Estudio de la eficacia antihipertensiva y tolerancia del bopindolol (LT 31-200) en pacientes hipertensos

Se ha realizado un estudio abierto con dosis crecientes de bopindolol, beta-bloqueante no selectivo de vida media larga, en pacientes con hipertensión arterial leve y moderada para valorar la eficacia y seguridad del tratamiento a corto y largo plazo. Se incluyeron 20 pacientes (12 mujeres y 8 varones) con edades comprendidas entre 36 y 62 años (x ± SD 51,6 ± 7,6) cuyas TA fueron superiores a 160 mm de Hg para la sistólica y entre 90 y 125 mm de Hg para la diastólica (x ± SD 165 ± 7,2 y 102,6 ± 6,7 respectivamente). Todos los pacientes fueron informados de las características del estudio y dieron su consentimiento por escrito para participar en el mismo. Tras la anamnesis y exploración física correspondientes se realizaron pruebas analíticas y complementarias con la finalidad de descartar patología asociada. Diecinueve de los veinte pacientes (95 %) respondieron satisfactoriamente tras 20 semanas de tratamiento con bopindolol oral una vez al día observándose diferencias estadísticamente significativas (p ≤ 0,001) a la 4.ª semana de tratamiento respecto a las cifras tensionales del período placebo (TA sistólica media 141,2 ± 17, TA diastólica media 87,22 ± 6,5). Resultados similares fueron obtenidos respecto a la frecuencia cardiaca. Las cifras de HDL-colesterol aumentaron significativamente (p ≤ 0,001) al igual que el cociente HDL-colesterol/colesterol total. No hubo variaciones importantes respecto al resto de parámetros estudiados. La tolerancia clínica fue buena en general, aunque algunos pacientes refirieron cefalea, somnolencia y náuseas, de intensidad moderada que no precisaron suspender el tratamiento

Texture-Based Analysis of 18F-Labeled Amyloid PET Brain Images

Amyloid positron emission tomography (PET) brain imaging with radiotracers like [18F]florbetapir (FBP) or [18F]flutemetamol (FMM) is frequently used for the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. Quantitative analysis is usually performed with standardized uptake value ratios (SUVR), which are calculated by normalizing to a reference region. However, the reference region could present high variability in longitudinal studies. Texture features based on the grey-level co-occurrence matrix, also called Haralick features (HF), are evaluated in this study to discriminate between amyloid-positive and negative cases. A retrospective study cohort of 66 patients with amyloid PET images (30 [18F]FBP and 36 [18F]FMM) was selected and SUVRs and 6 HFs were extracted from 13 cortical volumes of interest. Mann–Whitney U-tests were performed to analyze differences of the features between amyloid positive and negative cases. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were computed and their area under the curve (AUC) was calculated to study the discriminatory capability of the features. SUVR proved to be the most significant feature among all tests with AUCs between 0.692 and 0.989. All HFs except correlation also showed good performance. AUCs of up to 0.949 were obtained with the HFs. These results suggest the potential use of texture features for the classification of amyloid PET image

A bibliometric study of the literature on technological innovation: an analysis of 60 international academic journals

This paper aims to contribute to the debate on technological innovation, organization and work. Although technological innovation remained a debated topic in the academic literature during the past years, its implications for organizational processes seem still not sufficiently theorized and empirically investigated. By using two complementary journals’ rankings a search in the ISI Web of Science platform from 1985 through 2013 was performed. To analyze the 998 scientific retrieved contributions a bibliometric analysis has been conducted, adopting also Social Network Analysis tools. Our results reveal a significant growth of the technological innovation literature over the investigated period, the multidisciplinarity of the field and, particularly, the relevance of management and business & economics contributions. Overall, this study offers a broad overview of the literature on technological innovation and emphasizes the opportunity to investigate the role of technological innovation within the organizational life.This paper aims to contribute to the debate on technological innovation, organization and work. Although technological innovation remained a debated topic in the academic literature during the past years, its implications for organizational processes seem still not sufficiently theorized and empirically investigated. By using two complementary journals’ rankings a search in the ISI Web of Science platform from 1985 through 2013 was performed. To analyze the 998 scientific retrieved contributions a bibliometric analysis has been conducted, adopting also Social Network Analysis tools. Our results reveal a significant growth of the technological innovation literature over the investigated period, the multidisciplinarity of the field and, particularly, the relevance of management and business & economics contributions. Overall, this study offers a broad overview of the literature on technological innovation and emphasizes the opportunity to investigate the role of technological innovation within the organizational life.Monograph's chapter

Assessment of Cardiovascular Fibrosis Using Novel Fluorescent Probes

Cardiovascular fibrosis resulted from pressure overload or ischemia could alter myocardial stiffness and lead to ventricular dysfunction. Fluorescently labeled collagen-binding protein CNA 35, derived from the surface component of Staphylococcus aureus, and a novel synthetic biphenylalanine containing peptide are applied to stain fibrosis associated collagen and myocytes, respectively. Detailed pathological characteristics of cardiovascular fibrosis could be identified clearly in 2 hours. This staining pair requires only simple staining and brief washing, generating less than 10 ml of waste. The image information collected by this novel fluorescent staining pair is compatible with it collected by the traditional Masson's Trichrome and Picrosirius Red staining which are widely used to stain cardiovascular fibrosis and isolated cells

The Maristán stigma scale: a standardized international measure of the stigma of schizophrenia and other psychoses

Background: People with schizophrenia face prejudice and discrimination from a number of sources including professionals and families. The degree of stigma perceived and experienced varies across cultures and communities. We aimed to develop a cross-cultural measure of the stigma perceived by people with schizophrenia.Method: Items for the scale were developed from qualitative group interviews with people with schizophrenia in six countries. The scale was then applied in face-to-face interviews with 164 participants, 103 of which were repeated after 30 days. Principal Axis Factoring and Promax rotation evaluated the structure of the scale; Horn’s parallel combined with bootstrapping determined the number of factors; and intra-class correlation assessed test-retest reliability.Results: The final scale has 31 items and four factors: informal social networks, socio-institutional, health professionals and self-stigma. Cronbach’s alpha was 0.84 for the Factor 1; 0.81 for Factor 2; 0.74 for Factor 3, and 0.75 for Factor 4. Correlation matrix among factors revealed that most were in the moderate range [0.31-0.49], with the strongest occurring between perception of stigma in the informal network and self-stigma and there was also a weaker correlation between stigma from health professionals and self-stigma. Test-retest reliability was highest for informal networks [ICC 0.76 [0.67 -0.83]] and self-stigma [ICC 0.74 [0.64-0.81]]. There were no significant differences in the scoring due to sex or age. Service users in Argentina had the highest scores in almost all dimensions.Conclusions: The MARISTAN stigma scale is a reliable measure of the stigma of schizophrenia and related psychoses across several cultures. A confirmatory factor analysis is needed to assess the stability of its factor structure.We are also grateful for support from the Pan-American Health Office (PAHO), Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust and University College London (UCL)

The LARGE Principle of Cellular Reprogramming: Lost, Acquired and Retained Gene Expression in Foreskin and Amniotic Fluid-Derived Human iPS Cells

Human amniotic fluid cells (AFCs) are routinely obtained for prenatal diagnostics procedures. Recently, it has been illustrated that these cells may also serve as a valuable model system to study developmental processes and for application in regenerative therapies. Cellular reprogramming is a means of assigning greater value to primary AFCs by inducing self-renewal and pluripotency and, thus, bypassing senescence. Here, we report the generation and characterization of human amniotic fluid-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (AFiPSCs) and demonstrate their ability to differentiate into the trophoblast lineage after stimulation with BMP2/BMP4. We further carried out comparative transcriptome analyses of primary human AFCs, AFiPSCs, fibroblast-derived iPSCs (FiPSCs) and embryonic stem cells (ESCs). This revealed that the expression of key senescence-associated genes are down-regulated upon the induction of pluripotency in primary AFCs (AFiPSCs). By defining distinct and overlapping gene expression patterns and deriving the LARGE (Lost, Acquired and Retained Gene Expression) Principle of Cellular Reprogramming, we could further highlight that AFiPSCs, FiPSCs and ESCs share a core self-renewal gene regulatory network driven by OCT4, SOX2 and NANOG. Nevertheless, these cell types are marked by distinct gene expression signatures. For example, expression of the transcription factors, SIX6, EGR2, PKNOX2, HOXD4, HOXD10, DLX5 and RAXL1, known to regulate developmental processes, are retained in AFiPSCs and FiPSCs. Surprisingly, expression of the self-renewal-associated gene PRDM14 or the developmental processes-regulating genes WNT3A and GSC are restricted to ESCs. Implications of this, with respect to the stability of the undifferentiated state and long-term differentiation potential of iPSCs, warrant further studies

Amniocytes can serve a dual function as a source of iPS cells and feeder layers

Clinical barriers to stem-cell therapy include the need for efficient derivation of histocompatible stem cells and the zoonotic risk inherent to human stem-cell xenoculture on mouse feeder cells. We describe a system for efficiently deriving induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells from human and mouse amniocytes, and for maintaining the pluripotency of these iPS cells on mitotically inactivated feeder layers prepared from the same amniocytes. Both cellular components of this system are thus autologous to a single donor. Moreover, the use of human feeder cells reduces the risk of zoonosis. Generation of iPS cells using retroviral vectors from short- or long-term cultured human and mouse amniocytes using four factors, or two factors in mouse, occurs in 5–7 days with 0.5% efficiency. This efficiency is greater than that reported for mouse and human fibroblasts using similar viral infection approaches, and does not appear to result from selective reprogramming of Oct4+ or c-Kit+ amniocyte subpopulations. Derivation of amniocyte-derived iPS (AdiPS) cell colonies, which express pluripotency markers and exhibit appropriate microarray expression and DNA methylation properties, was facilitated by live immunostaining. AdiPS cells also generate embryoid bodies in vitro and teratomas in vivo. Furthermore, mouse and human amniocytes can serve as feeder layers for iPS cells and for mouse and human embryonic stem (ES) cells. Thus, human amniocytes provide an efficient source of autologous iPS cells and, as feeder cells, can also maintain iPS and ES cell pluripotency without the safety concerns associated with xenoculture