Principais alterações radiográficas de exames em acto de compra em cavalos Puro Sangue Lusitano

Dissertação de Mestrado Integrado em Medicina VeterináriaOs Exames em Acto de Compra (EAC) são cada vez mais utilizados para avaliar a futura capacidade desportiva do cavalo, e o exame radiográfico é o procedimento de diagnóstico mais efectuado para detecção de lesões osteoarticulares. O objectivo deste estudo é avaliar o estatuto osteoarticular de jovens cavalos de raça Puro Sangue Lusitano (PSL), através da investigação da presença de alterações osteoarticulares nas principais regiões abordadas por radiografia na medicina veterinária de terreno. Foram avaliados os exames radiográficos, efectuados em EAC, de 152 equinos de raça PSL, entre os 2 e os 5 anos de idade, das articulações interfalângicas dos membros torácicos, metacarpo/metatarsofalângicas dos membros torácicos e pélvicos, tarso e femorotibiopatelar. Um painel de avaliadores interpretou as radiografias e para cada região anatómica foi feita a identificação das principais alterações radiográficas. Assim, 84,9% dos equinos têm um ou mais achados radiográficos (AR). As articulações interfalângicas distais são as mais atingidas, nomeadamente por ossificação das cartilagens ungulares da falange distal (88% dos AR nesta articulação), com maior severidade no aspecto lateral. Na articulação metacarpo/metatarsofalângica há maior predisposição para alterações osteoarticulares nos membros pélvicos. Esta foi a articulação mais afectada por OC(D), principalmente fragmentos osteocondrais da falange proximal (41,5% dos AR nesta articulação) e remodelação da crista sagital do terceiro metacarpo/metatarso (35,4% dos AR nesta articulação). Nas articulações do tarso, 74% das alterações osteoarticulares são osteófitos e o relevo intermediário da cóclea tibial é o principal local para ocorrência de OCD. A articulação femorotibiopatelar foi a menos afectada, identificando-se fragmentos osteocondrais exclusivamente na crista lateral da tróclea do fémur. Os resultados indicam a presença de alterações osteoarticulares em cavalos jovens PSL. Com base na presença destes AR criou-se um estatuto osteoarticular. A utilização de um estatuto osteoarticular individual poderá ser útil na avaliação da saúde ortopédica dos equinos e por consequência ajudar na seleção de carreiras desportivas de jovens cavalos.ABSTRACT - MAIN RADIOGRAPHIC FINDINGS IN THE PRE-PURCHASE EXAMINATION OF LUSITANO HORSES - The pre-purchase examination is an increasingly powerful tool to assess the sportive capacity of the horse. Radiography is the most performed diagnostic procedure to detect osteochondral lesions. The aim of this study is to evaluate the osteoarticular status of young Lusitano breed horses, through the investigation of the presence of radiographic findings, in the main regions, during a field study. Pre-purchase radiographic exams of 152 Lusitano horses were realized. Horses were aged between 2 and 5 years old and studied regions included the interphalangeal joints of the forelimbs, metacarpo/metatarsophalangeal joints of the fore and hindlimbs, tarsal joints and femorotibiapatellar joints. A panel of evaluators interpreted the radiographies and the principal findings were identified for each anatomical region. Thus, 84.9% of the horses have one or more radiographic findings. The interphalangic joints are the most affected, namely by ossification of the collateral cartilages of the distal phalanx (88% of its findings), with greater severity in the lateral side. The metatarsophalangeal joint is more predisposed to osteocondral alterations than the metacarpophalangeal joint. These joints are the most affected by OC(D), primarily by osteochondral fragments on the proximal phalanx (41.5% of the findings in this joint) and irregularity of the sagital ridge of the third metacarpus/metatarsus (35.4% of the findings in this joint). In the tarsus, 74% of the findings are osteophytes and the intermediate ridge of the tibia is the main site for OCD. The femorotibiopatelar joint was the least affected joint, with fragmentation of the lateral trochlear ridge of the femur. The results show the presence of osteoarticular alterations in juvenile Lusitano horses. Based on the presence of radiographic signs, an individual osteoarticular status was established. Its importance is connected with its profitable use to assess the orthopedic health of the horses and, consequently, help in the selection of young horses for their future sports career.N/

In vitro polarized Raman analysis for the evaluation of the efficacy of CPP-ACP remineralizing mousse in tooth hypomineralization

UID/FIS/ 04559/2020The purpose of this in vitro study is to evaluate the efficacy of a commercially available tooth mousse in the remineralization of human enamel in cases of Molar-incisor-hypomineralization (MIH). Treatment protocol with GC Tooth Mousse containing Casein phosphopeptide amorphous calcium phosphate (CPP-ACP) was applied to 12 teeth (4 healthy, 4 hypomineralized with white opacities and 4 hypomineralized with yellow opacities) and the samples were evaluated with polarized Raman microscopy. The depolarization ratio of the symmetric stretching band of phosphate band was compared in each sample before and after treatment with the tooth mousse. The mean depolarization ratio values decreased in all three groups, after the treatment protocol, with significant differences (p < 0.05) for the two hypomineralized teeth’ groups. These results allowed us to conclude that there was an improvement in mineral density and organization of the hypomineralized enamel after treatment with CPP-ACP tooth mousse.publishersversionpublishe

Evaluation of the Efficacy of CPP-ACP Remineralizing Mousse in MIH White and Yellow Opacities—In Vitro Vickers Microhardness Analysis

Funding Information: This research was funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) (Portugal) by the research center grant UID/FIS/04559/2021 to LIBPhys from the FCT/MCTES/PIDDAC, Portugal. This research was also funded by Cuf, SA by Inês Cardoso-Martins PhD scholarship. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 by the authors.Remineralization of tooth enamel can be partially achieved by the application of a casein phosphopeptides and amorphous phosphate (CPP-ACP) complex. However, evidence to support its effectiveness in Molar-incisor-hypomineralization (MIH)-affected teeth is scarce. The study’s aim is to evaluate the efficacy of CPP-ACP mousse in remineralizing MIH-affected enamel using a Vickers microhardness test. Two groups of enamel opacities of hypomineralized permanent teeth, white (group A) and yellow (group B) lesions (n = 14), went through a 28-day treatment protocol with GC Tooth Mousse. Before and after treatment, microhardness was measured in three different areas of each tooth (hypomineralized, transition, and outside the hypomineralized area). Data were analyzed using parametric and non-parametric tests with a significance of p < 0.05. The mean microhardness values increased in the hypomineralized and transition areas in both groups after the treatment protocol (in group A, 105.38 ± 11.70 to 158.26 ± 37.34; 123.04 ± 22.84 to 156.33 ± 35.70; in group B, 108.63 ± 14.66 to 143.06 ± 22.81; 132.55 ± 20.66 to 146.00 ± 12.88) and the differences pre/post-treatment were statistically significant within each group (p < 0.001 for both groups). Between groups, there was a statistically significant difference in the same areas (hypomineralized: p = 0.003; transition: p = 0.008) with a higher improvement in enamel hardness in group A. Topical application of CPP-ACP showed an increase in the physical strength of the hypomineralized and transition areas of MIH-affected enamel, likely due to an increase in mineral content.publishersversionpublishe

Pectus Carinatum Evaluation Questionnaire (PCEQ): a novel tool to improve the follow-up in patients treated with brace compression

