Depression in Patients with Mastocytosis: Prevalence, Features and Effects of Masitinib Therapy

Depression in patients with mastocytosis is often reported but its prevalence and characteristics are not precisely described. In addition, the impact of therapies targeting mast cells proliferation, differentiation and degranulation on psychic symptoms of depression have never been investigated. Our objective was to determine the prevalence and to describe features of depression in a large cohort of mastocytosis patients (n = 288) and to investigate the therapeutic impact of the protein kinase inhibitor masitinib in depression symptoms. The description of depression was based on the analysis of a database with Hamilton scores using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Efficacy of masitinib therapy was evaluated using non parametric Wilcoxon test for paired data within a three months period (n = 35). Our results show that patients with indolent mastocytosis present an elevated prevalence of depression (64%). Depression was moderate in 56% but severe in 8% of cases. Core symptoms (such as psychic anxiety, depressed mood, work and interests) characterized depression in mastocytosis patients. Masitinib therapy was associated with significant improvement (67% of the cases) of overall depression, with 75% of recovery cases. Global Quality of Life slightly improved after masitinib therapy and did not predicted depression improvement. In conclusion, depression is very frequent in mastocytosis patients and masitinib therapy is associated with the reduction its psychic experiences. We conclude that depression in mastocytosis may originate from processes related to mast cells activation. Masitinib could therefore be a useful treatment for mastocytosis patients with depression and anxiety symptoms

On the role of computers in creativity-support systems

We report here on our experiences with designing computer-based creativity-support systems over several years. In particular, we present the design of three different systems incorporating different mechanisms of creativity. One of them uses an idea proposed by Rodari to stimulate imagination of the children in writing a picture-based story. The second one is aimed to model creativity in legal reasoning, and the third one uses low-level perceptual similarities to stimulate creation of novel conceptual associations in unrelated pictures.We discuss lessons learnt from these approaches, and address their implications for the question of how far creativity can be tamed by algorithmic approaches

A simple, efficient filter for multitemporal SAR images

[Departement_IRSTEA]DS [TR1_IRSTEA]51 - METHODO / GEOSYSTEMESInternational audienceIt has been recently shown how multitemporal data may be used to improve the radiometric resolution of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images. Yet even the optimal speckle reduction schemes may result in blurred images in featured zones. Structure detection is a prior requirement but complicates further the numerical treatments. Alternatively, it is shown that satisfactory results can be obtained using a simple adaptation of Lee's sigma filter, as illustrated by comparison with theoretically based methods. The proposed methodology combines temporal filtering with a subwindowing approach and appears to be a good compromise that smoothes efficiently the speckle in relatively homogeneous areas while carefully preserving the sharpness of the edges. It may be of particular interest for those concerned with the variations in time of backscatter, especially in an agricultural environment