31 research outputs found
Structural variations of vaginal and endometrial microbiota. Hints on female infertility
Microbiota are microorganismal communities colonizing human tissues exposed to the external environment, including the urogenital tract. The bacterial composition of the vaginal microbiota has been established and is partially related to obstetric outcome, while the uterine microbiota, considered to be a sterile environment for years, is now the focus of more extensive studies and debates. The characterization of the microbiota contained in the reproductive tract (RT) of asymptomatic and infertile women, could define a specific RT microbiota associated with implantation failure. In this pilot study, 34 women undergoing personalized hormonal stimulation were recruited and the biological samples of each patient, vaginal fluid, and endometrial biopsy, were collected immediately prior to oocyte-pick up, and sequenced. Women were subsequently divided into groups according to fertilization outcome. Analysis of the 16s rRNA V4-V5 region revealed a significant difference between vaginal and endometrial microbiota. The vaginal microbiota of pregnant women corroborated previous data, exhibiting a lactobacilli-dominant habitat compared to non-pregnant cases, while the endometrial bacterial colonization was characterized by a polymicrobial ecosystem in which lactobacilli were exclusively detected in the group that displayed unsuccessful in vitro fertilization. Overall, these preliminary results revisit our knowledge of the genitourinary microbiota, and highlight a putative relationship between vaginal/endometrial microbiota and reproductive success
Early Diagnosis of Congenital Uterine Anomalies: Is the Three Dimensional Ultrasound Approach the Suitable Choice? 3D in Uterine Anomalies
Purposes: Congenital uterine anomalies (CUA) are benign conditions associated with relatively serious
complications affecting the reproductive life. Due to their infrequency CUA are often misdiagnosed, exposing the
patient to possible future complications.
Case description: We report the cases of three women affected by an unknown CUA, which underwent three
different diagnostic and surgical approaches.
Conclusions: A correct and early diagnosis of CUA is mandatory to allow a correct clinical and therapeutic
management. In our opinion we might avoid the use of MRI considered as the second line technique after 2D-US,
keeping in mind that in CUA the diagnostic value of 3D-US has the same accuracy as MRI
Re-Factored Operational Support Systems for the Next Generation Platform-as-a-Service (NGPaaS)
SHARED SERVICES CENTER FOR E-GOVERNMENT POLICY
It is a general opinion that applicative cooperation represents a
useful vehicle for the development of e-government. At the architectural
level, solutions for applicative cooperation are quite stable, but
organizational and methodological problems prevent the expected and
needed development of cooperation among different administrations.
Moreover, the introduction of the “digital government” requires a
considerable involvement of resources that can be unsustainable for small
public administrations. This work shows how the above mentioned
problems can be (partially) solved with the introduction of a Shared
Services Center (SSC). The functional features of SSC in terms of its basic
services are presented together with a experimentation that involves the
Ente Regione Marche as SSC as far as both the technical capacities and the
organizations ones are concerned