Relationship between Determinants of Health, Equity, and Dimensions of Health Literacy in Patients with Cardiovascular Disease

Background: Health literacy (HL) has been linked to empowerment, use of health services, and equity. Evaluating HL in people with cardiovascular health problems would facilitate the development of suitable health strategies care and reduce inequity. Aim: To investigate the relationship between different dimensions that make up HL and social determinants in patients with cardiovascular disease. Methods: Observational, descriptive, cross-sectional study in patients with cardiovascular disease, aged 50-85 years, accessing primary care services in Valencia (Spain) in 2018-2019. The Health Literacy Questionnaire was used. Results: 252 patients. Age was significantly related with the ability to participate with healthcare providers (p = 0.043), ability to find information (p = 0.022), and understanding information correctly to know what to do (p = 0.046). Level of education was significant for all HL dimensions. Patients without studies scored lower in all dimensions. The low- versus middle-class social relationship showed significant results in all dimensions. Conclusions: In patients with cardiovascular disease, level of education and social class were social determinants associated with HL scores. Whilst interventions at individual level might address some HL deficits, inequities in access to cardiovascular care and health outcomes would remain unjustly balanced unless structural determinants of HL are taken into account

Contenido fenólico de aceites de oliva vírgenes de Sicilia y su efecto sobre la proliferación celular de osteoblastos humanos MG-63

The aim of this study was, first, to investigate the influence of olive variety and elevation of orchards on the phenolic compound content of Sicilian virgin olive oils (VOOs) and, second, to investigate the effects of VOO phenolic extracts on osteoblast cell growth using the human MG-63 osteosarcoma cell line. Olive oil phenolic content and its effect on human osteosarcoma cell proliferation varied according to the type of cultivar and the grove altitude. This variation was also observed within the same type of cultivar. This observation demonstrates that the cultivar and the grove location can significantly affect the chemical composition and bioactivity of virgin olive oil. Although this study supports the hypothesis that virgin olive oil phenolic fractions exert a beneficial effect on bone health, further studies assessing the in vivo accessibility of virgin olive oil phenolic compounds to osteoblast cells should be carried out.El objetivo del presente trabajo es investigar la influencia de la variedad y la altitud del cultivo en el contenido fenólico de aceites de oliva virgen Sicilianos. Asimismo, se ha investigado el efecto de los extractos fenólicos de los aceites en el crecimiento de osteoblastos usando la línea celular de osteosarcoma humano MG-63. El contenido fenólico y el efecto de los extractos analizados en la proliferación de la línea celular osteoblástica muestra una variabilidad consistente de acuerdo con el tipo y la altitud del cultivo. Estos datos demuestran que estas características pueden afectar significativamente la composición química y los efectos en salud del aceite de oliva virgen. Los resultados de este trabajo soportan la hipótesis de que las fracciones fenólicas de los aceites de oliva vírgenes ejercen un efecto beneficioso en la salud ósea. Asimismo, se deben realizar más estudios que establezcan la accesibilidad in vivo de los compuestos fenólicos del aceite de oliva virgen a las células osteoblásticas

The 2011 October Draconids outburst-I. Orbital elements, meteoroid fluxes and 21P/Giacobini-Zinner delivered mass to Earth

On 2011 October 8, the Earth crossed the dust trails left by comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner during its 19th and 20th century perihelion approaches with the comet being close to perihelion. The geometric circumstances of that encounter were thus favourable to produce a meteor storm, but the trails were much older than in the 1933 and 1946 historical encounters. As a consequence the 2011 October Draconid display exhibited several activity peaks with Zenithal Hourly Rates of about 400 meteors h-1. In fact, if the display had not been forecasted, it could have passed almost unnoticed as was strongly attenuated for visual observers due to the Moon. This suggests that most meteor storms of a similar nature could have passed historically unnoticed under unfavourable weather and Moon observing conditions. The possibility of obtaining information on the physical properties of cometary meteoroids penetrating the atmosphere under low geocentric velocity encounter circumstances motivated us to set up a special observing campaign. Added to the Spanish Fireball Network wide-field all-sky and CCD video monitoring, other high-sensitivity 1/2 arcsec black and white CCD videocameras were attached to the modified medium-field lenses for obtaining high-resolution orbital information. The trajectory, radiant and orbital data of October 16 Draconid meteors observed at multiple stations are presented. The results show that the meteors appeared from a geocentric radiant located at α = 263.0 ± 0°.4 and δ =+55.3 ± 0°.3 that is in close agreement with the radiant predicted for the 1873-1894 and the 1900 dust trails. The estimated mass of material from 21P/Giacobini-Zinner delivered to Earth during the 6 h outburst was around950 ±150 kg

A comprehensive dataset of annotated brain metastasis MR images with clinical and radiomic data.

Brain metastasis (BM) is one of the main complications of many cancers, and the most frequent malignancy of the central nervous system. Imaging studies of BMs are routinely used for diagnosis of disease, treatment planning and follow-up. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has great potential to provide automated tools to assist in the management of disease. However, AI methods require large datasets for training and validation, and to date there have been just one publicly available imaging dataset of 156 BMs. This paper publishes 637 high-resolution imaging studies of 75 patients harboring 260 BM lesions, and their respective clinical data. It also includes semi-automatic segmentations of 593 BMs, including pre- and post-treatment T1-weighted cases, and a set of morphological and radiomic features for the cases segmented. This data-sharing initiative is expected to enable research into and performance evaluation of automatic BM detection, lesion segmentation, disease status evaluation and treatment planning methods for BMs, as well as the development and validation of predictive and prognostic tools with clinical applicability

A polymeric nanomedicine diminishes inflammatory events in renal tubular cells

The polyglutamic acid/peptoid 1 (QM56) nanoconjugate inhibits apoptosis by interfering with Apaf-1 binding to procaspase-9. We now describe anti-inflammatory properties of QM56 in mouse kidney and renal cell models. In cultured murine tubular cells, QM56 inhibited the inflammatory response to Tweak, a non-apoptotic stimulus. Tweak induced MCP-1 and Rantes synthesis through JAK2 kinase and NF-kB activation. Similar to JAK2 kinase inhibitors, QM56 inhibited Tweak-induced NF-kB transcriptional activity and chemokine expression, despite failing to inhibit NF-kB-p65 nuclear translocation and NF-kB DNA binding. QM56 prevented JAK2 activation and NF-kB-p65(Ser536) phosphorylation. The anti-inflammatory effect and JAK2 inhibition by QM56 were observed in Apaf-12/2 cells. In murine acute kidney injury, QM56 decreased tubular cell apoptosis and kidney inflammation as measured by downmodulations of MCP-1 and Rantes mRNA expression, immune cell infiltration and activation of the JAK2-dependent inflammatory pathway. In conclusion, QM56 has an anti-inflammatory activity which is independent from its role as inhibitor of Apaf-1 and apoptosis and may have potential therapeutic relevance.This work was supported by grants from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (www.isciii.es), FIS: PI07/0020, CP08/1083, PS09/00447 and ISCIII-RETICS REDINREN RD 06/0016; Sociedad Española de Nefrología (www.senefro.org). Álvaro Ucero, Sergio Berzal and Carlos Ocaña supported by Fundacion Conchita Rabago (www.fundacionconchitarabago.net), Alberto Ortiz by the Programa de Intensificación de la Actividad Investigadora in the Sistema Nacional de Salud of the Instituto de Salud Carlos III and the Agencia ‘‘Pedro Lain Entralgo’’ of the Comunidad de Madrid and CIFRA S-BIO 0283/2006 www.madrid.org/lainentralgo) and Adrián Ramos, by FIS (Programa Miguel Servet)

CIBERER : Spanish national network for research on rare diseases: A highly productive collaborative initiative

Altres ajuts: Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII); Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación.CIBER (Center for Biomedical Network Research; Centro de Investigación Biomédica En Red) is a public national consortium created in 2006 under the umbrella of the Spanish National Institute of Health Carlos III (ISCIII). This innovative research structure comprises 11 different specific areas dedicated to the main public health priorities in the National Health System. CIBERER, the thematic area of CIBER focused on rare diseases (RDs) currently consists of 75 research groups belonging to universities, research centers, and hospitals of the entire country. CIBERER's mission is to be a center prioritizing and favoring collaboration and cooperation between biomedical and clinical research groups, with special emphasis on the aspects of genetic, molecular, biochemical, and cellular research of RDs. This research is the basis for providing new tools for the diagnosis and therapy of low-prevalence diseases, in line with the International Rare Diseases Research Consortium (IRDiRC) objectives, thus favoring translational research between the scientific environment of the laboratory and the clinical setting of health centers. In this article, we intend to review CIBERER's 15-year journey and summarize the main results obtained in terms of internationalization, scientific production, contributions toward the discovery of new therapies and novel genes associated to diseases, cooperation with patients' associations and many other topics related to RD research

Effect of roasting and boiling on the content of vicine, convicine and L-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine in Vicia faba L

The pyrimidine glycosides, vicine and convicine, are compounds of the genus Vicia, whereas their aglycone derivatives, divicine and isouramil, are responsible for favism occurrence, and L-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (L-DOPA) is a nonprotein amino acid precursor of dopamine in healthy neurons. The present work evaluated the effect of thermal treatment, which consisted of roasting and boiling, on the content of vicine, convicine and L-DOPA in mature cotyledons of 10 varieties of Mexican Vicia faba L.;determined the concentration of glycosides and L-DOPA by high-performance liquid chromatography. The raw cotyledons showed 2.88-6.10, 0.63-1.68 and 0.28-0.44 vicine, convicine and L-DOPA, respectively. The 12 and 40% and 30 and 61% decrease in vicine and convicine content, respectively, were observed to be the effect of roasting and boiling the samples. L-DOPA was totally removed by both thermal processes. In all analyzed samples, vicine was the main compound; however, there were significant differences between varieties and thermal treatments. Practical Applications Vicine and convicine glycosides are strongly implicated in favism, a hemolytic anemia in humans, and in poor performance of laying hens. There are reports of decreased egg weight, increase in the fragility of the yolk and a number of blood stains, and decreased fertility and hatchability of eggs. The characterization of new varieties of faba bean in their content of potentially toxic glycosides allows selection of those with the lowest possible content of such compounds. Also, the application of heat treatments that reduce glycosides will allow the use of seeds or flour to develop harmless food and feed ingredients. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc