Dental pathology in present-day and copper age samples

Dental paleopathology has become an excellent discipline to reconstruct the oral health of ancient populations and its trend from the past to the present day, especially regarding dietary habits. Our preliminary research aims to perform a comparative analysis on dental health status of two widely chronologically distant samples from Sardinia: the first one dates back to the Copper Age (III mill. B.C.) and comes from a collective hypogean burial named Scab’e Arriu (Siddi, SU), the second one is composed by extracted teeth of present-day individuals, collected during some traineeships at the Department of Surgical Science of the Dentistry School, in Cagliari

Mesonephric-Like Adenocarcinomas a Rare Tumor: The Importance of Diagnosis

Mesonephric-like adenocarcinomas (MLA) are rare neoplasms that arise in the uterine body and ovary and have been added to the World Health Organisation’s recent 2020 classification of female genital cancers. The pathogenesis of MLA is unknown and it remains debated whether they represent mesonephric carcinomas (Wolffian) arising in the endometrium/ovary or endometrioid carcinomas (Müllerian) closely mimicking mesonephric carcinomas. Here we report the case of a 57-year-old woman with an initial misdiagnosis of endometrioid adenocarcinoma on diagnostic biopsy. The patient came to our clinical evaluation for the appearance of menometrorrhagia complicated by anemia for several months. Therefore, she underwent pelvic echo-flowmetry, with indication for diagnostic hysteroscopy with endometrial biopsy, which yielded a positive result for endometrioid endometrial adenocarcinoma. Following staging CT scan and targeted examinations on pulmonary findings, the patient underwent surgery with surprise of definitive diagnosis deponent for endometrial MLA. Our intention is to establish a brief review of the scientific evidence in the literature and the tools available for a correct histological diagnosis, in the light of the scant anatomopathological evidence. Our question gives rise to the motive for the publication: is immunohistochemistry the right way to resolve the diagnostic error at histology, which is usually the only source of diagnostic certainty? This case is intended to alert of diagnostic error that risked having the patient treated as a neoplasm with a favorable prognosis and low degree of aggressiveness instead of for a very aggressive and poor prognosis tumor such as MLA

Application of latent class analysis in assessing the awareness, attitude, practice and satisfaction of paediatricians on sleep disorder management in children in Italy.

AIM: To identify subgroups regarding paediatricians' awareness, attitude, practice and satisfaction about management of Sleep-Disordered Breathing (SDB) in Italy using Latent Class Analysis (LCA). METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted on a large sample of Italian paediatricians. Using a self-administered questionnaire, the study collected information on 420 Paediatric Hospital Paediatricians (PHPs) and 594 Family Care Paediatricians (FCPs). LCA was used to discover underlying response patterns, thus allowing identification of respondent groups with similar awareness, attitude, practice and satisfaction. A logistic regression model was used to investigate which independent variables influenced latent class membership. Analyses were performed using R 3.5.2 software. A p-value<0.05 was considered statistically significant. RESULTS: Two classes were identified: Class 1 (n = 368, 36.29%) "Untrained and poorly satisfied" and Class 2 (n = 646, 63.71%) "Trained and satisfied." Involving paediatric pneumologists or otorhinolaryngologists in clinical practice was associated with an increased probability of Class 2 membership (OR = 5.88, 95%CI [2.94-13.19]; OR = 15.95, 95% CI [10.92-23.81] respectively). Examining more than 20 children with SDB during the last month decreased the probability of Class 2 membership (OR = 0.29, 95% CI [0.14-0.61]). FCPs showed a higher probability of Class 2 membership than PHPs (OR = 4.64, 95% CI [3.31-6.55]). CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that the LCA approach can provide important information on how education and training could be tailored for different subgroups of paediatricians. In Italy standardized educational interventions improving paediatricians' screening of SDB are needed in order to guarantee efficient management of children with SDB and reduce the burden of disease

Evaluation of an automatic HPLC analyser for thalassemia and haemoglobin variants screening

In this paper the authors report the evolution of a new automatic HPLC analyser for screening haemoglobinopathies. HbA2 and F determinations are accurate and reproducible. The analysis time is short (6.5 min) and there is a good separation between the HbA2 values of β-thalassemia carriers from normals and α-thalassemia carriers, with no overlap between these groups. In addition, the system is also able to detect and quantitate most of the haemoglobin variants, particularly those (HbS, HbC, HbE and Hb Lepore) able to interact with β-thalassemia and could make haemoglobin electrophoresis unnecessary in all samples. The ease of operation and the limited technical work make this system especially suitable for laboratories with a high workload and allow the cost of screening to be reduced

