechanisms of the additives as a function of their relative concentration. The determination of the antibacterial activity of the electrospun material clearly indicated that the most effective inhibition of food-borne path-ogenic bacteria was registered with PLA containing 20% of CRV