Growth And The Growth Hormone-Insulin Like Growth Factor 1 Axis In Children With Chronic Inflammation:Current Evidence, Gaps In Knowledge And Future Directions

Growth failure is frequently encountered in children with chronic inflammatory conditions like juvenile idiopathic arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and cystic fibrosis. Delayed puberty and attenuated pubertal growth spurt is often seen during adolescence. The underlying inflammatory state mediated by pro-inflammatory cytokines, prolonged use of glucocorticoid and suboptimal nutrition contribute to growth failure and pubertal abnormalities. These factors can impair growth by their effects on the growth hormone-insulin like growth factor axis and also directly at the level of the growth plate via alterations in chondrogenesis and local growth factor signaling. Recent studies on the impact of cytokines and glucocorticoid on the growth plate studies further advanced our understanding of growth failure in chronic disease and provided a biological rationale of growth promotion. Targeting cytokines using biologic therapy may lead to improvement of growth in some of these children but approximately one third continue to grow slowly. There is increasing evidence that the use of relatively high dose recombinant human growth hormone may lead to partial catch up growth in chronic inflammatory conditions, although long term follow-up data is currently limited. In this review, we comprehensively review the growth abnormalities in children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and cystic fibrosis, systemic abnormalities of the growth hormone-insulin like growth factor axis and growth plate perturbations. We also systematically reviewed all the current published studies of recombinant human growth hormone in these conditions and discuss the role of recombinant human insulin like growth factor-1

Synthesis, crystal structure and ionic conductivity of a new open-framework arsenate K0.405Bi0.865AsO4

International audienc

GIS-based landslide susceptibility mapping using bivariate statistical methods in North-western Tunisia

The Tunisian North-western region, especially Tabarka and Ain-Drahim villages, presents many landslides every year. Therefore, the landslide susceptibility mapping is essential to frame zones with high landslide susceptibility, to avoid loss of lives and properties. In this study, two bivariate statistical models: the evidential belief functions (EBF) and the weight of evidence (WoE), were used to produce landslide susceptibility maps for the study area. For this, a landslide inventory map was mapped using aerial photo, satellite image and extensive field survey. A total of 451 landslides were randomly separated into two datasets: 316 landslides (70%) for modelling and 135 landslides (30%) for validation. Then, 11 landslide conditioning factors: elevation, slope, aspect, lithology, rainfall, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), land cover/use, plan curvature, profile curvature, distance to faults and distance to drainage networks, were considered for modelling. The EBF and WoE models were well validated using the Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic (AUROC) curve with a success rate of 87.9% and 89.5%, respectively, and a predictive rate of 84.8% and 86.5%, respectively. The landslide susceptibility maps were very similar by the two models, but the WoE model is more efficient and it can be useful in future planning for the current study area