Analisi sperimentale degli ioni metallici presenti nella saliva di soggetti portatori di apparecchi ortodontici mobili

Fino a pochi decenni addietro, il fenomeno dell’esposizione a basse concentrazioni di agenti tossici era considerato soltanto un problema di igiene ambientale. In realtà vari studi1-5 hanno approfondito, grazie al monitoraggio biologico, il concetto di “esposizione a basse dosi” di agenti tossici o elementi in tracce: pertanto nei suddetti studi, gli autori concludono che le “basse dosi” corrispondono a una esposizione tale che le concentrazioni della sostanza in esame si mantengono, nei fluidi biologici (per la popolazione esposta), al di sopra dei valori massimi di riferimento (stabiliti per la popolazione generale) e al di sotto dei valori-limite biologici

ANTERIOR OPEN BITE TREATED WITH E F APPLIANCE: A CASE REPORT

Aim. Current trends in pediatric orthodontics aim to identify incorrect development of occlusion and medium/lower facial third as early as possible. Functional appliances are a popular type of device used for treating malocclusion in patients who are growing. Among the functional orthodontic devices intended for this purpose, \u201cEducation Functional\u201d is highlighted. It was developed by Dr. Daniel Rollet. In fact, in the occlusal alterations, early preventive treatment with elastodontic devices resulted in avoiding dysfunctional forces from acting on the skeletal pattern, thus reaching a balance between bone basis and muscular components. This report describes a clinical case of a patient (9-year-old female) with anterior open bite associated to oral dysfunction, treated, in the mixed dentition, with EF-line appliance. Our purpose is to evaluate the effectiveness of this device for the correction of the dysmorphoses

Acupuncture in the treatment of temporomandibular disorders, facial pain, and postural neuromuscular disorders. Presentation of a clinical case

Background and objectives: Temporomandibular disorders have a multifactorial etiology and involve the masticatory muscles, temporomandibular joint and associated structures. Therefore, different treatments are proposed and used. The aim of this paper is the use of acupuncture to treat temporomandibular disorders and associated symptoms. This article presents a clinical case study of a 39-year-old patient who presented temporomandibular disorders and headache of muscular origin. Results: After 10 acupuncture sessions, the results were highly satisfactory, with complete relief of headache pain and absence of joint disorders. These results suggest the efficacy of acupuncture in the symptomatic relief of temporomandibular disorders. Conclusions: It is concluded that acupuncture is an alternative method to conventional stomatognathic treatment for individuals with craniomandibular disorders of muscular origin

Mappe di Lavorabilita\u2019 per Giunti Misti di Alluminio Mediante Processo di Saldatura Linear Friction Welding

Il Linear Friction Welding \ue8 un processo di saldatura allo stato solido in cui una parte fissa \ue8 forzata contro una parte che si muove con moto lineare alternato per generare calore attraverso l\u2019attrito. Nel presente lavoro viene descritto lo studio effettuato per la realizzazione della giunzione mista mediante processo di Linear Friction Welding tra due leghe di alluminio che presentano propriet\ue0 meccaniche differenti, come la lega AA2011 e AA6082. Lo studio \ue8 stato condotto analizzando due differenti configurazioni determinate dalla posizione relativa delle leghe costituenti i provini da saldare. Per la realizzazione del processo \ue8 stata utilizzata una macchina prototipale dotata di sensori atti alla misura \u201cin process\u201d di variabili fondamentali per la completa comprensione del processo quali temperature nei provini, forze sui provini, accelerazioni e velocit\ue0 che questi subiscono

Transmission in NFS/N mice of the heritable spongiform encephalopathy associated with the gray tremor mutation.

It has been shown that the autosomal recessive mutation, gray tremor (gt) was associated in the homozygous state (gt/gt) with a rapidly fatal spongiform encephalopathy. Heterozygotes (+/gt) developed mild asymptomatic spongiform brain lesions as did recipient inbred mice inoculated with gt/gt brain homogenates, some of whom also showed behavioral abnormalities [Sidman, R. L., Kinney, H. C. & Sweet, H. O. (1985) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 82, 253-257]. In these studies, inbred NFS/N mice inoculated intracerebrally at birth or as adults with gt/gt or first passage gt brain homogenates developed a progressive disease characterized by tremor, ataxia, and spasticity. The symptoms were milder and more slowly progressive than in the gt/gt homozygote, in the paralytic syndrome that followed neonatal inoculation of NFS/N mice with a wild murine leukemia virus (Cas-Br-M MuLV), or in the rapidly progressive ataxia and terminal bradykinesia that followed scrapie inoculation of NFS/N mice. The noninflammatory spongiform encephalopathy in affected NFS/N mice resembled that observed in gt/gt homozygotes, +/gt heterozygotes, and asymptomatic recipient inbred mice inoculated with gt/gt brain homogenates. Neither infectious MuLV nor MuLV proteins were detected in gt/gt brain homogenates or in affected recipient mouse brains. Scrapie-associated fibrils, readily identifiable in subcellular fractions of brains from scrapie-inoculated NFS/N mice, were not detected in similar brain fractions from NFS/N mice inoculated with gt brain homogenates. These results confirm and extend the suggestion that gt spongiform encephalopathy has both heritable and transmissible properties. Moreover, the transmissible agent of gt disease differs from both Cas-Br-M MuLV and scrapie in its disease-inducing properties in NFS/N mice. The capacity of NFS/N mice to express transmitted gt encephalopathy as clinical disease, to rapidly express Cas-Br-M MuLV spongiform encephalomyelopathy, and to develop mouse-adapted scrapie after a very short incubation time suggest a distinct sensitivity of NFS/N mice to transmissible spongiform encephalopathy

Cellulose acetate phthalate, a common pharmaceutical excipient, inactivates HIV-1 and blocks the coreceptor binding site on the virus envelope glycoprotein gp120

BACKGROUND: Cellulose acetate phthalate (CAP), a pharmaceutical excipient used for enteric film coating of capsules and tablets, was shown to inhibit infection by the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) and several herpesviruses. CAP formulations inactivated HIV-1, herpesvirus types 1 (HSV-1) and 2 (HSV-2) and the major nonviral sexually transmitted disease (STD) pathogens and were effective in animal models for vaginal infection by HSV-2 and simian immunodeficiency virus. METHODS: Enzyme-linked immunoassays and flow cytometry were used to demonstrate CAP binding to HIV-1 and to define the binding site on the virus envelope. RESULTS: 1) CAP binds to HIV-1 virus particles and to the envelope glycoprotein gp120; 2) this leads to blockade of the gp120 V3 loop and other gp120 sites resulting in diminished reactivity with HIV-1 coreceptors CXCR4 and CCR5; 3) CAP binding to HIV-1 virions impairs their infectivity; 4) these findings apply to both HIV-1 IIIB, an X4 virus, and HIV-1 BaL, an R5 virus. CONCLUSIONS: These results provide support for consideration of CAP as a topical microbicide of choice for prevention of STDs, including HIV-1 infection

Vaccine protection against simian immunodeficiency virus in monkeys using recombinant gamma-2 herpesvirus

Recombinant strains of replication-competent rhesus monkey rhadinovirus (RRV) were constructed in which strong promoter/enhancer elements were used to drive expression of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) Env or Gag or a Rev-Tat-Nef fusion protein. Cultured rhesus monkey fibroblasts infected with each recombinant strain were shown to express the expected protein. Three RRV-negative and two RRV-positive rhesus monkeys were inoculated intravenously with a mixture of these three recombinant RRVs. Expression of SIV Gag was readily detected in lymph node biopsy specimens taken at 3 weeks postimmunization. Impressive anti-SIV cellular immune responses were elicited on the basis of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) tetramer staining and gamma interferon enzyme-linked immunospot (ELISPOT) assays. Responses were much greater in magnitude in the monkeys that were initially RRV negative but were still readily detected in the two monkeys that were naturally infected with RRV at the time of immunization. By 3 weeks postimmunization, responses measured by MHC tetramer staining in the two Mamu-A*01(+) RRV-negative monkeys reached 9.3% and 13.1% of all CD8(+) T cells in peripheral blood to the Gag CM9 epitope and 2.3% and 7.3% of all CD8(+) T cells in peripheral blood to the Tat SL8 epitope. Virus-specific CD8(+) T cell responses persisted at high levels up to the time of challenge at 18 weeks postimmunization, and responding cells maintained an effector memory phenotype. Despite the ability of the RRVenv recombinant to express high levels of Env in cultured cells, and despite the appearance of strong anti-RRV antibody responses in immunized monkeys, anti-Env antibody responses were below our ability to detect them. Immunized monkeys, together with three unimmunized controls, were challenged intravenously with 10 monkey infectious doses of SIVmac239. All five immunized monkeys and all three controls became infected with SIV, but peak viral loads were 1.2 to 3.0 log(10) units lower and chronic-phase viral loads were 1.0 to 3.0 log(10) units lower in immunized animals than the geometric mean of unimmunized controls. These differences were statistically significant. Anti-Env antibody responses following challenge indicated an anamnestic response in the vaccinated monkeys. These findings further demonstrate the potential of recombinant herpesviruses as preventive vaccines for AIDS. We hypothesize that this live, replication-competent, persistent herpesvirus vector could match, or come close to matching, live attenuated strains of SIV in the degree of protection if the difficulty with elicitation of anti-Env antibody responses can be overcome

A large annotated medical image dataset for the development and evaluation of segmentation algorithms

Semantic segmentation of medical images aims to associate a pixel with a label in a medical image without human initialization. The success of semantic segmentation algorithms is contingent on the availability of high-quality imaging data with corresponding labels provided by experts. We sought to create a large collection of annotated medical image datasets of various clinically relevant anatomies available under open source license to facilitate the development of semantic segmentation algorithms. Such a resource would allow: 1) objective assessment of general-purpose segmentation methods through comprehensive benchmarking and 2) open and free access to medical image data for any researcher interested in the problem domain. Through a multi-institutional effort, we generated a large, curated dataset representative of several highly variable segmentation tasks that was used in a crowd-sourced challenge - the Medical Segmentation Decathlon held during the 2018 Medical Image Computing and Computer Aided Interventions Conference in Granada, Spain. Here, we describe these ten labeled image datasets so that these data may be effectively reused by the research community

A Phase 1B, randomized, double blind, placebo controlled, multiple-dose escalation study of NSI-189 phosphate, a neurogenic compound, in depressed patients

We wanted to examine tolerability and efficacy of NSI-189, a benzylpiperizine-aminiopyridine neurogenic compound for treating major depressive disorder (MDD). This was a Phase 1B, double blind, randomized, placebo controlled, multiple-dose study with three cohorts. The first cohort received 40 mg q.d. (n=6) or placebo (n=2), the second cohort 40 mg b.i.d. (n=6) or placebo (n=2), and the third cohort 40 mg t.i.d. (n=6) or placebo (n=2). Twenty-four patients with MDD were recruited, with the diagnosis and severity confirmed through remote interviews. Eligible patients received NSI-189 or placebo for 28 days in an inpatient setting with assessments for safety, pharmacokinetics (PK) and efficacy. Outpatient follow-up visits were conducted until day 84 (±3). NSI-189 was relatively well tolerated at all doses, with no serious adverse effects. NSI-189 area under the curve increased in a dose-related and nearly proportional manner across the three cohorts, with a half-life of 17.4–20.5 h. The exploratory efficacy measurements, including Symptoms Of Depression Questionnaire (SDQ), Montgomery-Asberg Depression Scale (MADRS), Clinical Global Impressions—Improvement (CGI-I), and The Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cognitive and Physical Functioning Questionnaire (CPFQ) showed a promising reduction in depressive and cognitive symptoms across all measures for NSI-189, with significant improvement in the SDQ and CPFQ, and a medium to large effect size for all measures. These improvements persisted during the follow-up phase. In summary, NSI-189 shows potential as a treatment for MDD in an early phase study. The main limitation of this preliminary study was the small sample size of each cohort

The Medical Segmentation Decathlon

International challenges have become the de facto standard for comparative assessment of image analysis algorithms. Although segmentation is the most widely investigated medical image processing task, the various challenges have been organized to focus only on specific clinical tasks. We organized the Medical Segmentation Decathlon (MSD)—a biomedical image analysis challenge, in which algorithms compete in a multitude of both tasks and modalities to investigate the hypothesis that a method capable of performing well on multiple tasks will generalize well to a previously unseen task and potentially outperform a custom-designed solution. MSD results confirmed this hypothesis, moreover, MSD winner continued generalizing well to a wide range of other clinical problems for the next two years. Three main conclusions can be drawn from this study: (1) state-of-the-art image segmentation algorithms generalize well when retrained on unseen tasks; (2) consistent algorithmic performance across multiple tasks is a strong surrogate of algorithmic generalizability; (3) the training of accurate AI segmentation models is now commoditized to scientists that are not versed in AI model training