Therapeutic approaches with intravitreal injections in geographic atrophy secondary to age-related macular degeneration: current drugs and potential molecules

The present review focuses on recent clinical trials that analyze the efficacy of intravitreal therapeutic agents for the treatment of dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD), such as neuroprotective drugs, and complement inhibitors, also called immunomodulatory or anti-inflammatory agents. A systematic literature search was performed to identify randomized controlled trials published prior to January 2019. Patients affected by dry AMD treated with intravitreal therapeutic agents were included. Changes in the correct visual acuity and reduction in geographic atrophy progression were evaluated. Several new drugs have shown promising results, including those targeting the complement cascade and neuroprotective agents. The potential action of the two groups of drugs is to block complement cascade upregulation of immunomodulating agents, and to prevent the degeneration and apoptosis of ganglion cells for the neuroprotectors, respectively. Our analysis indicates that finding treatments for dry AMD will require continued collaboration among researchers to identify additional molecular targets and to fully interrogate the utility of pluripotent stem cells for personalized therapy

Toxic urban waste's assault on cardiovascular risk

Abstract A cardiovascular health survey of 1203 persons in households located near the hazardous waste disposal sites and in a reference community, was conducted from 2009 until today to assess whether rates of adverse cardiovascular health outcomes were elevated among persons living near the sites. Data included medical records of reported cardiovascular disease certificates and hospital admission for cardiovascular diseases from hospital database. The study areas appeared similar with respect to mortality, cancer incidence, and pregnancy outcomes. In contrast, rate ratios were greater than 1.5 for 2 of 19 reported diseases, i.e., angina pectoris, and strokes. The apparent broad-based elevation in reported diseases and symptoms may reflect increased perception or recall of conditions by respondents living near the sites. Our study found that cardiovascular risk is associated only with PM 2.5 concentrations, derived from uncontrolled burning of municipal solid waste in particular sites of our country. Their analysis demonstrated a relationship between increased levels of eventual fine particulate pollution and higher rates of death and complications from cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. Management of solid waste releases a number of toxic substances, most in small quantities and at extremely low levels. Because of the wide range of pollutants, the different pathways of exposure, long-term low-level exposure, and the potential for synergism among the pollutants, concerns remain about potential health effects but there are many uncertainties involved in the assessment. Future community-based health studies should include medical and psychosocial assessment instruments sufficient to distinguish between changes in health status and effects of resident reporting tendency

Impact-Enhanced Multi-Beam Piezoelectric Converter for Energy Harvesting in Autonomous Sensors

AbstractThis work proposes and experimentally validates a piezoelectric vibration energy harvester, which exploits the impact of a central compliant driving beam onto two piezoelectric parallel bimorph beams on flexible steel. At suitable mechanical excitation conditions, the central driving beam impacts the piezo beams and triggers a nonlinear frequency-up conversion mechanism that improves the overall effectiveness, i.e. increases the overall rms output voltage and widens the equivalent bandwidth of the converter with respect to the condition of the noninteracting linear converters

Functional traits predict species co-occurrence patterns in a North American Odonata metacommunity

The probability of occurrence of a given species in a target locality and assemblage is conditioned not only by environmental/climatic variables but also by the presence of other species (i.e., species co-occurrence). This framework, already complex in nature, becomes even more complicated if one considers the functional traits of species that, in turn, might influence the structure of metacommunities in various ways. Depending on the ecological and environmental setting, functional similarity (i.e., convergence in morphological and ecological traits) between species might either reduce their co-occurrence due to high niche overlap driving negative interactions or promote it if the similar traits are associated with local habitat suitability. Similarly, functional divergence might either promote species co-occurrence by limiting negative interactions through niche separation or reduce it through trait mediated environmental filtering. Therefore, discriminating between these alternative scenarios—predicting whether two species will tend to co-occur or not based on their traits—is extremely challenging. Here, we develop a novel protocol to tackle the challenge, and we demonstrate its effectiveness by showing that ecological species traits can predict species co-occurrence in a large dataset of North American Odonata. To this end, we first used the Hierarchical Modeling of Species Communities framework to quantify the pairwise species co-occurrence after controlling for environmental and climatic factors. Then, we used machine learning to generate models which proved capable of predict accurately the observed co-occurrence patterns from species functional traits. Our approach offers a generalizable analytical framework with the potential to clarify long-standing ecological questions

Long-term ocular biometric variations after scleral buckling surgery in macula-on rhegmatogenous retinal detachment