A questionnaire (Pectus Carinatum Evaluation Questionnaire, PCEQ) was developed to be applied in follow-up of patients with Pectus Carinatum (PC). After validation of the PCEQ, we aimed to quantify the compliance to brace compression and to assess factors that could influence this treatment in patients with PC. From July 2008 to July 2014, 56 patients with PC were treated with the Calgary Protocol of compressive bracing at Paediatric Surgery Department of Hospital So Joo. Forty patients (71%) completed the questionnaire. The PCEQ was divided into four sections: (i) compliance; (ii) symptoms; (iii) social influence; (iv) activities. For the validation process of the PCEQ, principal components analysis (PCA), orthogonal varimax or oblimin rotation and Cronbach's alpha coefficient were used. To evaluate the association between compliance and other sections of the questionnaire, we estimated the Pearson's correlation between compliance factor scores ('Compliance Days' and 'Compliance Hours') and the final score of each new questionnaire component identified by PCA ('Chest Pain', 'Dyspnoea', 'Back Pain', 'Parents' Influence', 'Friends' Influence', 'Activities', 'Time To Compliance'). For the sections 'Symptoms', 'Social Influence' and 'Activities', we estimated final scores as the sum of the questions that constitute each component. For the section 'Compliance', the factor scores were estimated by the regression method. After PCA analysis, the PCEQ found nine different components with high reliability. When analysing the compliance of our study group, the final score for 'Activities' revealed a significant correlation with the factor score for 'Compliance Hours' (r = 0.382, P = 0.015). The final score for 'Time To Compliance' showed a significant correlation with both factor scores for 'Compliance Hours' (r = -0.765, P < 0.001) and 'Compliance Days' (r = -0.345, P < 0.029). The PCEQ seems to be an important tool to follow up patients with PC treated by brace compression. Practical steps, such as developing a tight schedule in the early follow-up period or applying the PCEQ in first visits after initiating brace therapy, can be taken in order to increase compliance with brace therapy and improve the quality of life.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Homegreens - Aquaponics System as an Educational Tool towards a Sustainable Future

Aquaponics is an integrated production practice that emerges from the combi-nation of two farming techniques: hydroponics and aquaculture. It consists in a simulation of a natural ecosystem that grows plants without soil substrate in the nutrient enriched waters recirculated from aquaculture systems. This type of production offers several advantages, namely economic and ecological ones. Homegreens is a project that aims to create small saltwater and freshwater aquaponic sys-tems, which can be installed in schools and serve as a didactic tool for introducing contents such as biology and sustainability to a juvenile audience. Implemented by a designers, biol-ogists and agronomists’ multidisciplinary team, the methodology was based on the develop-ment and quantitative validation of prototypes, and the installation and qualitative analyses of user’s interaction. These small scale aquaponic systems consists on a grow bed, an aquarium with a capacity for 45L, a protection barrier for the plant’s roots, aeration, biofilters and a thermostat. Sever-al simplified models were developed, presented and installed in two primary schools. Labor-atory tests were conducted to validate the use of a cork grow bed and a 3D printed polya-cid lactic (PLA) aeration and biofilter system. Children’s engagement and interaction with these simplified models, indicates that these systems will provide a biology and sustainability related group learning opportunity.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

From plates to baits: using a remote video foraging system to study the impact of foraging on fouling non-indigenous species

Marinas are a gateway for the introduction and establishment of non-indigenous species (NIS). In these habitats, competition and predation are crucial determinants for NIS establishment and invasiveness. However, fish trophic preferences and biotic effects inside marinas are poorly known. This study proposes a novel method that combines the deployment of settlement plates to recruit different assemblages, followed by their use as bait in remote underwater video systems. This combined approach, addressed as a remote video foraging system (RVFS), can record fish foraging behaviour, including feeding choices and their impacts on fouling assemblage composition. An experimental RVFS trial carried out in a marina of Madeira Island, Portugal (NE Atlantic), identified the Mediterranean parrotfish, Sparisoma cretense, as the most important fouling grazer in the area. S. cretense behaved as a generalist and increased the heterogeneity of fouling assemblages, which can hamper NIS dominance of the fouling and reduce the pressure of propagules from the marina to the natural environment. The RVFS tool was useful to understand the trophic links between foragers and fouling and has the potential to provide relevant information for the management of NIS introductions, establishment and spread.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A Prospective Cohort Study

