ESMO management and treatment adapted recommendations in the COVID-19 era: gynaecological malignancies

The rapid spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection and its related disease (COVID-19) has required an immediate and coordinate healthcare response to face the worldwide emergency and define strategies to maintain the continuum of care for the non-COVID-19 diseases while protecting patients and healthcare providers. The dimension of the COVID-19 pandemic poses an unprecedented risk especially for the more vulnerable populations. To manage patients with cancer adequately, maintaining the highest quality of care, a definition of value-based priorities is necessary to define which interventions can be safely postponed without affecting patients' outcome. The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) has endorsed a tiered approach across three different levels of priority (high, medium, low) incorporating information on the value-based prioritisation and clinical cogency of the interventions that can be applied for different disease sites. Patients with gynaecological cancer are at particular risk of COVID-19 complications because of their age and prevalence of comorbidities. The definition of priority level should be based on tumour stage and histology, cancer-related symptoms or complications, aim (curative vs palliative) and magnitude of benefit of the oncological intervention, patients' general condition and preferences. The decision-making process always needs to consider the disease-specific national and international guidelines and the local healthcare system and social resources, and a changing situation in relation to COVID-19 infection. These recommendations aim to provide guidance for the definition of deferrable and undeferrable interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic for ovarian, endometrial and cervical cancers within the context of the ESMO Clinical Practice Guidelines

LiNbO3 integrated system for opto-microfluidic sensing

International audience; In this work, we realized and tested an integrated opto-microfluidics platform entirely made on lithium niobate (LiNbO3) crystals, able to detect the single droplet passage and estimate its size without the need of any imaging processing. It is based on the coupling of a self-aligned integrated optical stage, made of an array of optical waveguides, to a microfluidic circuit such as a T-junction or Cross-junction engraved in the same substrate. The platform presented high quality performances in terms of optical triggering, reproducibility and stability in time, allowing in real-time data analysis. The comparison with standard approaches using microscopes and fast camera imagining acquisition and relative post-processing, showed an increased capability better than 50%. The demonstrated feasibility of integration of these two stages will allow the realization of a Lab-On-a-Chip on a monolithic substrate of lithium niobate, exploiting its multiple applications for manipulation of droplets

A sensing architecture for empathetic data systems

Today's increasingly large and complex databases require novel and machine aided ways of exploring data. To optimize the selection and presentation of data, we suggest an unconventional approach. Instead of exclusively relying on explicit user input to specify relevant information or to navigate through a data space, we exploit the power and potential of the users' unconscious processes in addition. To this end, the user is immersed in a mixed reality environment while his bodily reactions are captured using unobtrusive wearable devices. The users' reactions are analyzed in real-time and mapped onto higher-level psychological states, such as surprise or boredom, in order to trigger appropriate system responses that direct the users' attention to areas of potential interest in the visualizations. The realization of such a close experience-based human-machine loop raises a number of technical challenges, such as the real-time interpretation of psychological user states. The paper at hand describes a sensing architecture for empathetic data systems that has been developed as part of such a loop and how it tackles the diverse challenges

Tumor BRCA Test for Patients with Epithelial Ovarian Cancer: The Role of Molecular Pathology in the Era of PARP Inhibitor Therapy

The PARP inhibitor olaparib has been approved in the maintenance setting of platinum-sensitive epithelial ovarian cancer patients with germline or somatic BRCA1/2 mutation. Therefore, the availability of a tumor BRCA test has become a clinical need. We report the results of the clinical implementation of a tumor BRCA test within the frame of an institutional workflow for the management of patients with nonmucinous and nonborderline epithelial ovarian cancer. In total, 223 patients with epithelial ovarian cancer were prospectively analyzed. BRCA1/2 status was evaluated on formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tumor specimens using next-generation sequencing technology. The tumor BRCA test had a success rate of 99.1% (221 of 223 successfully analyzed cases) and a median turnaround time of 17 calendar days. Among the 221 cases, BRCA1 or BRCA2 pathogenic/likely pathogenic mutations were found in 62 (28.1%) cases and variants of uncertain significance in 25 (11.3%) cases. The concordance rate between tumor BRCA test results and germline BRCA1/2 status was 87%, with five cases harboring pathogenic/likely pathogenic somatic-only mutations. The next-generation, sequencing-based tumor BRCA test showed a high success rate and a turnaround time compatible with clinical purposes. The tumor BRCA test could be implemented in a molecular diagnostic setting and it may guide the clinical management of patients with epithelial ovarian cancer

ESMO management and treatment adapted recommendations in the COVID-19 era: gynaecological malignancies

The rapid spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection and its related disease (COVID-19) has required an immediate and coordinate healthcare response to face the worldwide emergency and define strategies to maintain the continuum of care for the non-COVID-19 diseases while protecting patients and healthcare providers. The dimension of the COVID-19 pandemic poses an unprecedented risk especially for the more vulnerable populations. To manage patients with cancer adequately, maintaining the highest quality of care, a definition of value-based priorities is necessary to define which interventions can be safely postponed without affecting patients’ outcome. The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) has endorsed a tiered approach across three different levels of priority (high, medium, low) incorporating information on the value-based prioritisation and clinical cogency of the interventions that can be applied for different disease sites. Patients with gynaecological cancer are at particular risk of COVID-19 complications because of their age and prevalence of comorbidities. The definition of priority level should be based on tumour stage and histology, cancer-related symptoms or complications, aim (curative vs palliative) and magnitude of benefit of the oncological intervention, patients’ general condition and preferences. The decision-making process always needs to consider the disease-specific national and international guidelines and the local healthcare system and social resources, and a changing situation in relation to COVID-19 infection. These recommendations aim to provide guidance for the definition of deferrable and undeferrable interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic for ovarian, endometrial and cervical cancers within the context of the ESMO Clinical Practice Guidelines

Subjective and objective measures

One of the greatest challenges in the study of emotions and emotional states is their measurement. The techniques used to measure emotions depend essentially on the authors’ definition of the concept of emotion. Currently, two types of measures are used: subjective and objective. While subjective measures focus on assessing the conscious recognition of one’s own emotions, objective measures allow researchers to quantify and assess the conscious and unconscious emotional processes. In this sense, when the objective is to evaluate the emotional experience from the subjective point of view of an individual in relation to a given event, then subjective measures such as self-report should be used. In addition to this, when the objective is to evaluate the emotional experience at the most unconscious level of processes such as the physiological response, objective measures should be used. There are no better or worse measures, only measures that allow access to the same phenomenon from different points of view. The chapter’s main objective is to make a survey of the main measures of evaluation of the emotions and emotional states more relevant in the current scientific panorama.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Effects of different energy / protein ratios on the productive performance of female broiler chickens

In this paper we describe the main productive variables in a female broiler chickens flock fed with two levels of energy / protein. Were used 192 chickens housed in 16 boxes with 12 birds each one, being each box an experimental unit. We performed a repeated measures analysis to evaluate the treatment effects along the time. There were no statistically significant differences between treatments for body weight (p = 0.76) with averages accumulated of 3,087 g ± 96 g and 3100 g ± 92 g at the end of the cycle, neither for food intake 5.718,96 g ± 412.01 g 5.764,81 ± 429.15 g. Feed conversion showed the same performance, with cumulative values of 1.85 ± 0.09 and 1.86 ± 0.12 (p = 0.94). Both diets presented strong percentage of uniformity variations over the cycle, with no detectable differences (p = 0.27). The results obtained under the experimental conditions, indicate that the best diet would be the highest ratio of energy / protein, especially all isocaloric diets and considering the fact that the reduction in protein levels held about costs ration.Fil: Sindik, M. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Ciencias Veterinarias. Cátedra Producción de Aves. Corrientes, ArgentinaFil: Terraes, J.C. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Ciencias Veterinarias. Cátedra Producción de Aves. Corrientes, ArgentinaFil: Sandoval, L. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Ciencias Veterinarias. Cátedra Bioquímica. Corrientes, ArgentinaFil: Revidatti, F. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Ciencias Veterinarias. Cátedra Producción de Aves. Corrientes, ArgentinaFil: Fernández, R. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Ciencias Veterinarias. Cátedra Producción de Aves. Corrientes, ArgentinaFil: Betella, A. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Estación Experimental Agropecuaria (EEA) El Colorado. Módulo de Producción de Aves. Formosa, ArgentinaEn el presente trabajo se describen las principales variables productivas en un lote de pollos parrilleros hembras alimentados con dos niveles de energía/proteína. Se utilizaron 192 pollas alojados en 16 boxes con 12 aves cada uno, constituyendo cada box la unidad experimental. Se aplicó un análisis de medidas repetidas para verificar el efecto de los tratamientos en el tiempo. No se registraron diferencias estadísticas significativas entre tratamientos para peso corporal (p=0.76) con promedios acumulados al final del ciclo de 3.087 g ± 96 g y 3100 g ± 92 g, ni para consumo de alimento (p=0.87) donde la ración forrajera presentó un valor de 5.718,96 g ± 412,01 g y 5.764,81 ± 429,15 g el de la parrillera. La conversión alimenticia presentó el mismo comportamiento, con registros acumulados de 1,85 ± 0,09 y 1,86 ± 0,12 (p=0.94). En ambas dietas el porcentaje de uniformidad presentó fuertes variaciones a lo largo del ciclo, sin detectarse diferencias significativas (p=0.27). Los resultados obtenidos en el marco de las condiciones experimentales, indicarían que la dieta de elección sería la de mayor relación de energía/ proteína, en particular tratándose de dietas isocalóricas y considerando el efecto que la reducción de los niveles de proteína posee sobre los costos de la ración

Recent Advances in Light Driven Phenomena for Applications in Opto-microfuidics Lab-on-chip Platforms

International audienc

Next-generation sequencing-based BRCA testing on cytological specimens from ovarian cancer ascites reveals high concordance with tumour tissue analysis

Background With the approval of the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor olaparib for newly diagnosed, breast cancer gene (BRCA)1/2 mutated, ovarian cancer women, the assessment of BRCA1/2 tumour status will be shortly required at the time of diagnosis. Aim To investigate the feasibility of next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based BRCA tumour test on cytological specimens from ovarian cancer ascites. Methods We evaluated the BRCA1/2 status on neoplastic ascites and corresponding tumour tissue of 11 patients with ovarian cancer, using the NGS \ue2 \u20ac Oncomine BRCA Research Assay'. Results The NGS-based BRCA test on cytological samples had a success rate of 100%, with 11 of 11 concordant BRCA1/2 results between ascites and tumour tissues analyses, including two wild type samples and nine cases harbouring somatic or germline variants. Conclusion BRCA test may be performed on ovarian cancer ascites, reproducing BRCA1/2 tumour status and representing a useful tool for clinical decision-making