Background: Myopic shift and biometric ocular changes have been previously observed after scleral buckling (SB) surgery in rhegmatogenous retinal detachment (RRD), but long term-term outcomes had not yet been explored. The purpose of present study is to evaluate long term ocular biometric changes in patients with primary macula-on RRD treated with SB. Methods: In this retrospective, observational study, we reviewed the medical records of patients undergoing SB surgery for macula-on RRD. Ocular biometry was performed before and at the most recent visit after surgery. Axial length (AXL), anterior chamber depth (ACD), anterior corneal astigmatism and spherical equivalent in treated eyes were compared before and after surgery as well as with those of fellow eyes. Results: Thirty-four eyes of 17 patients with a mean age of 57.0 ± 8.9 years were included. The mean follow-up duration was 50.9 ± 21.9 months (median 53.0; range 12 to 82 months). A significant postoperative AXL increase of 0.83 mm and a concomitant myopic shift of 1.35 diopters was observed in the operated eyes (p < 0.0001). The preoperative AXL was the only predictive factor of AXL change after surgery (B = 0.152, 95% CI 0.059 to 0.245, β = 0.668, P = 0.003). Compared to fellow eyes, a postoperative ACD shallowing of 0.1 mm was found in operated eyes (p < 0.05), while there were no long-term changes of anterior corneal astigmatism. Conclusions: We show that the preoperative AXL is the only predictive factor of AXL increase after SB surgery. Scleral encircling induces a concomitant long-term shallowing of the AC, therefore fourth generation intraocular lens (IOL) power calculation formulae should be used for patients requiring cataract surgery after SB

Shared and Distinct Features of Human Milk and Infant Stool Viromes.

Infants acquire many of their microbes from their mothers during the birth process. The acquisition of these microbes is believed to be critical in the development of the infant immune system. Bacteria also are transmitted to the infant through breastfeeding, and help to form the microbiome of the infant gastrointestinal (GI) tract; it is unknown whether viruses in human milk serve to establish an infant GI virome. We examined the virome contents of milk and infant stool in a cohort of mother-infant pairs to discern whether milk viruses colonize the infant GI tract. We observed greater viral alpha diversity in milk than in infant stool, similar to the trend we found for bacterial communities from both sites. When comparing beta diversity, viral communities were mostly distinguishable between milk and infant stool, but each was quite distinct from adult stool, urine, and salivary viromes. There were significant differences in viral families in the infant stool (abundant bacteriophages from the family Siphoviridae) compared to milk (abundant bacteriophages from the family Myoviridae), which may reflect significant differences in the bacterial families identified from both sites. Despite the differences in viral taxonomy, we identified a significant number of shared viruses in the milk and stool from all mother-infant pairs. Because of the significant proportion of bacteriophages transmitted in these mother-infant pairs, we believe the transmission of milk phages to the infant GI tract may help to shape the infant GI microbiome

Ruthenium-thymine acetate binding modes: Experimental and theoretical studies

Ruthenium complexes have proved to exhibit antineoplastic activity, related to the interaction of the metal ion with DNA. In this context, synthetic and theoretical studies on ruthenium binding modes of thymine acetate (THAc) have been focused to shed light on the structure-activity relationship. This report deals with the reaction between dihydride ruthenium mer-[Ru(H)2(CO)(PPh3)3], 1 and the thymine acetic acid (THAcOH) selected as model for nucleobase derivatives. The reaction in refluxing toluene between 1 and THAcOH excess, by H2 release affords the double coordinating species k1-(O)THAc-, k2-(O,O)THAc-[Ru(CO)(PPh3)2], 2. The X-ray crystal structure confirms a simultaneous monohapto, dihapto- THAc coordination in a reciprocal facial disposition. Stepwise additions of THAcOH allowed to intercept the monohapto mer-k1(O)THAc-Ru(CO)H(PPh3)3] 3 and dihapto trans(P,P)-k2(O,O)THAc-[Ru(CO)H(PPh3)2] 4 species. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) studies, associated with DFT (Density Function Theory)-calculations energies and analogous reactions with acetic acid, supported the proposed reaction path. As evidenced by the crystal supramolecular hydrogen-binding packing and 1H NMR spectra, metal coordination seems to play a pivotal role in stabilizing the minor [(N=C(OH)] lactim tautomers, which may promote mismatching to DNA nucleobase pairs as a clue for its anticancer activity

Investigation of the Effects of Hydrodynamic and Parasitic Electrostatic Forces on the Dynamics of a High Aspect Ratio MEMS Accelerometer

AbstractWe present the results of an extensive characterization of physical and electrostatic effects influencing the dynamical behavior of a micro-electromechanical (MEMS) accelerometer based on commercial technology. A similar device has been utilized recently to demonstrate the effect of Casimir and other nano-scale interactions on the pull-in distance [Ardito et. al., Microelectron. Reliab., 52 (2012) 271]. In the present work, we focus on the influence of pressure, plate separation, and electric surface potentials on the spectral mechanical response. We finally find evidence for the presence of non-viscous damping due to compressibility of the ambient gas, and demonstrate a strong dependence of the sensitivity on the parameters of the operating point