Effect of Red Orange and Lemon Extract-Enriched Diet in Suckling Lambs' Fecal Microbiota

Red orange and lemon extract (RLE) is an anthocyanins-rich dietary supplement that may influence gastrointestinal bacterial community in ruminants. The aim of the present study was to investigate the RLE effects on gut microbiota composition in lambs. Twenty-eight lambs were randomly divided into a control group (CON; n = 14) and an anthocyanin group (ANT; n = 14) and fed the same diet; additionally, only the ANT received 90 mg/kg live weight of RLE at day. After lamb slaughter (40 ± 1 days), fecal samples were collected from the rectum and stored at −20 ◦C until analysis. Analysis of fecal microbiome was carried out by metabarcoding analysis of 16S rRNA. After reads denoising, sequences were aligned against SILVA rRNA sequence database using MALT, and taxonomic binning was performed with MEGAN. A significant increase in Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes and a decrease in Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria was observed in ANT compared to CON. Moreover, an interesting increase of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium genera and a decrease in Escherichia coli and Salmonella species were detected in ANT compared to CON. Results recommend that anthocyanin supplementation in lamb diet is able to modulate positively gut microbiota and may inhibit the growth of some potential pathogenic microorganisms

Application of Bayes' Theorem in Valuating Depression Tests Performance

The validity of clinical diagnoses is a fundamental topic in clinical psychology, because now there are some political administrations, as the IOM or the U.K. government, which are focusing on best evidence-based practice in clinical psychology. The most problematic issue in clinical psychology is to avoid wrong diagnoses which can have negative consequences on individual life and on the utility of clinical treatments. In the case of diagnoses based on self-report tests, the diagnostic decision about individual health is based on the comparison between its score and the cutoff, according to the frequentist approach to probability. However, the frequentist approach underestimates the possible risks of incorrect diagnoses based on cutoffs only. The Bayesian approach is a valid alternative to make diagnoses on the basis of the scores from psychological tests. The Bayes' theorem estimates the posterior probability of the presence of a pathology on the basis of the knowledge about the diffusion of this pathology (prior probability) and of the knowledge of sensitivity and specificity values of the test. With all this information, it is possible to estimate the diagnostic accuracy of some self-report tests used for assessing depression. We analyzed the diagnostic accuracy of the most used psychological tests of depression (Zung's Self-Rating Depression Scale, Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression, Center for Epidemiological Studies for Depression and the Beck Depression Inventory), together with a new scale (Teate Depression Inventory) developed with the IRT procedure, by analyzing the published works in which data about sensitivity and specificity of these scales are reported. Except the TDI, none of these scales can reach a satisfactory level of diagnostic accuracy, probably for the absence of an optimal procedure to select test items and subjects with clearly defined pathological symptoms which could allow the reduction of false positives in test scoring

Padova Charter on personal injury and damage under civil-tort law: Medico-legal guidelines on methods of ascertainment and criteria of evaluation

Compensation for personal damage, defined as any pecuniary or non-pecuniary loss causally related to a personal injury under civil-tort law, is strictly based on the local jurisdiction and therefore varies significantly across the world. This manuscript presents the first ''International Guidelines on Medico-Legal Methods of Ascertainment and Criteria of Evaluation of Personal Injury and Damage under Civil-Tort Law''. This consensus document, which includes a step-by-step illustrated explanation of flow charts articulated in eight sequential steps and a comprehensive description of the ascertainment methodology and the criteria of evaluation, has been developed by an International Working Group composed of juridical and medico-legal experts and adopted as Guidelines by the International Academy of Legal Medicine (IALM)

Guidelines on the Methods of Ascertainment of Whiplash-Associated Disorders

This chapter presents the International Guidelines developed by the Working Group on Personal Injury and Damage under the patronage of the International Academy of Legal Medicine (IALM) regarding the Methods of Ascertainment of any suspected Whiplash-Associated Disorders (WAD). This chapter includes a detailed description of the logical and methodological steps of the ascertainment process as well as a synoptic diagram in the form of a flow-chart. This chapter represents a slightly modified version of an article published in the International Journal of Legal Medicine