Family Archives in Mesopotamia during the Old Babylonian Period

The distinction between legal and administrative documents or letters, that have been used since the beginning of assyriological studies, may help understand archival documents taken separately. However, analysing archives as a whole by (re)constructing files and dossiers is the only way to make sense with documents of different natures, as they were sorted, filed, and kept by those who produced them. After a general presentation of the Old Babylonian archival documentation, this paper investigates the function and motivation of family archives and archival documents, introducing another typological distinction : among the large mass of sealed documents, which record the responsibility of persons regarding authority, whether legal or administrative, we should distinguish between documents of limited validity, recording temporary arrangements between persons, and documents of unlimited validity establishing permanent status of persons and properties, which compose the core of Old Babylonian family archives. A third class of archival texts, without any sealings, served other purposes in the archives, recording the memory of domestic bookkeeping or of archival activities as such

Önhan Tunca & Abd el-Massih Hanna Baghdo (éd.), Chagar Bazar (Syrie) III. Les trouvailles épigraphiques et sigillographiques du chantier I (2000-2002)

Ce troisième volume des rapports de la mission syro-belge de Chagar Bazar (Syrie) constitue assurément un exemple à suivre en matière de publication de documentation cunéiforme issue de fouilles régulières. Une introduction replace les documents dans leur contexte archéologique (1re partie) ; une édition critique des documents donne pour chacun d’eux une transcription, une traduction et des notes philologiques et bibliographiques (2e partie) ; un important commentaire fait état des connaissan..

Phytalgic®, a food supplement, vs placebo in patients with osteoarthritis of the knee or hip: a randomised double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial

International audienceINTRODUCTION: The medicinal treatment of osteoarthritis (OA) is mostly symptomatic to relieve pain and incapacity with analgesics and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), drugs with well-known risks. Complementary medicines might reduce the symptoms of OA and decrease the need for NSAIDs. This study tested the effects of a food supplement, Phytalgic, on pain and function in patients with osteoarthritis and their use of analgesic and NSAIDs. METHODS: A randomized double-blind parallel-groups clinical trial compared Phytalgic (fish-oil, vitamin E, Urtica dioica) to a placebo for three months, in 81 patients with OA of the knee or hip using NSAIDs and/or analgesics regularly. The main outcome measures were use of NSAIDs (in Defined Daily Doses per day - DDD/day) or analgesics (in 500 mg paracetamol-equivalent tablets per week (PET/week) measured each month, and Western Ontario-McMaster University Osteo-Arthritis Index (WOMAC) function scales. RESULTS: After three months of treatment, the mean use of analgesics in the active arm (6.5 PET/week) vs. the placebo arm (16.5) was significantly different (P < 0.001) with a group mean difference of -10.0 (95% CI: -4.9 to -15.1). That of NSAIDs in the active arm (0.4 DDD/day) vs the placebo arm (1.0 DDD/day) was significantly different (P = 0.02) with a group mean difference of - 0.7 DDD/day (95% CI: -0.2 to -1.2). Mean WOMAC scores for pain, stiffness and function in the active arm (respectively 86.5, 41.4 and 301.6) vs the placebo arm (resp. 235.3, 96.3 and 746.5) were significantly different (P < 0.001) with group mean differences respectively of -148.8 (95% CI: -97.7 to -199.9), -54.9 (95% CI: -27.9 to -81.9) and -444.8 (95% CI: -269.1 to -620.4). CONCLUSIONS: The food supplement tested appeared to decrease the need for analgesics and NSAIDs and improve the symptoms of osteoarthritis. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Clinicaltrials.gov NCT00666523

Cytoplasmic PAR-3 protein expression is associated with adverse prognostic factors in clear cell renal cell carcinoma and independently impacts survival.

International audienceClear cell renal cell carcinomas (ccRCCs) represent 70% of renal cancers, and several clinical and histolopathological factors are implicated in their prognosis. We recently demonstrated that the overexpression of PAR-3 protein encoded by the PARD3 gene could be implicated in renal oncogenesis. The object of this work was to study the association of intratumoral PAR-3 expression with known prognostic parameters and clinical outcome. In this aim, PAR-3 expression was assessed by immunohistochemistry in ccRCC tumors of 101 patients from 2003 to 2005. The immunostaining of PAR-3 was scored either as membranous (mPAR-3) or as both membranous and cytoplasmic (cPAR-3). Cytoplasmic PAR-3 was significantly associated with worse histopathological and clinical prognostic factors: Fuhrman grades 3 and 4, tumor necrosis, sarcomatoid component, adrenal invasion, renal and hilar fat invasion, eosinophilic component, a noninactivated VHL gene, higher tumor grade, lymph node involvement, metastasis, and worse clinical Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group and S classification scores. After multivariate analysis, 2 parameters were independently associated with cPAR-3: necrosis and eosinophilic components. In addition, cPAR-3 patients had shorter overall and progression-free survivals independently from strong prognostic validated factors like metastases. A cytoplasmic expression of PAR-3 is therefore implicated in worse clinical and pathological cancer features in ccRCC and could be useful to identify patients with high-risk tumors

Wild-type VHL Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinomas Are a Distinct Clinical and Histologic Entity: A 10-Year Follow-up

International audienceBackground: Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is an aggressive tumor with 50% risk of metastases at initial diagnosis or at follow-up. An inactivation of the tumor-suppressor gene von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) is present in &gt;70% of sporadic cases by two of three different mechanisms: locus deletion, gene mutation, or promoter hypermethylation. Objective: To correlate the complete status of the VHL gene with clinical and pathologic criteria. Design, setting, and participants We retrospectively included 98 patients with ccRCC who underwent surgery between 2002 and 2005. VHL gene deletions (71 of 98; 72.4%), mutations (68 of 98; 69.4%), and promoter hypermethylations (13 of 98; 13.3%) were screened by gene copy analysis, gene sequencing, and methylation-specific multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification, respectively. Outcome measurements and statistical analysis Relationships between VHL subgroups and the studied criteria were analyzed using chi-square and Student t tests. Survival was analyzed with the log-rank test and Kaplan-Meier curves. Results and limitations: Compared with ccRCCs with two events (66.3%), tumors with no or one genetic event (33.6%) were associated with a higher nuclear grade IV (p = 0.02), metastases (p = 0.04), sarcomatoid component (p = 0.01), dense lymphocyte infiltrate (p = 0.013), and vascular endothelial growth factor overexpression (&gt;30%) (p = 0.003), which was also an independent factor after multivariate analysis. Furthermore, wild-type VHL tumors (no inactivating event, 11.2%) were associated with nodal involvement (p = 0.019), and patients with this type of tumor had a specific survival of 33 mo compared with patients with ccRCCs having one or two VHL inactivating events (107 mo; p = 0.016). The retrospective design with small number of wild-type tumors was a limitation of this work. Conclusions: This long-term study (10-yr clinical follow-up) confirms that ccRCCs with wild-type VHL are highly aggressive tumors that need to be formally identified. Patient summary Among activated VHL tumors, the wild-type subgroup defines an aggressive phenotype with worse survival rates, suggesting that these tumors must be more thoroughly screene

The SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics' resources: focus on curated databases

The SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (www.isb-sib.ch) provides world-class bioinformatics databases, software tools, services and training to the international life science community in academia and industry. These solutions allow life scientists to turn the exponentially growing amount of data into knowledge. Here, we provide an overview of SIB's resources and competence areas, with a strong focus on curated databases and SIB's most popular and widely used resources. In particular, SIB's Bioinformatics resource portal ExPASy features over 150 resources, including UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot, ENZYME, PROSITE, neXtProt, STRING, UniCarbKB, SugarBindDB, SwissRegulon, EPD, arrayMap, Bgee, SWISS-MODEL Repository, OMA, OrthoDB and other databases, which are briefly described in this article

Les attentes imaginées du public, facteur d’autorégulation du français des journalistes

info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublishe