The smoker with interstitial lung disease and interventions for successful smoking cessation

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Comparing the emerging psychological meaning of tattoos in drug-addicted and not drug-addicted adults: A look inside health risks

Although tattoos have been historically characteristic of criminals and drug addicts therefore carrying negative associations, it is now an accepted and appreciated form of body modification. Tattoos could be considered as a projective psychological test, most people use their body as blackboard to represent the most varied meanings related to the way they perceive themselves. It is also true that tattoos can assume the role of diagnostic indicators for a possible abuse of psychoactive substances, as well as their aggregating and communicative functions within the group of drug addicts. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to explore the relation among personality traits, self-efficacy, locus of control and motivations for tattooing. The sample consisted of 150 subjects, 50 tattooed adults, 50 tattooed drug addicted adults, and 50 non-tattooed adults. Data were collected by using the Big Five Questionnaire (BFQ), the Perceived Self- efficacy Test, the Mini Locus of Control scale and a Tattoos Inventory. Results of the present study contribute to a deeper understanding of the new meaning of tattoos, they no longer represent personality traits, they rather have the function of reinforcing beliefs about how to perceive oneself, this happens especially in drug addicts in which the presence of tattoos reinforces the illusory belief of self-esteem and internal locus of control. Given the rising presence of tattoos today, this could be useful to get a better understanding of the existential unease of certain populations

Thalassemic cardiomyopathy: Echocardiography difference between major and intermediate thalassemia at rest and during isometric effort: Yearly follow-up

Left ventricular (LV) performance was studied in young patients with severe chronic anemia due to beta-thalassemia major, intermedia, and in healthy control subjects. M-mode echocardiograms were recorded in each patient and semiautomatic computerized analysis of the tracings provided data relating to LV performance. Then a statistical analysis of the difference between each specific thalassemic group and the normal subjects was made using Student's t-test for unpaired data. The study showed that cardiac dysfunction is more serious in major than in intermediate beta thalassemia. A follow-up one year later showed a progressive deterioration of the cardiac indices, in spite of treatment with desferrioxamine. A handgrip test was performed in the follow-up study, which permitted us to distinguish different groups relative to the changes in LV performance indices. Our findings indicate that echocardiography provides a simple noninvasive means for assessing changes in the cardiac structure and function, which should also prove useful in the serial evaluation of patients at risk of developing myocardial iron deposition

Electronic cigarette: a possible substitute for cigarette dependence.

Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of premature mortality in western countries and it is important for smokers to stop as early as possible. Electronic cigarettes are a popular phenomenon of global proportion. Recent uncontrolled studies, reported that a certain number of smokers have quit using electronic cigarettes. This could hint a role for electronic cigarettes to be used for smoking cessation, and therefore merits further evaluation for this purpose. Besides vaporising nicotine to be inhaled, electronic cigarettes may also provide a coping mechanism for conditioned smoking cues by replacing some of the rituals associated with smoking gestures, and for these reasons cigarette could become a tool – if studied more extensively – in the fight against tobacco-related morbidity and mortality

Role of Microenvironment in Glioma Invasion. What We Learned from In Vitro Models

The invasion properties of glioblastoma hamper a radical surgery and are responsible for its recurrence. Understanding the invasion mechanisms is thus critical to devise new therapeutic strategies. Therefore, the creation of in vitro models that enable these mechanisms to be studied represents a crucial step. Since in vitro models represent an over-simplification of the in vivo system, in these years it has been attempted to increase the level of complexity of in vitro assays to create models that could better mimic the behaviour of the cells in vivo. These levels of complexity involved: 1. The dimension of the system, moving from two-dimensional to three-dimensional models; 2. The use of microfluidic systems; 3. The use of mixed cultures of tumour cells and cells of the tumour micro-environment in order to mimic the complex cross-talk between tumour cells and their micro-environment; 4. And the source of cells used in an attempt to move from commercial lines to patient-based models. In this review, we will summarize the evidence obtained exploring these different levels of complexity and highlighting advantages and limitations of each system used

Reconstruction from Radon projections and orthogonal expansion on a ball

The relation between Radon transform and orthogonal expansions of a function on the unit ball in \RR^d is exploited. A compact formula for the partial sums of the expansion is given in terms of the Radon transform, which leads to algorithms for image reconstruction from Radon data. The relation between orthogonal expansion and the singular value decomposition of the Radon transform is also exploited.Comment: 15 page

Human Adipose-Derived Stem Cells in Madelung's Disease: Morphological and Functional Characterization

Madelung Disease (MD) is a syndrome characterized by the accumulation of aberrant symmetric adipose tissue deposits. The etiology of this disease is yet to be elucidated, even though the presence of comorbidities, either genetic or environmental, has been reported. For this reason, establishing an in vitro model for MD is considered crucial to get insights into its physiopathology. We previously established a protocol for isolation and culture of stem cells from diseased tissues. Therefore, we isolated human adipose-derived stem cells (ASC) from MD patients and compared these cells with those isolated from healthy subjects in terms of surface phenotype, growth kinetic, adipogenic differentiation potential, and molecular alterations. Moreover, we evaluated the ability of the MD-ASC secretome to affect healthy ASC. The results reported a difference in the growth kinetic and surface markers of MD-ASC compared to healthy ASC but not in adipogenic differentiation. The most commonly described mitochondrial mutations were not observed. Still, MD-ASC secretome was able to shift the healthy ASC phenotype to an MD phenotype. This work provides evidence of the possibility of exploiting a patient-based in vitro model for better understanding MD pathophysiology, possibly favoring the development of novel target therapies

Lipoprotein (a) is increased in acute coronary syndromes (unstable angina pectoris and myocardial infarction), but it is not predictive of the severity of coronary lesions

Lipoprotein (a) [Lp(a)] concentrations were determined in 365 patients undergoing coronary angiography for stable angina (n = 159), unstable angina (n = 99), recent myocardial infarction (n = 45), and nonischemic heart disease (cardiomyopathy or valvular disease, n = 62, non-IHD). Mean +/- SD and median Lp(a) concentrations in stable angina (29.9 +/- 29.2;22 mg/dl) did not differ from those in non-IHD (26.9 +/- 26.3; 17), but were significantly lower than in patients with unstable angina (52.7 +/- 36.6; 58) and myocardial infarction (44.8 +/- 36.4; 34) (p0.01). Coronary angiography revealed that 261 patients, including 4 patients in the non-IHD group, had significant (or = 50%) coronary lesions. Lp(a) was higher in patients with (41 +/- 35; 32) than in those without (28 +/- 27; 19) angiographic evidence of significant coronary stenosis (p0.05) and showed a weak univariate correlation with the angiographic index (Total Score) of the severity of the disease (r = 0.106;p0.05). However, in the subgroup of 303 patients with stable/unstable angina or myocardial infarction, Lp(a) was predictive neither of angiographic presence nor of severity of coronary disease. Patients were then ranked according to the Total Score values. Among patients with comparable angiographic severity of coronary artery disease, Lp(a) appeared to be remarkably higher in patients with acute ischemic syndromes (unstable angina, myocardial infarction) than in patients with stable angina. In conclusion, Lp(a) was roughly twice as high in acute (unstable angina, myocardial infarction) than in chronic (stable angina) ischemic syndromes, but there was no difference between chronic stable angina and non-IHD.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS