Endometriosis: A Rare Cause of Large Bowel Obstruction.

Large bowel obstruction can result in significant morbidity and mortality, especially in cases of acute complete obstruction. There are many possible causes, the most common in adults being colorectal cancer. Endometriosis is a benign disease, and the most affected extragenital location is the bowel, especially the rectosigmoid junction. However, transmural involvement and acute occlusion are very rare events. We report an exceptional case of acute large bowel obstruction as the initial presentation of endometriosis. The differential diagnosis of colorectal carcinoma may be challenging, and this case emphasizes the need to consider intestinal endometriosis in females at a fertile age presenting with gastrointestinal symptoms and an intestinal mass causing complete large bowel obstruction.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Viscoelastic monitoring of starch-based biomaterials in simulated physiological conditions

Dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) was used to investigate the solid-state rheological behaviour in a starch-based thermoplastic aimed to be used in different biomedical applications. The tested samples were processed by different injection moulding procedures. The dry samples were immersed in a simulated physiological solution and the relevant viscoelastic parameters were monitored against time. The decrease of stiffness due to swelling can be followed in real time, being less pronounced for the composite sample with hydroxyapatite (HA). The temperature control of the liquid bath was found to be very good. Frequency scans were also performed in wet conditions in samples previously immersed during different times, indicating that DMA is a suitable method to control in-vitro the changes on the viscoelastic properties of biomaterials during degradation

Finite-size effects in roughness distribution scaling

We study numerically finite-size corrections in scaling relations for roughness distributions of various interface growth models. The most common relation, which considers the average roughness $$as scaling factor, is not obeyed in the steady states of a group of ballistic-like models in 2+1 dimensions, even when very large system sizes are considered. On the other hand, good collapse of the same data is obtained with a scaling relation that involves the root mean square fluctuation of the roughness, which can be explained by finite-size effects on second moments of the scaling functions. We also obtain data collapse with an alternative scaling relation that accounts for the effect of the intrinsic width, which is a constant correction term previously proposed for the scaling of$$. This illustrates how finite-size corrections can be obtained from roughness distributions scaling. However, we discard the usual interpretation that the intrinsic width is a consequence of high surface steps by analyzing data of restricted solid-on-solid models with various maximal height differences between neighboring columns. We also observe that large finite-size corrections in the roughness distributions are usually accompanied by huge corrections in height distributions and average local slopes, as well as in estimates of scaling exponents. The molecular-beam epitaxy model of Das Sarma and Tamborenea in 1+1 dimensions is a case example in which none of the proposed scaling relations works properly, while the other measured quantities do not converge to the expected asymptotic values. Thus, although roughness distributions are clearly better than other quantities to determine the universality class of a growing system, it is not the final solution for this task.Comment: 25 pages, including 9 figures and 1 tabl

Chemistry and applications of phosphorylated chitin and chitosan

Chitin and chitosan are natural based non-toxic, biodegradable and biocompatible polymers and have been used in biomedical areas in the form of sutures, wound healing materials and artificial skin, and for the sustained release of drugs as well as in various industrial applications. However, practical use of these polymers has been mainly confined to the unmodified forms. Recently, there has been a growing interest in chemical modification of chitin and chitosan to improve their solubility and widen their applications. Among them, phosphorylated chitin and chitosan have attracted considerable interest because of their various advantages: anti-inflammatory property, ability to form metal complexes, blood compatibility and formation of anionic polyelectrolyte hydrogels. The purpose of this review is to take a closer look of different synthetic methods of phosphorylated chitin and chitosan and their potential applications in environmental, food, fuel cell, and biomedical fields. Based on current research and existing products, some new and futuristic approaches in this context area are discussed.R. Jayakumar acknowledges the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology for providing him a Post-Doc scholarship (SFRH/BPD/14670/2003). This work was partially supported by FCT Foundation for Science and Technology, through funds from the POCTI and/or FEDER program. This work was partially supported by the European Union funded STREP Project HIPPOCRATES (NMP3-CT-2003-505758)

Synthesis and characterization of N-methylenephenyl phosphonic chitosan

Chitosan is a natural based polymer obtained by alkaline deacetylation of chitin, exhibiting excellent properties such as non‐toxicity, biocompatibility and biodegradability. N‐Methylenephenyl phosphonic chitosan (NMPPC) is synthesized from chitosan by reacting with phenyl phosphonic acid using formaldehyde. The NMPPC was characterized by FTIR, 31P‐NMR, X‐ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, thermogravimeteric analysis and solubility studies. A significant decrease of molecular weight was observed in the NMPPC. The TGA studies suggested that NMPPC has less thermal stability than chitosan. The X‐ray diffraction analysis showed that NMPPC was amorphous in nature. The solubility property of the polymer was improved after the incorporation of a phenyl phosphonic grou

Innovative approach for producing injectable, biodegradable materials using chitooligosaccharides and green chemistry

Although there are a number of injectable biomaterials currently under development, they present some drawbacks such as being based on synthetic polymers, needing toxic or aggressive synthesis procedures or using raw materials with low availability and/or high production costs. Having this in mind, a novel injectable biomaterial using chitooligosaccharides as starting materials was developed. This system uses a widely available and cheap polymer from marine biomass (chitosan), which can be turned into an injectable material by water-based and ecologically friendly reactions. Chitooligosaccharides were functionalized with methacrylic groups, to allow in situ crosslinking. The degree of substitution, as determined by 1H NMR, varied between 5 and 50%. The system was characterized in terms of kinetics of gel formation, rheology, degradation behavior and in vitro cytotoxicity. The gelation time could be easily tailored between 1.5 and 60 min by changing the conditions of the methacrylation reaction, and the final gel presented rheological properties typical of strong gels, that is, shear stresses in the kPa range. The cross-linked gel was degradable and nontoxic, presenting indeed an interesting cytokinetic effect. Injectable materials based on chitooligosaccharides are, therefore, an innovative system combining adequate biological performance, ease of preparation, and an ecologically friendly concept of production.The authors thank Dr. Mar Fernandez for the cytotoxicity tests. L.F.B. thanks the European Commission for supporting this work through a Marie Curie-IIF fellowship

Surface properties of extracts from cork black condensate

The insulation corkboard production generates black condensate (BC), a paste-like solid waste. It is hydrophobic and has the potential to be used as protective coating. To evaluate this potential, coatings were prepared from BC extracts and their surface behavior was evaluated by contact angle (CA) measurements. The CA dynamics were recorded as a function of time; advancing CAs were also registered; the approaches were applied according to Fowkes, Owens- Wendt-Rabel-Kaelble (OWRK), and Van Oss to determine the surface energy (SE) for each coating. Depending on the liquid probe, three phenomena were observed: water evaporation, diiodomethane diffusion into the coating, and rearrangement of the chemical groups on the coating surface, when glycerol was dropped onto the surface. Based on the results from the CA dynamics, the applicability of the coatings against hydrophobic environments was limited owing to its affinity to apolar compounds. The results show that the coating prepared by the toluene BC extract was the best coating. The key data were: water CA of 99.38, total SE (between 37.4 mN m-1 and 40.1 mN m-1), SE polar component (0.1 mN m-1), and the acidic and basic characters were negligible. It can be concluded that the BC extracts have potential for coatings.R.P. acknowledges a post-doc research grant BPD/39333/2007 from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). We gratefully acknowledge Amorim Isolamentos S.A. for the supply of black condensate

Wetspun poly-L-(lactic acid)-borosilicate bioactive glass scaffolds for guided bone regeneration

We developed a porous poly-L-lactic acid (PLLA) scaffold compounded with borosilicate bioactive glasses (BBGs) endowing it with bioactive properties. Porous PLLA-BBG fibre mesh scaffolds were successfully prepared by the combination of wet spinning and fibre bonding techniques. Micro-computed tomography (μCT) confirmed that the PLLA-BBG scaffolds containing ≈ 25% of BBGs (w/w) exhibited randomly interconnected porous (58 to 62% of interconnectivity and 53 to 67% of porosity) with mean pore diameters higher that 100 μm. Bioactivity and degradation studies were performed by immersing the scaffolds in simulated body fluid (SBF) and ultrapure water, respectively. The PLLA-BBG scaffolds presented a faster degradation rate with a constant release of inorganic species, which are capable to produce calcium phosphate structures at the surface of the material after 7 days of immersion in SBF (Ca/P ratio of ~ 1.7). Cellular in vitro studies with human osteosarcoma cell line (Saos-2) and human adipose-derived stem cells (hASCs) showed that PLLA-BBGs are not cytotoxic to cells, while demonstrating their capacity to promote cell adhesion and proliferation. Overall, we showed that the proposed scaffolds present a tailored kinetics on the release of inorganic species and controlled biological response under conditions that mimic the bone physiological environment.JSF acknowledges the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) for his PhD grant BD/73162/2010. This work was partially supported by the European Research Council grant agreement ERC-2012-ADG20120216-321266 - project ComplexiTE

Study of the fosfosal controlled permeation through glutaraldehyde crosslinked chitosan membranes

Advanced material forum III : proceedings of the III International Materials Symposium, Aveiro, 2005Fosfosal, a phosphate derivative of salicylic acid, which presents both analgesic and antiinflammatory properties, was used as a model drug to study the potential of recently developed chitosan membranes (with different crosslinking degrees) to be used as drug release rate-controlling membranes. The fosfosal permeation across these membranes was studied using an in-house built developed diffusion cell with online automatic monitoring. Experiments were performed using phosphate buffer saline (PBS) solution at 37ºC. Different flow properties of the detection set up were determined in order to estimate the errors introduced by the automatic online monitoring system. For increasing crosslinking degrees the permeability initially decreased, and then increased, likely as a consequence of the crosslinking influence on a variety of properties like crystallinity and hydrophilicity that have opposite influence on permeability. In summary, it was possible to control the drug release profile by means of changing the degree of crosslinking of chitosan membranes and to follow the respective release kinetics by means of using the developed diffusion cell(undefined