15 research outputs found
Early invasive vulvar squamous cell carcinoma arising in a woman with vulvar pemphigus vulgaris and systemic lupus erythematosus
Pemphigus vulgaris (PV) is an autoimmune blistering disease of the skin and mucous membranes. Genital involvement occurs when most other common sites are concurrently affected or are in remission. Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease that may affect many parts of the body and the skin with occasional bullous lesions. Pemphigus vulgaris and SLE may be associated, albeit rarely. Here, we report the first case of a woman affected with SLE presenting with early invasive squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) arising from Pemphigus Vulgaris of the vulva
An Ecosystem-Based Approach to Assess the Status of a Mediterranean Ecosystem, the Posidonia oceanica Seagrass Meadow
17 páginas, 8 tablas, 3 figurasBiotic indices, which reflect the quality of the environment, are widely used in the marine realm. Sometimes, key species or
ecosystem engineers are selected for this purpose. This is the case of the Mediterranean seagrass Posidonia oceanica, widely
used as a biological quality element in the context of the European Union Water Framework Directive (WFD). The good
quality of a water body and the apparent health of a species, whether or not an ecosystem engineer such as P. oceanica, is
not always indicative of the good structure and functioning of the whole ecosystem. A key point of the recent Marine
Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) is the ecosystem-based approach. Here, on the basis of a simplified conceptual model
of the P. oceanica ecosystem, we have proposed an ecosystem-based index of the quality of its functioning, compliant with
the MSFD requirements. This index (EBQI) is based upon a set of representative functional compartments, the weighting of
these compartments and the assessment of the quality of each compartment by comparison of a supposed baseline. The
index well discriminated 17 sites in the north-western Mediterranean (French Riviera, Provence, Corsica, Catalonia and
Balearic Islands) covering a wide range of human pressure levels. The strong points of the EBQI are that it is easy to
implement, non-destructive, relatively robust, according to the selection of the compartments and to their weighting, and
associated with confidence indices that indicate possible weakness and biases and therefore the need for further field data
acquisition.Peer reviewe