Neuroimagen y neurobiología de la adicción:un estudio sobre los cambios funcionales cerebrales en personas adictas a las cocaína

Decenes Jornades de Foment de la Investigació de la FCHS (Any 2004-2005)El consumo crónica de cocaína produce una reducción de la dopamina en ciertas áreas cerebrales, provocando una alteración en este sistema. (Volkow y cols., 1999; Wu y cols., 1997). El objetivo de este trabajo es estudiar mediante Resonancia Magnética Funcional, los efectos que el consumo crónico de cocaína provoca sobre el procesamiento emocional. Los participantes (10 pacientes adictos a la cocaína y 10 personas no adictas) realizaron una tarea de procesamiento emocional en la que visualizaban fotografías con contenido emocional positivo, negativo y neutro (Adaptación española del International Affective Pictures System, IAPS, moltó y cols. 2001) como fondo en un tarea de discriminación de letras. Los resultados muestran una menor activación en el núcleo accumbens, giro cingulado anterior y cortex orbitofrontal en personas adictas a la cocaína en comparación al grupo control, ante la visión de imágenes positivas. Mientras que, se observa una menor activación del giro cingulado anterior en pacientes en comparación a los controles, para la visión de imágenes negativas. Estos resultados sugieren que la tarea del IAPS es una buena tarea para activar áreas específicas de recompensa (N.acc y giro orbitofrontal). Y que los pacientes presentan una disfunción en el sistema de recompensa, lugar donde actúa la cocaína tras su administración, liberando dopamina. Esto podría tener como consecuencia una menor sensibilidad de estas personas para los reforzadores naturales

Electrospinning of silica sub-microtubes mats with platinum nanoparticles for NO catalytic reduction

Silica sub-microtubes loaded with platinum nanoparticles have been prepared in flexible non-woven mats using co-axial electrospinning technique. A partially gelated sol made from tetraethyl orthosilicate was used as the silica precursor, and oil was used as the sacrificial template for the hollow channel generation. Platinum has been supported on the wall of the tubes just adding the metallic precursor to the sol–gel, thus obtaining the supported catalyst by one-pot method. The silica tubes have a high aspect ratio with external/internal diameters of 400/200 nm and well-dispersed platinum nanoparticles of around 2 nm. This catalyst showed a high NO conversion with very high selectivity to N2 at mild conditions in the presence of excess oxygen when using C3H6 as reducing agent. This relevant result reveals the potential of this technique to produce nanostructured catalysts onto easy to handle conformations.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under CTQ2012-36408 project

Body-part-specific Representations of Semantic Noun Categories.

Word meaning processing in the brain involves ventrolateral temporal cortex, but a semantic contribution of the dorsal stream, especially frontocentral sensorimotor areas, has been controversial. We here examine brain activation during passive reading of object-related nouns from different semantic categories, notably animal, food, and tool words, matched for a range of psycholinguistic features. Results show ventral stream activation in temporal cortex along with category-specific activation patterns in both ventral and dorsal streams, including sensorimotor systems and adjacent pFC. Precentral activation reflected action-related semantic features of the word categories. Cortical regions implicated in mouth and face movements were sparked by food words, and hand area activation was seen for tool words, consistent with the actions implicated by the objects the words are used to speak about. Furthermore, tool words specifically activated the right cerebellum, and food words activated the left orbito-frontal and fusiform areas. We discuss our results in the context of category-specific semantic deficits in the processing of words and concepts, along with previous neuroimaging research, and conclude that specific dorsal and ventral areas in frontocentral and temporal cortex index visual and affective–emotional semantic attributes of object-related nouns and action-related affordances of their referent objects

ABO blood group system and placental malaria in an area of unstable malaria transmission in eastern Sudan

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Understanding the pathogenesis of malaria in pregnancy and its consequences for both the mother and the baby is fundamental for improving malaria control in pregnant women.</p> <p>Aim</p> <p>The study aimed to investigate the role of ABO blood groups on pregnancy outcomes in an area of unstable malaria transmission in eastern Sudan.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A total of 293 women delivering in New Half teaching hospital, eastern Sudan during the period October 2006–March 2007 have been analyzed. ABO blood groups were determined and placental histopathology examinations for malaria were performed. Birth and placental weight were recorded and maternal haemoglobin was measured.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>114 (39.7%), 61 (22.1%) and 118 (38.2%) women were primiparae, secundiparae and multiparae, respectively. The ABO blood group distribution was 82(A), 59 (B), 24 (AB) and 128 (O). Placental histopathology showed acute placental malaria infections in 6 (2%), chronic infections in 6 (2%), 82 (28.0%) of the placentae showed past infection and 199 (68.0%) showed no infection. There was no association between the age (OR = 1.02, 95% CI = 0.45–2.2; <it>P </it>= 0.9), parity (OR = 0.6, 95% CI = 0.3–1.2; <it>P </it>= 0.1) and placental malaria infections. In all parity blood group O was associated with a higher risk of past (OR = 1.9, 95% CI = 1.1–3.2; <it>P </it>= 0.01) placental malaria infection. This was also true when primiparae were considered separately (OR = 2.6, 95% CI = 1.05–6.5, <it>P </it>= 0.03).</p> <p>Among women with all placental infections/past placental infection, the mean haemoglobin was higher in women with the blood group O, but the mean birth weight, foeto-placental weight ratio was not different between these groups and the non-O group.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These results indicate that women of eastern Sudan are at risk for placental malaria infection irrespective to their age or parity. Those women with blood group O were at higher risk of past placental malaria infection.</p

Type IV collagen drives alveolar epithelial-endothelial association and the morphogenetic movements of septation

Background: Type IV collagen is the main component of the basement membrane that gives strength to the blood-gas barrier (BGB). In mammals, the formation of a mature BGB occurs primarily after birth during alveologenesis and requires the formation of septa from the walls of the saccule. In contrast, in avians, the formation of the BGB occurs rapidly and prior to hatching. Mutation in basement membrane components results in an abnormal alveolar phenotype; however, the specific role of type IV collagen in regulating alveologenesis remains unknown. Results: We have performed a microarray expression analysis in late chick lung development and found that COL4A1 and COL4A2 were among the most significantly upregulated genes during the formation of the avian BGB. Using mouse models, we discovered that mutations in murine Col4a1 and Col4a2 genes affected the balance between lung epithelial progenitors and differentiated cells. Mutations in Col4a1 derived from the vascular component were sufficient to cause defects in vascular development and the BGB. We also show that Col4a1 and Col4a2 mutants displayed disrupted myofibroblast proliferation, differentiation and migration. Lastly, we revealed that addition of type IV collagen protein induced myofibroblast proliferation and migration in monolayer culture and increased the formation of mesenchymal-epithelial septal-like structures in co-culture. Conclusions: Our study showed that type IV collagen and, therefore the basement membrane, play fundamental roles in coordinating alveolar morphogenesis. In addition to its role in the formation of epithelium and vasculature, type IV collagen appears to be key for alveolar myofibroblast development by inducing their proliferation, differentiation and migration throughout the developing septum

Electrosprayed core-shell nanoparticles of PVP and shellac for furnishing biphasic controlled release of ferulic acid

Coaxial electrospraying was explored to organize polymer excipients in a core-shell manner for providing biphasic controlled release of active ingredient. With ferulic acid (FA) as a model drug, and shellac and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) as the core and shell polymeric matrices, core-shell nanoparticles were successfully fabricated. A series of tests were carried out to characterize the prepared core-shell nanoparticles and also the nanoparticles prepared using a single fluid electrospraying of the shell or core fluids alone. The core-shell nanoparticles had an average diameter of 530 ± 80 nm with clear core-shell structure. The contained FA was converted to an amorphous state both in the core and the shell parts due to the favorable hydrogen bonding between the components. In vitro dissolution tests demonstrated that the core-shell nanoparticles were able to provide the desired biphasic drug-controlled release profiles. Coaxial electrospraying is a useful tool for the development of novel nanodrug delivery systems from polymers

Módulo de autoaprendizaje sobre la utilización de preparaciones extemporáneas como herramienta docente en farmacia clínica y atención farmacéutica

Podeu consultar la Vuitena trobada de professorat de Ciències de la Salut completa a: http://hdl.handle.net/2445/66524INTRODUCCIÓN Las preparaciones extemporáneas se incluyen entre los medicamentos complejos que constituyen un motivo de consulta frecuente por parte de la ciudadanía. El objetivo es difundir un nuevo módulo de autoaprendizaje como herramienta docente que pretende reforzar el papel y la competencia profesional de los estudiantes de farmacia en la cartera de servicios profesionales. MATERIAL Y MÉTODOS En el diseño del módulo se decidió la temática (Servicio Profesional de Dispensación de Preparaciones Extemporáneas), elementos de contenido, tipo de visualización (no secuencial) y disponibilidad (acceso abierto). Posteriormente se efectuaron las fases de desarrollo: documentación (Centro de Información ‘online’ de Medicamentos de la AEMPS y base de datos del medicamento del CGCOF), creación del contenido (tipos de preparaciones extemporáneas, procedimientos para su preparación, administración, conservación y posterior eliminación) y edición. El equipo estuvo..

Improvement of fatigue, physical functioning, and well-being among patients with severe impairment at baseline receiving ibrutinib in combination with bendamustine and rituximab for relapsed chronic lymphocytic leukemia/small lymphocytic lymphoma in the HELIOS study.

Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is an important endpoint, especially in clinical trials for malignancies with a long course of disease, such as chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Patient-reported outcomes were examined in the randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled HELIOS study to assess the impact of treatment with the Bruton's tyrosine kinase inhibitor ibrutinib, added to bendamustine plus rituximab (BR) background therapy. Measures included FACIT-Fatigue, EORTC QLQ-C30, QLQ-CLL16, and EQ-5D-5L. Of 578 patients enrolled, 540 (93%) provided FACIT-Fatigue responses at baseline. Most had only a moderate degree of impairment at baseline; mean values did not appear to change over time in either treatment arm, suggesting that adding ibrutinib to BR did not impact health-related quality of life. However, post-hoc analyses showed that subgroups of patients with the worst fatigue, physical functional status, and well-being at baseline had greater improvements in these outcomes with ibrutinib plus BR treatment versus placebo