Using the Resected Kidney for Transplantation After Nephrectomy for Nutcracker Syndrome

Nutcracker syndrome (NCS) is the clinical manifestation of unilateral renal venous hypertension. It develops secondary to the nutcracker phenomenon caused by compression of the left renal vein between the superior mesenteric artery and the aorta. We present the case of a 43-year-old female with a history of left flank pain, pelvic congestion, and hematuria secondary to NCS. The patient frequently required high-dose non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications with minimal relief. She initiated a kidney donor evaluation after electing to undergo a nephrectomy for the possible long-term resolution of NCS symptoms. If diagnosed early, NCS does not generate pathology within the kidney. This finding allows an individual with medically refractory NCS to avoid the morbidity of a complex surgical procedure by instead donating their kidney. Attention to this treatment modality could provide individuals with NCS resolution of symptoms while providing someone with end-stage renal disease with a life-saving organ

Are we interconnected? A qualitative study on the role and perception of different actors on malaria social behaviour change interventions in rural Mozambique

Background: Interconnecting institutions (health and education sector) and community (through a network of community structures) in social and behaviour change (SBC) activities can add value in an effort for malaria prevention towards a long-term objective of elimination. This approach has been implemented since 2011 in some rural districts of Mozambique. The objective of this study is to describe the perceptions of community and institutional actors on malaria prevention interventions in rural Mozambique. Methods: A descriptive qualitative study with a constructivist research paradigm was conducted in October 2018 in two rural districts of Zambezia Province with high malaria burden in Mozambique. Key-informant sampling was used to select the study participants from different actors and layers: malaria community volunteers, health professionals, non-governmental actors, and education professionals. In-depth interviews (IDIs) and focus group discussions (FGDs) were used to explore the perceptions of these actors. Classic content analysis looking for themes and semantics was used, and saturation guided the sample size recruitment. Results: A total of 23 institutional actor IDIs took place, and 8 FGDs were held. Four themes emerged from the content analysis: (1) organizational and functional aspects; (2) knowledge about malaria; (3) perception of institutional actors on SBC and community involvement; and, (4) perception of institutional actors on the coordination and leadership on SBC malaria interventions. Community structures were well organized, linked to the health sector and operational, with good knowledge of malaria prevention. Education sector (school teachers) links with the health sector were in some cases good, and in other cases, non-existent. The importance of SBC interventions for malaria control was recognized by health actors, although the activities are delegated to non-governmental institutions. Domestic budgetary allocation constraints, quality of intervention and lack of SBC standard indicators were also identified by health actors as aspects for improvement. Conclusions: Community structures, volunteers and primary school teachers have good knowledge on malaria prevention and regularly sensitize community members and students. Institutional health actors and partners recognize their role on malaria prevention activities, however, more interconnection is needed at different levels.publishersversionpublishe

Comparison of Analytical Methods Of Serum Untargeted Metabolomics

Funding Information: IV. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research was funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), grant DSAIPA/DS/0117/2020 and RNEM-LISBOA-01-0145-FEDER-022125 (Portuguese Mass Spectrometry Network). Centro de Química Estrutural is a Research Unit funded by FCT through projects UIDB/00100/2020 and UIDP/00100/2020. Institute of Molecular Sciences is an Associate Laboratory funded by FCT through project LA/P/0056/2020. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 IEEE.Metabolomics has emerged as a powerful tool in the discovery of new biomarkers for medical diagnosis and prognosis. However, there are numerous challenges, such as the methods used to characterize the system metabolome. In the present work, the comparison of two analytical platforms to acquire the serum metabolome of critically ill patients was conducted. The untargeted serum metabolome analysis by ultraperformance liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) enabled to identify a set of metabolites statistically different between deceased and discharged patients. This set of metabolites also enabled to develop a very good predictive model, based on linear discriminant analysis (LDA) with a sensitivity and specificity of 80% and 100%, respectively. Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy was also applied in a high-throughput, simple and rapid mode to analyze the serum metabolome. Despite this technique not enabling the identification of metabolites, it allowed to identify molecular fingerprints associated to each patient group, while leading to a good predictive model, based on principal component analysis-LDA, with a sensitivity and specificity of 100% and 90%, respectively. Therefore, both analytical techniques presented complementary characteristics, that should be further explored for metabolome characterization and application as for biomarkers discovery for medical diagnosis and prognosis.publishersversionpublishe

Infection Biomarkers Based on Metabolomics

Funding Information: Funding: This work was supported by the project grant DSAIPA/DS/0117/2020 supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal; and by the project grant NeproMD/ISEL/2020 financed by Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa.Current infection biomarkers are highly limited since they have low capability to predict infection in the presence of confounding processes such as in non-infectious inflammatory processes, low capability to predict disease outcomes and have limited applications to guide and evaluate therapeutic regimes. Therefore, it is critical to discover and develop new and effective clinical infection biomarkers, especially applicable in patients at risk of developing severe illness and critically ill patients. Ideal biomarkers would effectively help physicians with better patient management, leading to a decrease of severe outcomes, personalize therapies, minimize antibiotics overuse and hospitalization time, and significantly improve patient survival. Metabolomics, by providing a direct insight into the functional metabolic outcome of an organism, presents a highly appealing strategy to discover these biomarkers. The present work reviews the desired main characteristics of infection biomarkers, the main metabolomics strategies to discover these biomarkers and the next steps for developing the area towards effective clinical biomarkers.publishersversionpublishe

Reactive phenotypes after acute and chronic NK‐cell activation

J Biol Regul Homeost Agents. 2004 Jul-Dec;18(3-4):331-4. Reactive phenotypes after acute and chronic NK-cell activation. Lima M, Almeida J, Teixeira MA, Santos AH, Queirós ML, Fonseca S, Moura J, Gonçalves M, Orfão A, Pinto Ribeiro AC. Service of Clinical Hematology, Laboratory of Cytometry, Hospital Geral de Santo António, Porto, Portugal. [email protected] Abstract Several phenotypic changes have been shown to occur after NK-cell stimulation, involving molecules that have been proved to regulate NK-cell migration into tissues and NK-cell activation and proliferation as well as target cell recognition and killing. Here, we review the reactive phenotypes observed in vivo after acute and chronic NK-cell activation. PMID: 15786700 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE

The Impact of the Serum Extraction Protocol on Metabolomic Profiling Using UPLC-MS/MS and FTIR Spectroscopy

Funding Information: This research was funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), Grants DSAIPA/DS/0117/2020 and RNEM-LISBOA-01-0145-FEDER-022125 (Portuguese Mass Spectrometry Network). The Centro de Química Estrutural is a Research Unit funded by FCT through projects UIDB/00100/2020 and UIDP/00100/2020. The Institute of Molecular Sciences is an Associate Laboratory funded by FCT through project LA/P/0056/2020. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.Biofluid metabolomics is a very appealing tool to increase the knowledge associated with pathophysiological mechanisms leading to better and new therapies and biomarkers for disease diagnosis and prognosis. However, due to the complex process of metabolome analysis, including the metabolome isolation method and the platform used to analyze it, there are diverse factors that affect metabolomics output. In the present work, the impact of two protocols to extract the serum metabolome, one using methanol and another using a mixture of methanol, acetonitrile, and water, was evaluated. The metabolome was analyzed by ultraperformance liquid chromatography associated with tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS), based on reverse-phase and hydrophobic chromatographic separations, and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. The two extraction protocols of the metabolome were compared over the analytical platforms (UPLC-MS/MS and FTIR spectroscopy) concerning the number of features, the type of features, common features, and the reproducibility of extraction replicas and analytical replicas. The ability of the extraction protocols to predict the survivability of critically ill patients hospitalized at an intensive care unit was also evaluated. The FTIR spectroscopy platform was compared to the UPLC-MS/MS platform and, despite not identifying metabolites and consequently not contributing as much as UPLC-MS/MS in terms of information concerning metabolic information, it enabled the comparison of the two extraction protocols as well as the development of very good predictive models of patient’s survivability, such as the UPLC-MS/MS platform. Furthermore, FTIR spectroscopy is based on much simpler procedures and is rapid, economic, and applicable in the high-throughput mode, i.e., enabling the simultaneous analysis of hundreds of samples in the microliter range in a couple of hours. Therefore, FTIR spectroscopy represents a very interesting complementary technique not only to optimize processes as the metabolome isolation but also for obtaining biomarkers such as those for disease prognosis.publishersversionpublishe

Emission and absorption of photons and the black-body spectra in Lorentz-odd Electrodynamics

We study a number of issues related to the emission and absorption radiation by non-relativistic electrons within the framework of a Lorentz-breaking electrodynamics in (3+1) dimensions. Our main results concern how Planck-like spectrum law is sensitive to terms that violate Lorentz symmetry. We have realized that Planck law acquires extra terms proportional to the violating parameters: for the CPT-odd model, the leading extra terms appear to be linear or quadratic in these violating parameters according to the background vector is parallel or perpendicular to the photon wave-vector. In the CPT-even case a linear `correction' shows up. Among other possible ways to probe for these violations, by means of the present results, we may quote the direct observation of the extra contributions or an unbalancing in the mean occupation number of photon modes in a given thermal bath.Comment: 11 pages, Late

Guess what: Chronic 13q14.3+/CD5‐ /CD23+ lymphocytic leukemia in blood and t(11;14)(q13;q32)+/CD5+/CD23‐ mantle cell lymphoma in lymph nodes!

Cytometry B Clin Cytom. 2003 Jan;51(1):41-4. Guess what: Chronic 13q14.3+/CD5-/CD23+ lymphocytic leukemia in blood and t(11;14)(q13;q32)+/CD5+/CD23- mantle cell lymphoma in lymph nodes! Lima M, Pinto L, Dos Anjos Teixeira M, Canelhas A, Mota A, Cabeda JM, Silva C, Queirós ML, Fonseca S, Santos AH, Brochado P, Justiça B. Service of Clinical Hematology, Hospital Geral de Santo António, Porto, Portugal. [email protected] Abstract We report a case of a patient with two B-cell lymphoproliferative disorders: CD5(-)/CD23(+) B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia and CD5(+)/CD23(-) mantle cell lymphoma. These disorders were diagnosed simultaneously based on flow cytometry, immunohistochemistry, fluorescence in situ hybridization, and polymerase chain reaction-based molecular studies. The B-cell lymphocytic leukemia clone predominated in the blood and bone marrow, whereas the mantle cell clone predominated in lymph nodes. Copyright 2002 Wiley-Liss, Inc. PMID: 12500296 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE