Therapeutic Effectiveness of Nutrition Therapy in Pediatric Patients with Chronic Liver Diseases Awaiting Liver Transplantation

Abstract It is important to prevent protein/calorie malnutrition in children with end stage liver diseases prior to transplantation. This study involved 34 patients between the ages of 10 and 156 months (mean value 25.69 months 32.2) (13 females and 21 males) on the liver transplant waiting list. Data collected as of three months before transplant and up to ten months after the procedure concerned gender, age, weight, height, Pediatric End Stage Liver Disease Score, baseline pathology, type of nutrition, type of transplant, immunosuppression, pulse steroid therapy, length of stay, and post transplant complications. Linear regression analysis showed that the length of hospital stay was 24.5 days more for females than for males, but also that intensive nutrition therapy shortens this stay for both female patients (P = 0.085) and younger patients (P = 0.023). The study population was divided into two groups according to the different nutritional therapies adopted. The Student’s t-test and Mann-Whitney test evidenced that the group receiving intensive nutrition therapy grew taller compared with the group following an oral diet (mean -1.37 and Prob = 0.043); that females grew taller compared to males (mean -1.65 +/- 0.56); and that there was an increase in height among the children in the group receiving intensive nutrition therapy despite the presence (-1.37 +/- 0.56) or absence (-14.8 +/- 5.44 and Prob = 0.035) of complications, and despite the administration (-1.03 +/- 0.33) or non administration (-1.48 +/- 0.55 and Prob = 0.019) of steroids. Intensive nutrition therapy enhances the velocity of growth in height and shortens the length of hospital stay, thus optimizing the final prognosis of the baseline pathology

Food Chemistry: Food quality and new analytical approaches

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Evaluation of a Multicommuted Flow System for Photometric Environmental Measurements

A portable flow analysis instrument is described for in situ photometric measurements. This system is based on light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and a photodiode detector, coupled to a multipumping flow system. The whole equipment presents dimensions of 25  cm × 22  cm × 10  cm, weighs circa 3 kg, and costs 650 €. System performance was evaluated for different chemistries without changing hardware configuration for determinations of (i) Fe3+ with SCN-, (ii) iodometric nitrite determination, (iii) phenol with sodium nitroprusside, and (iv) 1-naphthol-N-methylcarbamate (carbaryl) with p-aminophenol. The detection limits were estimated as 22, 60, 25, and 60 ng mL -1 for iron, nitrite, phenol, and carbaryl at the 99.7% confidence level with RSD of 2.3, 1.0, 1.8, and 0.8%, respectively. Reagent and waste volumes were lower than those obtained by flow systems with continuous reagent addition. Sampling rates of 100, 110, 65, and 72 determinations per hour were achieved for iron, nitrite, phenol, and carbaryl determination

Identificación de los pólenes en la flora ornamental de la ciudad de Granada (I)

Se ha confeccionado una clave dicotómica para identificar los pólenes de la flora ornamental de la ciudad de Granada, y un glosario de términos que incluye los rasgos morfológicos más destacables de los mismos.A dichotomous key has been designed to identify the pollens from ornamental flora found in the city of Granada, as well as a glossary of terms describing the most outstanding !TIorphological characteristics of each

Identificación de los pólenes en la flora ornamental de la ciudad de Granada (I)

A dichotomous key has been designed to identify the pollens from ornamental flora found in the city of Granada, as well as a glossary of terms describing the most outstanding morphological characteristics of each.Se ha confeccionado una clave dicotómica para identificar los pólenes de la flora ornamental de la ciudad de Granada, y un glosario de términos que incluye los rasgos morfológicos más destacables de los mismos

Adipokines in obesity and metabolic diseases

Adipose tissue secretes many adipokines that regulate important physiological functions. Growing studies have highlighted that these bioactive molecules may contribute to the development of metabolic and cardiovascular diseases. Adipokines exert systemic metabolic effects and independent activity on numerous cells of the cardiovascular system, including cardiomyocytes and vascular cell walls. Adiponectin shows anti-inflammatory and anti-atherosclerotic activity on blood vessels. Conversely, resistin is endowed with pro-inflammatory effects and stimulates the proliferation of smooth muscle cells, thus promoting the development of atherosclerotic plaque. Leptin plays an important role in cardiac remodeling and blood pressure regulation through the activation of the sympathetic system. Obesity is a pathological condition associated with hypertrophy of white adipose tissue, which stimulates the production of pro-inflammatory adipokines while, it reduces the production of anti-inflammatory adipokines. The delicate balance among the production of pro-and anti-inflammatory molecules generated by adipose tissue affects, not only the development of metabolic complications associated with obesity, but also the onset and progression of atherosclerosis. Therefore, adipokines may be regarded as potential agents of clinical interest in the treatment of a wide range of metabolic disorders and as potential biomarkers useful for early detection of metabolic, cardiovascular and inflammatory diseases

Molecular beacon strategies for sensing purpose

The improvement of nucleic acid probes as vital molecular engineering devices will cause a noteworthy contribution to developments in bioimaging, biosensing, and disorders diagnosis. The molecular beacon (MB) which was designed by Tyagi and Kramer in 1996, are loop-stem hairpin-designed oligonucleotides armed with a quencher and a dye (also named reporter groups) at the 30 or 50 ends. This construction allows that MBs in the absence of their target complementary molecules do not fluoresce. Through hybridization with their specific targets a spontaneous configuration change on MBs occur and the dye and quencher separate from each other, resulting in emitting the fluorescence. MBs are effective probes for biosensing because of their extraordinary target-specificity, unique structure, inherent fluorescent signal transduction mechanism, low background fluorescence emission, recognition without separation, and favorable thermodynamic properties. In comparison to other probes (such as linear DNA sequences), MBs with the same number of complementary nucleotides matching their target, are multitasking probes. They have advantages of thermodynamic and photostability, flexible ability for conjugation, higher efficient intrinsic signal switching, and ultra-sensitivity. MBs not only are useful for identifying a nucleic acid target but can also be employed for recognition of various non-nucleic acid goals, including heavy metals and cations, enzymes, cells, ATP, etc. Hence, this review highlights the potential of MBs in the improvement of biosensors and their usage in detection of different analytes such as miRNA, mRNA, cocaine, methamphetamine, actin, thrombin, heavy metal and cations and so on. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Peer reviewe