Nasal lavage CCL24 levels correlate with eosinophils trafficking and symptoms in chronic sino-nasal eosinophilic inflammation

OBJECTIVES: The aim of our study was to measure CCL24 (eotaxin-2) levels in nasal lavage fluid of patients with different forms of sinonasal chronic eosinophilic inflammation to verify the relationship with nasal hypereosinophilia and symptoms. METHODS: Patients with nasal hypereosinophilia were randomly recruited and grouped in persistent allergic rhinitis, non-allergic rhinitis with eosinophilia syndrome (NARES) and chronic rhinosinusitis with polyps. Non rhinitic volunteers were recruited as controls. CCL24 concentration was measured by `Quantikine Human CCL24 Immunoassay`. Differential cell counts were performed by microscopic cytological examination of nasal tissue scraped by inferior turbinate. RESULTS: CCL24 levels measured in patient groups were significantly higher compared to control group with the highest levels in NARES patients. Eotaxin- 2 levels were significantly correlated to severity of symptoms and to the percentage of eosinophils in nasal tissue. CONCLUSIONS: We revealed high levels of CCL24 in all patient groups showing a significant correlation with the degree of eosinophilia and clinical symptoms. A prolonged accumulation of CCL24 inside the nasal mucosa may sustain the process of unspecific self-perpetuating eosinophil recruitment pathognomonic of these patients

Cominciare con la Resistenza. Saggi di storici esordienti sul 1943-1945

Ancora nel XXI secolo, dopo più di sessant'anni, la Resistenza anziché trovarsi archiviata tra i monumenti di una ormai lontana storia patria, continua a sollecitare il dibattito pubblico e l'interesse dei giovani studiosi che sono i protagonisti di questo libro.Si può parlare di una politica partigiana? E che rapporto ha avuto con quella dei partiti?. I contributi del volume ruotano intorno a queste domande partendo dai nodi classici - il governo Parri, la svolta di Salerno, la Repubblica di Montefiorino - ma affrontando anche aspetti poco indagati - i sovietici che furono partigiani in Italia o le opinioni dell'"uomo comune" durante il conflitto - per arrivare a toccare i diversi modi di rielaborare la memoria (i romanzi di Fenoglio, il teatro sui partigiani, il museo dedicato ai fratelli Cervi)

Intervista: quando la classe operaia andava in Paradiso. Le sinistre europee nell\u2019\u201cet\ue0 dell\u2019oro\u201d del capitalismo

Quando la classe operaia andava in paradiso. Le sinistre europee nell\u2019\u201cet\ue0 dell\u2019oro\u201d del capitalism

Automated peritumoral edema segmentation in preoperative brain MRI scans

Peritumoral brain edema is a frequently encountered phenomenon that strongly contributes to neurological signs and symptoms. This paper presents a fully automated procedure based on Support Vector Machine for the accurate and efficient edema delineation in brain MRI imagery. The segmentation procedure is conceived fully automatic and specifically oriented to non-volumetric data to facilitate the insertion in clinical practice. The major efforts in building a robust classifier were concentrated in the extraction and selection of a set of significant features from multispectral brain MR images. Preliminary experimental results obtained by processing in-house collected data, are encouraging creating the premises for an effective use of the automated segmentation procedure in brain tumor clinical studies. To see if the proposed supervised method can be considered an alternative to other contemporary approaches, the results obtained were compared with those obtained by an unsupervised region-based segmentation procedure based on Graph Cut

Cardiac rhabdomyosarcoma: a clinicopathologic and electron microscopy study

A 66-year-old woman was admitted to the hospital with a neurological syndrome characterized by ataxia and diplopia. Magnetic resonance of the brain documented an ischemic medullary lesion. Examination of the heart revealed a grade 2/6 systolic murmur at the left sternal border and apex that radiated towards the axilla. The echocardiography study showed a mild mitral regurgitation, and an abnormally enlarged posterior papillary muscle was found in the left ventricle. Two weeks after admission, the patient died suddenly due to a stroke. At autopsy, a recent vast swollen ischemic cerebral infraction was found. Furthermore, two old infarcts were observed in the spleen. A cardiac examination showed a white-gray ulcered mass in the left ventricle and histological analysis revealed a rhabdomyosarcoma

Different structural behaviors evidenced in thaumatin-like proteins: A spectroscopic study

Three proteins belonging to the thaumatin-like proteins family were compared in this study from a structural point of view: zeamatin, a new recently isolated PR-5 from Cassia didymobotrya and the commercial sweet-thaumatin. The former two proteins possess antifungal activities while commercial thaumatin is well known to be a natural sweetener. Intrinsic fluorescence studies have evidenced that the three proteins behave differently in unfolding experiments showing different structural rigidity. All the three proteins are more stable at slight acidic buffers, but sweet-thaumatin has a major tendency to destructurate itself. Similar observations were made from circular dichroism studies where a structural dependence relationship from the pH and the solvent used confirmed a hierarchic scale of stability for the three proteins. These structural differences should be considered to be significant for a functional rol