Implant survival and success rates in patients with risk factors: results from a long-term retrospective study with a 10 to 18 years follow-up

OBJECTIVE: Risk factors for implant therapy are represented by all general and local conditions that through various mechanisms can increase either short-term and long-term failure risk. The aim of this study is to assess the implant survival and implant success rates with single and multiple risk factors. PATIENTS AND METHODS: To address the research purpose, a retrospective cohort study was designed and implemented, including a sample of 225 patients with a total of 871 implants placed. The following risk factors were considered: smoking, bruxism, bone augmentation procedures and the presence of load risk (implants with crown/implant relation > 0.8; angulation > 25°; presence of cantilever). Follow-up ranged from 10 years to 18 years (average follow-up 13.6 years). Failures were subdivided into short-term failures, before the prosthetic phase, and long-term failures, after definitive prosthesis. The success criteria published by Albrektsson and Zarb were adopted. A Cox proportional hazard regression model was used to calculate hazard ratio, with a statistically significant p-value <0.05. RESULTS: Out of the 871 implants placed, 138 did not meet the success criteria, (success rate 84.16%), sixty (43.47%) were classified as "early failure" and seventy-eight as "late failure" (56.53%). A total of 70 dental implants were removed, with a survival rate of 91.96%. CONCLUSIONS: The presence of a single risk factor does not imply a marked increase of failure risk. Among the analyzed factors, the one that proved to be the most dangerous was bruxism, even when presented as the only risk factor. Bruxism with load risk proved to be the most dangerous association (success rate 69.23%) and could be included among the absolute contraindications for implant treatment

Le trasformazioni dello spazio urbano: la quarta dimensione nella georeferenziazione dell’iconografia storica di Rome

Se si considera la componente fisica del sistema città come espressione materiale dell’insieme dei fenomeni evolutivi dei luoghi, appare evidente come la sua rappresentazione possa essere considerata come sistema di conoscenza generale in grado di manifestare una convergenza di informazioni di natura altamente eterogenea. Le vaste trasformazioni che hanno interessato le città nella storia hanno determinato una evoluzione non solo nelle modifiche morfologiche degli assetti territoriali e nella stratificazione architettonica delle strutture urbane, ma anche nella percezione e fruizione degli spazi urbani. Se si considera l’organizzazione dello spazio urbano come ambito di relazione tra gli uomini, i contributi che provengono dalle fonti bibliografiche, iconografiche e cartografiche in particolare possono consentire la ricostruzione diacronica dei tessuti urbani. Questa ricostruzione è resa possibile dalla lettura delle diverse rappresentazioni che della città sono state date nel tempo, come rappresentazioni iconografiche o pittoriche, talvolta simboliche se non addirittura metaforiche, che consentono di acquisire conoscenze dei luoghi, anche quando presentano uno scarso grado di attendibilità. L’introduzione dell’informatica nel rilevamento e nella rappresentazione cartografica e la realizzazione dei sistemi informativi territoriali hanno aperto nuove possibilità non solo nella realizzazione di database collegati e georeferenziati, che possono contenere una notevole quantità di informazioni di diversa natura progressivamente incrementabili, ma soprattutto rendendo agevoli sia le molteplici interrogazioni sia le successive elaborazioni. Lo sviluppo della cartografia digitale dalla quale si possono derivare direttamente modelli tridimensionali, si pone quindi come punto di partenza per una corretta rappresentazione della complessità del fenomeno urbano e per un ripensamento dello spazio non più sulla base di esplorazioni planimetriche, ma tramite la creazione di modelli virtuali generati in maniera più o meno automatica a partire dalla cartografia stessa. In questo senso, il modello di derivazione cartografica costituisce l’aspetto metrico-quantitativo della rappresentazione della città, aspetto che risulta tanto più esatto, obiettivo e verificabile in quanto ottenuto con strumenti che rendono le misurazioni sufficientemente attendibili. Si tratta dunque di esplorare la cartografia tridimensionale cogliendone le peculiarità e la ricchezza nella restituzione dello spazio urbano, caratteristiche, queste, che suggeriscono immediatamente di tentare di ricostruire con la stessa vivacità rappresentativa anche tutti i trascorsi storici della città o, quanto meno, di alcuni dei suoi momenti topici, con particolare attenzione alle trasformazioni di natura orografica ed edilizia. In questo quadro emergono due distinti aspetti di natura metodologica, l’uno concernente la generazione del modello urbano e le implicazioni tecniche che questo comporta (implementazione di dati, automatismi, studi tipo-morfologici, scala del modello, …), l’altro relativo all’evoluzione della città attraverso il confronto tra modelli cartografici diversi (bi e tridimensionali). La realizzazione di un modello virtuale basato sulla cartografia digitale 3D, che fotografa lo stato attuale della struttura urbana, può rappresentare la griglia tridimensionale di riferimento per una visualizzazione delle trasformazioni spaziali attuata con una procedura che ripercorre a ritroso il cammino della storia. Si tratta di riferire a questa griglia orientata sulla base di capisaldi topografici certi i dati cartografici e iconografici provenienti dalla ricerca storico-documentaria, sulla base della individuazione di elementi invarianti della struttura urbana, come assetti orografici, vuoti urbani o edifici esistenti, etc., che non hanno mutato la loro localizzazione e le loro caratteristiche morfologiche. Così concepito, il modello tridimensionale di derivazione cartografica si caratterizza per la capacità di recepire e valorizzare documenti molto diversi e non necessariamente “scientifici” ai fini di una visualizzazione interattiva della storia del singolo brano di città o del singolo edificio per valutarne le trasformazioni sul piano morfologico e dimensionale, ma anche percettivo.Peer Reviewe

Potential Application of Lung Ultrasound in Children with Severe Uncontrolled Asthma: Preliminary Hypothesis Based on a Case Series

: In recent years, lung ultrasound (LUS) has been increasingly used for the diagnosis of respiratory diseases in both adult and pediatric patients. However, asthma is a field in which the use of LUS is not yet well defined, or is in development. In the following case series, we describe clinical, laboratory, and radiological results, as well as detailed lung ultrasound findings of six children with asthma: some of them with acute asthma attack and with inadequately controlled allergic asthma or childhood asthma; others with acute asthma and allergic or infantile asthma adequately controlled by preventive therapy. Finally, we describe the clinical, laboratory, and imaging parameters of a child with severe allergic asthma in the absence of exacerbation. In these cases, albeit at different times, LUS played an important role in both the initial diagnostic process and follow-up. It also showed different ultrasound features depending on the severity of the individual asthma based on the type of asthmatic phenotype and control of it

Recent results and perspectives on cosmology and fundamental physics from microwave surveys

Recent cosmic microwave background data in temperature and polarization have reached high precision in estimating all the parameters that describe the current so-called standard cosmological model. Recent results about the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect from cosmic microwave background anisotropies, galaxy surveys, and their cross-correlations are presented. Looking at fine signatures in the cosmic microwave background, such as the lack of power at low multipoles, the primordial power spectrum and the bounds on non-Gaussianities, complemented by galaxy surveys, we discuss inflationary physics and the generation of primordial perturbations in the early Universe. Three important topics in particle physics, the bounds on neutrinos masses and parameters, on thermal axion mass and on the neutron lifetime derived from cosmological data are reviewed, with attention to the comparison with laboratory experiment results. Recent results from cosmic polarization rotation analyses aimed at testing the Einstein equivalence principle are presented. Finally, we discuss the perspectives of next radio facilities for the improvement of the analysis of future cosmic microwave background spectral distortion experiments.Comment: 27 pages, 9 figures. Review Article. International Journal of Modern Physics D, in press. [Will appear also on the proceedings of the Fourteenth Marcel Grossmann Meeting University of Rome "La Sapienza" - Rome, July 12-18, 2015 (http://www.icra.it/mg/mg14/), eds. Robert T. Jantzen, Kjell Rosquist, Remo Ruffini. World Scientific, Singapore

Putative role of circulating human papillomavirus DNA in the development of primary squamous cell carcinoma of the middle rectum: a case report

Here we present the case of a patient affected by rectal squamous cell carcinoma in which we demonstrated the presence of Human Papillomavirus (HPV) by a variety of techniques. Collectively, the virus was detected not only in the tumor but also in some regional lymph nodes and in non-neoplastic mucosa of the upper tract of large bowel. By contrast, it was not identifiable in its common sites of entry, namely oral and ano-genital region. We also found HPV DNA in the plasma-derived exosome. Next, by in vitro studies, we confirmed the capability of HPV DNA-positive exosomes, isolated from the supernatant of a HPV DNA positive cell line (CaSki), to transfer its DNA to human colon cancer and normal cell lines. In the stroma nearby the tumor mass we were able to demonstrate the presence of virus DNA in the stromal compartment, supporting its potential to be transferred from epithelial cells to the stromal ones. Thus, this case report favors the notion that human papillomavirus DNA can be vehiculated by exosomes in the blood of neoplastic patients and that it can be transferred, at least in vitro, to normal and neoplastic cells. Furthermore, we showed the presence of viral DNA and RNA in pluripotent stem cells of non-tumor tissue, suggesting that after viral integration (as demonstrated by p16 and RNA in situ hybridization positivity), stem cells might have been activated into cancer stem cells inducing neoplastic transformation of normal tissue through the inactivation of p53, p21, and Rb. It is conceivable that the virus has elicited its oncogenic effect in this specific site and not elsewhere, despite its wide anatomical distribution in the patient, for a local condition of immune suppression, as demonstrated by the increase of T-regulatory (CD4/CD25/FOXP3 positive) and T-exhausted (CD8/PD-1positive) lymphocytes and the M2 polarization (high CD163/CD68 ratio) of macrophages in the neoplastic microenvironment. It is noteworthy that our findings depicted a static picture of a long-lasting dynamic process that might evolve in the development of tumors in other anatomical sites. Copyright © 2019 Ambrosio, Vernillo, De Carolis, Carducci, Mundo, Ginori, Rocca, Nardone, Lucenti Fei, Carfagno, Lazzi, Cricca and Tosi

Modeling the contribution of male testosterone levels to the duration of positive COVID testing among hospitalized male COVID-19 patients

Background: A growing body of evidence is emerging suggesting testosterone can affect all cells involved in the immune response to both bacterial and viral infections, and the testosterone effect on the immune response could explain the greater susceptibility of men to infections including COVID-19. We aimed to explore the predictive role of male serum total testosterone (TT) levels on the time till viral negativity testing among hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Methods: The univariate effect of risk factors for the duration of COVID-19 viral positivity was evaluated using the log-rank test and Kaplan-Meier estimates. A multivariable Cox regression model was developed to test the role of TT levels and the subsequent odds for shorter viral positivity intervals. Results: Increasing serum TT levels and the need for an oxygen administration strategy were independently predictive for respectively reduced and increased days to negativization (Hazard Ratio [HR]: 1.39, 95% CI: 0.95-2.03 and HR: 0.19, 95% CI: 0.03-1.18). Conclusion: Baseline higher TT levels for male COVID-19 patients at hospital admission are associated with shorter durations of positive COVID-19 testing and thus viral clearance. Our preliminary findings might play a relevant to help pandemic control strategies if these will be verified in future larger multicentric and possibly randomized trials