Human Endometrial CD98 Is Essential for Blastocyst Adhesion

BACKGROUND: Understanding the molecular basis of embryonic implantation is of great clinical and biological relevance. Little is currently known about the adhesion receptors that determine endometrial receptivity for embryonic implantation in humans. METHODS AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Using two human endometrial cell lines characterized by low and high receptivity, we identified the membrane receptor CD98 as a novel molecule selectively and significantly associated with the receptive phenotype. In human endometrial samples, CD98 was the only molecule studied whose expression was restricted to the implantation window in human endometrial tissue. CD98 expression was restricted to the apical surface and included in tetraspanin-enriched microdomains of primary endometrial epithelial cells, as demonstrated by the biochemical association between CD98 and tetraspanin CD9. CD98 expression was induced in vitro by treatment of primary endometrial epithelial cells with human chorionic gonadotropin, 17-β-estradiol, LIF or EGF. Endometrial overexpression of CD98 or tetraspanin CD9 greatly enhanced mouse blastocyst adhesion, while their siRNA-mediated depletion reduced the blastocyst adhesion rate. CONCLUSIONS: These results indicate that CD98, a component of tetraspanin-enriched microdomains, appears to be an important determinant of human endometrial receptivity during the implantation window

Characterization and prognostic implication of 17 chromosome abnormalities in myelodysplastic syndrome

The prognosis of chromosome 17 (chr17) abnormalities in patients with primary myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) remains unclear. The revised International Prognostic Scoring System (IPSS-R) includes these abnormalities within the intermediate cytogenetic risk group.This study assessed the impact on overall survival (OS) and risk of acute myeloid leukemia transformation (AMLt) of chr17 abnormalities in 88 patients with primary MDS. We have compared this group with 1346 patients with primary MDS and abnormal karyotype without chr17 involved. The alterations of chr17 should be considered within group of poor prognosis. The different types of alterations of chromosome 17 behave different prognosis. The study confirms the intermediate prognostic impact of the i(17q), as stated in IPSS-R. The results of the study, however, provide valuable new information on the prognostic impact of alterations of chromosome 17 in complex karyotypes

Pedalando em busca de alternativas saudáveis e sustentáveis Cycling to achieve healthy and sustainable alternatives

A busca por cidades e cidadãos mais saudáveis vem contribuindo para o fortalecimento de políticas públicas de valorização da bicicleta como meio de transporte em diferentes países, oferecendo benefícios para a promoção da saúde, mas também podendo ampliar o risco de acidentes. Esta revisão tem como objetivo analisar a produção científica que trata da relação entre o ciclismo como meio de transporte e a saúde pública. As bases de dados utilizadas foram PubMed, Lilacs e SciELO, com 66 artigos completos selecionados. Os resultados demonstram que é recente a preocupação com este tema, especialmente nos países em desenvolvimento. Os principais temas abordados pelos pesquisadores foram: segurança no trânsito, políticas públicas e os efeitos do ciclismo na saúde. Conclui-se que o padrão de utilização da bicicleta como meio de transporte ocorre de forma bastante heterogênea, mas com potenciais maiores impactos nos países em desenvolvimento, aonde torna-se urgente a inclusão deste tema nas agendas de pesquisas sobre a relação entre promoção do transporte ativo, saúde e segurança no trânsito.<br>The quest for healthier cities and citizens has contributed to the strengthening of public policies championing the bicycle as a means of transportation and offering benefits to individual wellbeing in various countries, however there is also an increased risk of accidents. The scope of this review is to analyze scientific output dealing with the relationship between cycling as a means of transportation and public health. PubMed, LILACS and SciELO were the chosen databases used in the research and 66 complete articles were selected. The results show that concern about this theme is recent, especially in developing countries. The most recurrent topics raised by the researchers were: traffic safety, public policies and the effects of cycling on health. We concluded that the decision to use the bicycle as a means of transportation occurs in a very heterogeneous manner, albeit with potentially greater impacts in developing countries where the inclusion of this theme in the research agendas related to the promotion of active transport, health and traffic safety is a matter of urgency

COVID-19 in hospitalized HIV-positive and HIV-negative patients : A matched study

CatedresObjectives: We compared the characteristics and clinical outcomes of hospitalized individuals with COVID-19 with [people with HIV (PWH)] and without (non-PWH) HIV co-infection in Spain during the first wave of the pandemic. Methods: This was a retrospective matched cohort study. People with HIV were identified by reviewing clinical records and laboratory registries of 10 922 patients in active-follow-up within the Spanish HIV Research Network (CoRIS) up to 30 June 2020. Each hospitalized PWH was matched with five non-PWH of the same age and sex randomly selected from COVID-19@Spain, a multicentre cohort of 4035 patients hospitalized with confirmed COVID-19. The main outcome was all-cause in-hospital mortality. Results: Forty-five PWH with PCR-confirmed COVID-19 were identified in CoRIS, 21 of whom were hospitalized. A total of 105 age/sex-matched controls were selected from the COVID-19@Spain cohort. The median age in both groups was 53 (Q1-Q3, 46-56) years, and 90.5% were men. In PWH, 19.1% were injecting drug users, 95.2% were on antiretroviral therapy, 94.4% had HIV-RNA < 50 copies/mL, and the median (Q1-Q3) CD4 count was 595 (349-798) cells/μL. No statistically significant differences were found between PWH and non-PWH in number of comorbidities, presenting signs and symptoms, laboratory parameters, radiology findings and severity scores on admission. Corticosteroids were administered to 33.3% and 27.4% of PWH and non-PWH, respectively (P = 0.580). Deaths during admission were documented in two (9.5%) PWH and 12 (11.4%) non-PWH (P = 0.800). Conclusions: Our findings suggest that well-controlled HIV infection does not modify the clinical presentation or worsen clinical outcomes of COVID-19 hospitalization

Discovering HIV related information by means of association rules and machine learning

Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is still one of the main health problems worldwide. It is therefore essential to keep making progress in improving the prognosis and quality of life of affected patients. One way to advance along this pathway is to uncover connections between other disorders associated with HIV/AIDS-so that they can be anticipated and possibly mitigated. We propose to achieve this by using Association Rules (ARs). They allow us to represent the dependencies between a number of diseases and other specific diseases. However, classical techniques systematically generate every AR meeting some minimal conditions on data frequency, hence generating a vast amount of uninteresting ARs, which need to be filtered out. The lack of manually annotated ARs has favored unsupervised filtering, even though they produce limited results. In this paper, we propose a semi-supervised system, able to identify relevant ARs among HIV-related diseases with a minimal amount of annotated training data. Our system has been able to extract a good number of relationships between HIV-related diseases that have been previously detected in the literature but are scattered and are often little known. Furthermore, a number of plausible new relationships have shown up which deserve further investigation by qualified medical experts