Quinoxaline chemistry. Part 11. 3-phenyl-2[phenoxy- and phenoxymethyl]-6(7) or 6,8-substituted quinoxalines and N-[4-(6(7)-substituted or 6,8-disubstituted-3-phenylquinoxalin-2-yl)hydroxy or hydroxymethyl]benzoylglutamates. Synthesis and evaluation of in

Twenty-four out of twenty-nine quinoxalines were selected at the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Md, USA, for in vitro anticancer screening. Among these, 10 derivatives exhibited high values of percent tumor growth inhibition at a concentration of 10(-4) M in all cancer cell lines. Four of these compounds maintained these values at 10(-5) M, whereas a certain number exhibited significant values of percent inhibition at the most diluted concentrations (10(-8)-10(-6) M). Inhibitory activity against dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) (bovine and rat liver) was determined for the most active compounds. This test showed that this type of quinoxaline exhibited an appreciable activity in comparison with the previously described aza analogues. In the other test (Lactobacillus casei, thymidylate synthase (TS), human HTS) no or poor activity was detected in both series of compounds. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved

Synthesis of N-(5,7-diamino-3-phenyl-quinoxalin-2-yl)-3,4,5-substituted anilines and N-[4[(5,7-diamino-3-phenylquinoxalin-2-yl)amino]benzoyl]-l-glutamic acid diethyl ester: evaluation of in vitro anti-cancer and anti-folate activities

Several diamino quinoxalines were designed, synthesized and evaluated as anti-tumor agents. Two compounds showed the most potent cytotoxic activities against the leukemia CCRF-CEM cell line (GI50 < 0.01 μM) and the ovarian cancer cell line OVCAR-4 (GI50 = 0.03 μM), respectively, with comparable/better activities than Methotrexate (MTX). Docking calculations of the complexes of hDHFR with the most active compounds identified the binding mode of the described molecules with respect to MTX

Quinoxaline chemistry. Part 15. 4-[2-Quinoxalylmethylenimino]-benzoylglutamates and -benzoates, 4-[2-quinoxalylmethyl-N-methylamino]-benzoylglutamates as analogues of classical antifolate agents. Synthesis, elucidation of structures and in vitro evaluati

We report on an extension of our previous discovery of in vitro anticancer activity of trifluoromethylquinoxalines as analogues of classical and non-classical antifolic methotrexate and trimetrexate. In this case a small number of Schiff bases were obtained from the reaction of 2-bromethyl-3-R-6(7)trifluoromethylquinoxaline and ethyl p-aminobenzoylglutamate, ethyl p-aminobenzoate, p-toluidine instead of the expected 4-[2-quinoxalyl]methyl-N-methylanilino derivatives, which in turn formed with N-methylanilino derivatives. The reaction mechanism has been put forward. Structure elucidation of both Schiff bases and N-methylanilino analogues was achieved by a combination of 1H and 13C NMR spectra and hetcor experiments. Compounds 3a, 3b, 3c, 8, 11, 12, 13, Ie were tested in antifolic enzyme assay [Lactobacillus casei (LcTS), Leishmania major (LmTs), human Thymidylate synthase (hTs), human TS, human dihydrofolate reductase (hDHFR)] while compounds 3a, 3b, 3c were tested for anticancer activity. These results seem to indicate that the Schiff bases are somewhat active either as anticancer or as folate inhibitors, while compound Ie was selectively active against hDHFR with an inhibition constant (Ki) of 200 nM with a specificity of about 1000-folds with respect to hTS

Interaction of heterozygous beta zero-thalassemia with single functional alpha-globin gene

In this study, we analyzed the phenotypic manifestations resulting from the interaction of heterozygous beta zero-thalassemia(beta zero-39 nonsense mutation) with the functional loss of three alpha-globin structural genes in six subjects, of whom four had the [-alpha/--]alpha-globin genotype and two the [--/alpha Th alpha] alpha-globin genotype. The beta-thalassemia defect was in all cases the nonsense mutation at codon 39. The nondeletion alpha-thalassemia alpha th was the initiation codon mutation (AUG----GUG) of the alpha-2 gene. In all these subjects hypochromia and microcytosis were more marked than in beta zero-thalassemia heterozygotes with a full complement of four alpha-globin genes. All but one had moderate anemia. The alpha:beta globin chain synthesis ratios were consistently decreased. No cases had Hb H on electrophoresis. Subjects with [--/alpha Th alpha] alpha-globin genotype had more severe thalassemia-like manifestations than those with [--/-alpha] alpha-globin genotyp