Portal Hypertension Related to Schistosomiasis Treated with a Transjugular Intrahepatic Portosystemic Shunt

Hepatosplenic schistosomiasis represents the most common form of chronic intestinal schistosomiasis. Liver periportal fibrosis, leading to portal hypertension, is the major cause of disease morbidity and mortality, due to massive bleeding of esophageal or gastric varices.

Could molecular assessment of calcium metabolism be a useful tool to early screen patients at risk for pre-eclampsia complicated pregnancy? Proposal and rationale.

Abstract One of the most frequent causes of maternal and perinatal morbidity is represented by hypertensive disorders during pregnancy. Women at high risk must be subjected to a more intensive antenatal surveillance and prophylactic treatments. Many genetic risk factors, clinical features and biomarkers have been proposed but none of these seems able to prevent pre-eclampsia onset. English literature review of manuscripts focused on calcium intake and hypertensive disorders during pregnancy was performed. We performed a critical analysis of evidences about maternal calcium metabolism pattern in pregnancy analyzing all possible bias affecting studies. Calcium supplementation seems to give beneficial effects on women with low calcium intake. Some evidence reported that calcium supplementation may drastically reduce the percentage of pre-eclampsia onset consequently improving the neonatal outcome. Starting from this evidence, it is intuitive that investigations on maternal calcium metabolism pattern in first trimester of pregnancy could represent a low cost, large scale tool to screen pregnant women and to identify those at increased risk of pre-eclampsia onset. We propose a biochemical screening of maternal calcium metabolism pattern in first trimester of pregnancy to discriminate patients who potentially may benefit from calcium supplementation. In a second step we propose to randomly allocate the sub-cohort of patients with calcium metabolism disorders in a treatment group (calcium supplementation) or in a control group (placebo) to define if calcium supplementation may represent a dietary mean to reduce pre-eclampsia onset and to improve pregnancy outcome

Sero-epidemiological survey of Neospora caninum infection in dogs in north-eastern Italy

Risk factors associated with Neospora caninum seroprevalence in north-eastern Italy in healthy dogs were assessed. Antibodies to N. caninum were found in 10.9% of 707 kennel and owned dogs by a commercial competitive ELISA (VMRD(R) Inc.). All dogs were negative for Leishmania infantum by indirect fluorescent antibody test indicating no cross reactivity or association between the two protozoa in this area. Seroprevalence association with breed and age of dogs and other factors are discussed

Validation of a commercially available cELISA test for canine neosporosis against an indirect fluorescent antibody test (IFAT)

A commercially available competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (cELISA, VMRD (R)) was validated for the detection of Neospora caninum antibodies in the serum of dogs, using as a reference test an indirect fluorescent antibody test (IFAT, Fuller (R)). A partial verification approach Was used. A total of 618 dogs were screened with cELISA and a subset of positive and negative sera (n = 237) were then tested with IFAT. Naive relative sensitivity (SE,) and naive relative specificity (SPnv) of cELISA were calculated and then corrected (SEcorr SPcorr) for studies with partial validation. Results showed a SEnv of 72% and a SPnv of 89.3%; corrected estimates showed a SEcorr of 47% and a SPcorr of 96%. ROC analysis showed that the cutoff recommended by the Manufacturer (30%) corresponded to the highest naive sensitivity (72%) combined with a good naive specificity (90%) of cELISA. Corrected estimates of SE and SP for partial verification method revealed that SE of the cELISA is lower and SP is higher than naive estimates. The results Suggest to use this test for confirmation of a clinical suspicion of neosporosis, and to use some techniques for adjustment of misclassification in prevalence and risk-factor studies

Neosporosis of dogs: sero-epidemiological survey in north-eastern Italy

none5nonenoneCAPELLI G.; NARDELLI S.; FRANGIPANE DI REGALBONO A.; SCALA A.; PIETROBELLI M.Capelli, G.; Nardelli, S.; FRANGIPANE DI REGALBONO, Antonio; Scala, A.; Pietrobelli, Mari