Funding Information: The present publication was funded by Fundação Ciência e Tecnologia, IP national support through CHRC (UIDP/04923/2020). Publisher Copyright: © 2023 by the authors.Torque teno virus (TTV) was recently identified as a potential biomarker for the degree of immunosuppression, and potentially as a predictor of rejection and infection in solid organ transplant patients. We evaluated TTV viral load in kidney transplant (KT) patients during the first year post-transplant to examine overall kinetics and their relationships with deleterious events, including episodes of infection and the formation of de novo donor-specific antibodies (DSAs). In a single-center, prospective observational cohort study, 81 KT patients were monitored at baseline, week 1, and month 1, 3, 6, 9 and 12, post-KT, and whenever required by clinical events. Kidney function, plasma TTV load, immunoglobulins and lymphocyte subpopulations were assessed at each time point. Twenty-six patients (32.1%) presented a total of 38 infection episodes post-KT. Induction immunosuppression with thymoglobulin, compared to basiliximab, was not associated with more infections (p = 0.8093). Patients with infectious events had lower T-cells (p = 0.0500), CD8+ T-cells (p = 0.0313) and B-cells (p = 0.0009) 1 month post-KT, compared to infection-free patients. Patients with infection also showed higher increases in TTV viral loads between week 1- month 1, post-KT, with TTV viral load variations >2.65 log10 cp/mL predicting the development of infectious events during the 12-month study period (p < 0.0001; sensitivity 99.73%; specificity 83.67%). Patients who developed de novo DSAs had lower TTV DNA viral loads at month 12 after KT, compared to patients who did not develop DSA (3.7 vs. 5.3 log10 cp/mL, p = 0.0023). Briefly, evaluating early TTV viremia is a promising strategy for defining infectious risk in the 1st year post-KT. The availability of standardized commercial real-time PCR assays is crucial to further validate this as an effective tool guiding immunosuppression prescription.publishersversionpublishe

Evaluation of The Medical Board Exam in Portugal

Introduction: There is a high heterogeneity in the structure of postgraduate medical training evaluation worldwide. However, in contrast to other countries, there have been no scientific studies of the final medical board examination, in Portugal. The present study aimed to evaluate the adequacy of the medical board examination including its validity as measured by its association with medical school grade average and national seriation examination. Material and Methods: Cross-sectional, observational study. We analyzed the final results on the medical board examination of 2439 physicians, across 47 specialties, who completed their training in 2016 and 2017, using measures of central tendency and variability. We assessed the association between these grades and the national exam to initiate residency, and the grade average in Medical School. Results: Measures of central tendency and variability, and consequent shape measures, revealed that the distribution of the scores of the final medical board exam is extremely negatively asymmetric and leptokurtic. A positive association was also found between the results in this exam and the score on national exam to initiate residency, and the grade average in Medical School. Conclusion: Although the medical board examination was, in general, positively associated with scores on the national exam to initiate residency, and the mean final Medical School grades, thus indicating its potential validity, our results demonstrate that this exam presents no satisfactory discriminative capacity. Therefore, there is room to improve the actual postgraduate medical examination model, including changes in its classification system and potentially consider other assessment models

SARS-CoV-2 introductions and early dynamics of the epidemic in Portugal

Genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in Portugal was rapidly implemented by the National Institute of Health in the early stages of the COVID-19 epidemic, in collaboration with more than 50 laboratories distributed nationwide. Methods By applying recent phylodynamic models that allow integration of individual-based travel history, we reconstructed and characterized the spatio-temporal dynamics of SARSCoV-2 introductions and early dissemination in Portugal. Results We detected at least 277 independent SARS-CoV-2 introductions, mostly from European countries (namely the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Italy, and Switzerland), which were consistent with the countries with the highest connectivity with Portugal. Although most introductions were estimated to have occurred during early March 2020, it is likely that SARS-CoV-2 was silently circulating in Portugal throughout February, before the first cases were confirmed. Conclusions Here we conclude that the earlier implementation of measures could have minimized the number of introductions and subsequent virus expansion in Portugal. This study lays the foundation for genomic epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 in Portugal, and highlights the need for systematic and geographically-representative genomic surveillance.We gratefully acknowledge to Sara Hill and Nuno Faria (University of Oxford) and Joshua Quick and Nick Loman (University of Birmingham) for kindly providing us with the initial sets of Artic Network primers for NGS; Rafael Mamede (MRamirez team, IMM, Lisbon) for developing and sharing a bioinformatics script for sequence curation (https://github.com/rfm-targa/BioinfUtils); Philippe Lemey (KU Leuven) for providing guidance on the implementation of the phylodynamic models; Joshua L. Cherry (National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health) for providing guidance with the subsampling strategies; and all authors, originating and submitting laboratories who have contributed genome data on GISAID (https://www.gisaid.org/) on which part of this research is based. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the view of the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Health and Human Services, or the United States government. This study is co-funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia and Agência de Investigação Clínica e Inovação Biomédica (234_596874175) on behalf of the Research 4 COVID-19 call. Some infrastructural resources used in this study come from the GenomePT project (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-022184), supported by COMPETE 2020 - Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation (POCI), Lisboa Portugal Regional Operational Programme (Lisboa2020), Algarve Portugal Regional Operational Programme (CRESC Algarve2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Práticas artísticas no ensino básico e secundário

A matéria-prima de que trata esta revista é base de trabalho para um ensino artístico alargado, estendendo-se fora dos limites da aula, transgredindo os limites formais dos curricula, implicando património e riqueza cultural, sensibilizando para o imaterial, criando públicos apreciadores e também agentes criadores. É toda uma comunidade que se interliga através dos valores imateriais que sempre foram os da arte. A tarefa do educador é muito alargada: exige-se que esteja à altura deste desígnio humanista, que é também um desafio ao destino da humanidade: pela educação artística constroem-se futuros, e sem arte há intolerância, materialismo, indiferença, alienação, morte. Os tempos que se vivem são exigentes. As questões da pós modernidade estão muito acesas, desde as que nos obrigam ao desassossego, como a sustentabilidade e a poluição, como as que nos implicam politicamente, como a justiça, os direitos civis, a desigualdade. Tudo isto é matéria com a qual se amassa um barro que pode ser mais ou menos criativo: trata-se de extrair a matéria-prima com que se pode fazer os blocos que constroem o futuro. Aos profissionais da educação e do ensino, esta consciência, ao mesmo tempo desamparada – os cortes da economia neoliberal transformaram a arte em indústria, e a sua educação em criação de consumidores – e ao mesmo tempo vigilante e interventiva. Os artigos que responderam a esta chamada, respondem, cada um a seu modo, a este desassossego, a este desconforto, a este mal-estar contemporâneo. Dispuseram-se segundo uma sequência que se articula com base em temas afins que se podem descrever sucintamente: Todos os que participaram neste número mostraram a sua matéria-prima, a sua reação à falta que a arte nos faz. A chamada soa, e ressoa, e é necessário que seja por todos ouvida, em todos os países. É simples: as artes estão em perigo. Perigo porque há menos horas, menos professores, menos opções, menos conhecimento. As reduções no horário, a eliminação de disciplinas tão importantes como a história da arte, fazem de cada professor um agente da resistência, um ser mais implicado na sobrevivência da chama da criação. Matéria-prima: matéria para resgatar a verdade humana, a arte, a expressão mais valiosa da sua vaidade. Resgatar o homem que Michel Foucault (1988: 412) vê ameaçado, como um rosto na areia, desenhado à beira-mar.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio