Microchimerism in Sjögren's syndrome.

[No abstract available

Abóbora-gila (cucurbita ficifolia), uma hortaliça pouco convencional cultivada no Rio Grande do Sul.

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Thalidomide: Focus on its employment in rheumatologic diseases

Thalidomide is an immunomodulatory agent; although its mechanisms of action are not fully understood, many authors have described its anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive properties. More interestingly, thalidomide has shown the ability to suppress tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα) production and to modify the expression of TNFα induced adhesion molecules on endothelial cells and on human leukocytes. Thalidomide has been used in several diseases (i.e. dermatological, autoimmune, gastrointestinal). In this review we focus specifically on the use of this drug in disorders with rheumatological features such as lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis and Still's disease, ankylosing spondylitis, and Behçet's disease. Despite its well known side effects, first of all peripheral nerve involvement and teratogenesis, which can be avoided by following strict guidelines, thalidomide could represent an alternative drug in some rheumatological conditions, particularly in patients who show resistance, contraindication or toxicity with other conventional treatments

Characterizing rings in terms of the extent of injectivity and projectivity of their modules

Given a ring R, we define its right i-profile (resp. right p-profile) to be the collection of injectivity domains (resp. projectivity domains) of its right R-modules. We study the lattice theoretic properties of these profiles and consider ways in which properties of the profiles may determine the structure of rings and viceversa. We show that the i-profile is isomorphic to an interval of the lattice of linear filters of right ideals of R, and is therefore modular and coatomic. In particular, we give a practical characterization of the i-profile of a right artinian ring. We show through an example that the p-profile is not necessarily a set, and also characterize the right p-profile of a right perfect ring. The study of rings in terms of their (i- or p-)profile was inspired by the study of rings with no (i- or p-) middle class, initiated in recent papers by Er, L\'opez-Permouth and S\"okmez, and by Holston, L\'opez-Permouth and Orhan-Ertas. In this paper, we obtain further results about these rings and we also use our results to provide a characterization of a special class of QF-rings in which the injectivity and projectivity domains of any module coincide.Comment: 19 pages, examples and propositions added. Title change

Transcranial cerebellar direct current stimulation (tcDCS): motor control, cognition, learning and emotions

The neurological manifestations of cerebellar diseases range from motor to cognitive or behavioral abnormalities. Experimental data in healthy subjects extend the cerebellar role to learning, emotional and mood control. The need for a non-invasive tool to influence cerebellar function in normal and pathological conditions led researchers to develop transcranial cerebellar direct current stimulation (tcDCS). tcDCS, like tDCS, depends on the principle that weak direct currents delivered at around 2. mA for minutes over the cerebellum through surface electrodes induce prolonged changes in cerebellar function. tcDCS modulates several cerebellar skills in humans including motor control, learning and emotional processing. tcDCS also influences the cerebello-brain interactions induced by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), walking adaptation, working memory and emotional recognition. Hence tcDCS is a simple physiological tool that can improve our physiological understanding of the human cerebellum, and should prove useful also in patients with cerebellar dysfunction or psychiatric disorders and those undergoing neurorehabilitation to enhance neuroplasticity

Spinal direct current stimulation modulates the activity of gracile nucleus and primary somatosensory cortex in anaesthetized rats

Afferent somatosensory activity from the spinal cord has a profound impact on the activity of the brain. Here we investigated the effects of spinal stimulation using direct current, delivered at the thoracic level, on the spontaneous activity and on the somatosensory evoked potentials of the gracile nucleus, which is the main entry point for hindpaw somatosensory signals reaching the brain from the dorsal columns, and of the primary somatosensory cortex in anaesthetized rats. Anodal spinal direct current stimulation (sDCS) increased the spontaneous activity and decreased the amplitude of evoked responses in the gracile nucleus, whereas cathodal sDCS produced the opposite effects. At the level of the primary somatosensory cortex, the changes in spontaneous activity induced by sDCS were consistent with the effects observed in the gracile nucleus, but the changes in cortical evoked responses were more variable and state dependent. Therefore, sDCS can modulate in a polarity-specific manner the supraspinal activity of the somatosensory system, offering a versatile bottom-up neuromodulation technique that could potentially be useful in a number of clinical applications