Impact of body mass index on retention rates of anti-TNF-alfa drugs in daily practice for psoriasis

Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin disease which often requires life-long treatment.Our objective was to assess the role of the body mass index (BMI) on the retention rates of anti-TNF-alfa therapies in patients with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis.Retrospective observational study of psoriasis patients included in local databases of three public Italian hospitals. All patients, who received anti-TNF-alfa treatment in referral centers, were included. Only patients with at least 1-year follow-up were considered eligible. The outcome was the conservation of the treatment at 1 and 2 years of follow-up.194 patients were enrolled. 307 treatment courses with a minimum follow-up of 12 months and 263 with a follow-up of 24 months were analyzed. The proportion of patients receiving the same treatment at months 12 and 24 was 67.43% and 42.21%, respectively. The proportion steadily decreased with increased values of BMI.The overall efficacy of TNF-alfa inhibitors diminishes with time. The BMI affects the long-term survival rate of anti-TNF-alfa in psoriatic patients. A high BMI can be considered a potential predictor of drug discontinuation

Robots Are Not All the Same: Young Adults' Expectations, Attitudes, and Mental Attribution to Two Humanoid Social Robots

The human physical resemblance of humanoid social robots (HRSs) has proven to be particularly effective in interactions with humans in different contexts. In particular, two main factors affect the quality of human-robot interaction, the physical appearance and the behaviors performed by the robot. In this study, we examined the psychological effect of two HRSs, NAO and Pepper. Although some studies have shown that these two robots are very similar in terms of the human likeness, other evidence has shown some differences in their design affecting different psychological elements of the human partner. The present study aims to analyze the variability of the attributions of mental states (AMS), expectations of robotic development and negative attitudes as a function of the physical appearance of two HRSs after observing a real interaction with a human (an experimenter). For this purpose, two groups of young adults were recruited, one for the NAO

Gulliver’s virtual travels: active embodiment in extreme body sizes for modulating our body representations

It is noted that the perceptual experience of body and space can be modulated by changing the action capabilities or by manipulating the perceived body dimensions through a multisensory stimulation. This study adds to pre-existing literature by investigating the alterations in bodily experience following embodiment to both enlarged and shrunked bodies, while participants actively navigated in a virtual environment. A normal-sized body served as a reference condition. After each embodied navigation, participants estimated the height and width of three different body parts. Results revealed that the embodiment over shrunked body induced a significant reduction in participants’ body image, while no changes were reported after the embodiment over the enlarged body. Findings were discussed in terms of previous literature exploring the constraints implicated in the ownership over different bodies

The interaction between motor simulation and spatial perspective-taking in action language: a cross-cultural study

: Growing evidence has revealed the crucial role of motor simulation and spatial perspective-taking in action language. However, there is still a lack of understanding of how motor and spatial processes interact when there are multiple actors involved, and if embodied processes are consistent across different cultures. To address this gap, we examined the interaction between motor simulation and spatial perspective-taking in action-sentences comprehension, along with the consistency of embodied processes across cultures. We collected data from Italian and US English speakers using an online sentence-picture verification task. The participants completed four conditions: two congruent (i.e., the participant is the agent in the sentence and the photo; the agent is someone else interacting with the participant in both the sentence and the picture) and two incongruent (i.e., the agents of the sentence and the picture do not match). The results show that when the perspective of the picture matched that described in the sentence-processing reaction times (RTs) were faster than in the incongruent conditions. In the congruent conditions where the agent is someone else, RTs were slower compared to the condition where the participant is the agent. This has been interpreted as claiming that motor simulation and perspective-taking are independent processes interacting during sentence comprehension (e.g., motor simulation is always run in the role of the agent, but we can adopt multiple perspectives depending on the pronouns and the contextual cues). Furthermore, Bayesian analysis provided evidence that embodied processing of action language entwines a common mechanism, suggesting cross-cultural consistency of embodied processes

Can You Activate Me? From Robots to Human Brain

L'efficacia dei robot sociali \ue8 stata ampiamente riconosciuta in diversi contesti della vita quotidiana degli umani, ma ancora poco si sa sulle aree cerebrali attivate osservando o interagendo con un robot. La ricerca che combina neuroscienze, scienze cognitive e robotica pu\uf2 fornire nuove intuizioni sia sul funzionamento del nostro cervello che sull'implementazione dei robot. Studi comportamentali sui robot sociali hanno dimostrato che la percezione sociale dei robot \ue8 influenzata da almeno due fattori: aspetto fisico e comportamento (Marchetti et al., 2018). Come possono le neuroscienze spiegare tali risultati? Ad oggi sono stati condotti studi attraverso l'utilizzo di tecniche sia EEG che fMRI per indagare le aree cerebrali coinvolte nell'interazione uomo-robot. Questi studi hanno affrontato principalmente le attivazioni cerebrali in risposta a paradigmi che coinvolgono o la performance di un'azione o la carica di una componente emotiva.The effectiveness of social robots has been widely recognized in different contexts of humans\u2019 daily life, but still little is known about the brain areas activated by observing or interacting with a robot. Research combining neuroscience, cognitive science and robotics can provide new insights into both the functioning of our brain and the implementation of robots. Behavioural studies on social robots have shown that the social perception of robots is influenced by at least two factors: physical appearance and behavior (Marchetti et al., 2018). How can neuroscience explain such findings? To date, studies have been conducted through the use of both EEG and fMRI techniques to investigate the brain areas involved in human-robot interaction. These studies have mainly addressed brain activations in response to paradigms involving either action performance or charged of an emotional component

PRENOLIN project. Results of the validation phase at sendai site

One of the objectives of the PRENOLIN project is the assessment of uncertainties associated with non-linear simulation of 1D site effects. An international benchmark is underway to test several numerical codes, including various non-linear soil constitutive models, to compute the non-linear seismic site response. The preliminary verification phase (i.e. comparison between numerical codes on simple, idealistic cases) is now followed by the validation phase, which compares predictions of such numerical estimations with actual strong motion data recorded from well-known sites. The benchmark presently involves 21 teams and 21 different non-linear computations. Extensive site characterization was performed at three sites of the Japanese KiK-net and PARI networks. This paper focuses on SENDAI site. The first results indicate that a careful analysis of the data for the lab measurement is required. The linear site response is overestimated while the non-linear effects are underestimated in the first iteration. According to these observations, a first set of recommendations for defining the non-linear soil parameters from lab measurements is proposed. PRENOLIN is part of two larger projects: SINAPS@, funded by the ANR (French National Research Agency) and SIGMA, funded by a consortium of nuclear operators (EDF, CEA, AREVA, ENL)

TOpic: rare and special cases, the real "Strange cases"

Introduction: The bladder hernia represents approximately 1-3% of all inguinal hernias, where patients aged more than 50 years have a higher incidence (10%). Many factors contribute to the development of a bladder hernia, including the presence of a urinary outlet obstruction causing chronic bladder distention, the loss of bladder tone, pericystitis, the perivesical bladder fat protrusion and the obesity

Long-Term Drug Survival and Effectiveness of Secukinumab in Patients with Moderate to Severe Chronic Plaque Psoriasis: 42-Month Results from the SUPREME 2.0 Study

Purpose: SUPREME, a phase IIIb study conducted in Italy, demonstrated safety and high efficacy of secukinumab for up to 72 weeks in patients with moderate-to-severe plaque-type psoriasis. SUPREME 2.0 study aimed to provide real-world data on the long-term drug survival and effectiveness of secukinumab beyond 72 weeks. Patients and Methods: SUPREME 2.0 is a retrospective observational chart review study conducted in patients previously enrolled in SUPREME study. After the end of the SUPREME study, eligible patients continued treatment as per clinical practice, and their effectiveness and drug survival data were retrieved from medical charts. Results: Of the 415 patients enrolled in the SUPREME study, 297 were included in SUPREME 2.0; of which, 210 (70.7%) continued secukinumab treatment throughout the 42-month observation period. Patients in the biologic-naïve cohort had higher drug survival than those in the biologic-experienced cohort (74.9% vs 61.7%), while HLA-Cw6–positive and HLA-Cw6–negative patients showed similar drug survival (69.3% and 71.9%). After 42 months, Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI) 90 was achieved by 79.6% of patients overall; with a similar proportion of biologic-naïve and biologic-experienced patients achieving PASI90 (79.8% and 79.1%). The mean absolute PASI score reduced from 21.94 to 1.38 in the overall population, 21.90 to 1.24 in biologic-naïve and 22.03 to 1.77 in biologic-experienced patients after 42 months. The decrease in the absolute PASI score was comparable between HLACw6–positive and HLA–Cw6-negative patients. The baseline Dermatology Life Quality Index scores also decreased in the overall patients (10.5 to 2.32) and across all study sub-groups after 42 months. Safety was consistent with the known profile of secukinumab, with no new findings. Conclusion: In this real-world cohort study, secukinumab showed consistently high long-term drug survival and effectiveness with a favourable safety profile

COVID Feel Good-An Easy Self-Help Virtual Reality Protocol to Overcome the Psychological Burden of Coronavirus

Background: Living in the time of the COVID-19 means experiencing not only a global health emergency but also extreme psychological stress with potential emotional side effects such as sadness, grief, irritability, and mood swings. Crucially, lockdown and confinement measures isolate people who become the first and the only ones in charge of their own mental health: people are left alone facing a novel and potentially lethal situation, and, at the same time, they need to develop adaptive strategies to face it, at home. In this view, easy-to-use, inexpensive, and scientifically validated self-help solutions aiming to reduce the psychological burden of coronavirus are extremely necessary. Aims: This pragmatic trial aims to provide the evidence that a weekly self-help virtual reality (VR) protocol can help overcome the psychological burden of the Coronavirus by relieving anxiety, improving well-being, and reinforcing social connectedness. The protocol will be based on the 'Secret Garden' 360 VR video online (www.covidfeelgood.com) which simulates a natural environment aiming to promote relaxation and self-reflection. Three hundred sixty-degree or spherical videos allow the user to control the viewing direction. In this way, the user can explore the content from any angle like a panorama and experience presence and immersion. The 'Secret Garden' video is combined with daily exercises that are designed to be experienced with another person (not necessarily physically together), to facilitate a process of critical examination and eventual revision of core assumptions and beliefs related to personal identity, relationships, and goals. Methods: This is a multicentric, pragmatic pilot randomized controlled trial involving individuals who experienced the COVID-19 pandemic and underwent a lockdown and quarantine procedures. The trial is approved by the Ethics Committee of the Istituto Auxologico Italiano. Each research group in all the countries joining the pragmatic trial, aims at enrolling at least 30 individuals in the experimental group experiencing the self-help protocol, and 30 in the control group, over a period of 3 months to verify the feasibility of the intervention. Conclusion: The goal of this protocol is for VR to become the 'surgical mask' of mental health treatment. Although surgical masks do not provide the wearer with a reliable level of protection against the coronavirus compared with FFP2 or FFP3 masks, surgical masks are very effective in protecting others from the wearer's respiratory emissions. The goal of the VR protocol is the same: not necessarily to solve complex mental health problems but rather to improve well-being and preserve social connectedness through the beneficial social effects generated by positive emotions

Evaluation of the glycemic effect of methotrexate in psoriatic arthritis patients with metabolic syndrome: A pilot study

Methotrexate (MTX) is a systemic immunosuppressant drug used for the treatment of psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. Previous studies demonstrated a potential association between psoriasis and diabetes mellitus, obesity, atherosclerosis, hypertension, eventuating into metabolic syndrome. This study aimed at exploring the glycemic effects of MTX in psoriatic arthritis (PsA) patients. In this prospective cross-sectional study, 27 patients with PsA were evaluated. The status of PsA and presence of accompanying metabolic syndrome was determined by standard criteria and indices. Blood indicators including HbA1c, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, fasting blood sugar, total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein, triglycerides, and C-reactive protein were examined before and 12 weeks after MTX therapy. There were no significant changes between HbA1c levels before and after MTX therapy in both genders (men: P=0.131, women: P=0.803). In addition, HbA1c levels in PsA patients with metabolic syndrome were not different before and after treatment (P=0.250). Finally, HbA1c levels did not change in PsA patients without metabolic syndrome before and after therapy (P=0.506). MTX in PsA patients does not appear to have hyperglycaemic effects in the short-term and can be safely used in patients with metabolic syndrome and diabetes