High Risk Human Papillomavirus in a Group of Portuguese Women

Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is the etiological agent for cervical cancer and genital warts. Worldwide, cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women and the high risk HPV (HR-HPV), namely HPV 16 and 18 are responsible for the most of the cases. The objective was to analyze the HR-HPV frequency in a group of women referred for HR-HPV testing. Clinical samples from 3117 women were perform by Cobas® HPV test (Roche Molecular Systems, CA, USA), this assay detected HPV 16 and HPV 18 and ‘Other HR-HPV’ (-31,-33,-35,-39,-45,-51,-52,-56,-58,-59,-66 and 68). Positive samples for ‘Other HR-HPV’ were sequenced for genotyping using MY09/11 primer´s. HR-HPV frequency was 20.8% (649/3117). Among the positive samples, ‘Other HR-HPV’ was the most common (72.8%; 473/649). HPV 16 and 18 were detected only in 22.8% (148/649) and 7.4% (48/649) of the cases, respectively. 7.4% (48/649) of the positive women were infected with more than one HPV (34 with ‘Other HR-HPV’ + HPV 16; 8 with ‘Other HR-HPV’ + HPV 18; 5 with ‘Other HR-HPV’ + HPV 16 + HPV 18 and 1 with HPV 16 + HPV 18). Sequencing of ‘Other HR-HPV’ is ongoing and preliminary results shown the majority frequency for HPV 31 (11.7%) followed by HPV 56 (9.1%) and 8.9% for the HPV 66. The HR-HPV frequency is high (20.8%), 30.4 % of these women were infected with HPV 16 or HPV 18 which is a high frequency. This study reveals the importance of the implementation of screening programs, and the use of HPV detection.N/

Metacognitive and social cognition training (MSCT) in schizophrenia: a preliminary efficacy study

Psychosocial interventions have proven to be effective in treating social cognition in people with psychotic disorders. The current study aimed to determine the effects of a metacognitive and social cognition training (MSCT) program, designed to both remediate deficits and correct biases in social cognition. Thirty-five clinically stable outpatients were recruited and assigned to the MSCT program (n = 19) for 10 weeks (18 sessions) or to the TAU group (n = 16), and they all completed pre- and post-treatment assessments of social cognition, cognitive biases, functioning and symptoms. The MSCT group demonstrated a significant improvement in theory of mind, social perception, emotion recognition and social functioning. Additionally, the tendency to jump to conclusions was significantly reduced among the MSCT group after training. There were no differential benefits regarding clinical symptoms except for one trend group effect for general psychopathology. The results support the efficacy of the MSCT format, but further development of the training program is required to increase the benefits related to attributional style

O risco de interações farmacocinéticas associado ao consumo de produtos naturais por doentes oncológicos

Monografia realizada no âmbito da unidade de Estágio Curricular do Mestrado Integrado em Ciências Farmacêuticas, apresentada à Faculdade de Farmácia da Universidade de CoimbraOs doentes oncológicos recorrem frequentemente a produtos naturais concomitantemente com a quimioterapia com o objetivo de tratar a doença, aliviar os sintomas da doença ou minimizar efeitos adversos associados à medicação. Para a maior parte destes produtos não existem estudos que suportem os seus benefícios e eficácia e são usados de forma leviana pelos doentes que acreditam que por se tratar de produtos naturais não têm efeitos adversos. No entanto, os fármacos utilizados em quimioterapia apresentam margens terapêuticas estreitas, o que significa que alterações na farmacocinética destes fármacos facilmente conduzem a situações de toxicidade ou concentrações subterapêuticas, podendo ambas colocar em causa a vida do doente. Com a presente monografia, pretende-se conhecer o perfil de consumo de uma amostra de doentes oncológicos que recebem assistência médica na cidade de Coimbra e analisar os produtos naturais sinalizados quanto ao risco de interação com medicamentos. Constatou-se que 57,7% dos doentes inquiridos recorrem a estes produtos, sendo mais frequente o consumo por pessoas com idade superior a 65 anos. 73% destes doentes não comunicou ao médico nem ao farmacêutico que utilizava estes produtos e 53% refere que os toma por recomendação de familiares ou amigos.Cancer patients often use natural products concomitantly with chemotherapy in order to treat the disease, alleviating the symptoms or minimize adverse effects associated with the medication. For most of these products there are no studies that support the benefits and effectiveness and they are used lightly by patients who believe that natural products do not have adverse effects. However, the drugs used in chemotherapy have narrow therapeutic window, which means that little changes in their pharmacokinetics easily lead to situations of toxicity or subtherapeutic concentrations. Both situations jeopardize the patient's life. The purpose of this monograph is to know the consumption profile of a sample of cancer patients who receive medical care in the city of Coimbra and to analyze the risk of interaction with drugs of herbs flagged. It was found that 57.7% of patients surveyed consume these products. 73% of them did not report to the doctor or the pharmacist and 53% refer that it was family or friends who advised them to use it

Association of 2D:4D digit ratio with frailty and MMSE

The 2D:4D ratio is an indicator of prenatal testosterone exposure (Fink, Manning, & Neave, 2006) and it is a fairly stable one (Anders, 2007). While there are some studies about the role of testosterone on frailty (Srinivas-Shankar & Wu, 2009) and cognitive decline (Moffat, 2005) in older adults, very few analyze the impact of prenatal testosterone exposure (Halil et al., 2013). Our aim was to understand the relation between 2D:4D ratio, frailty and cognitive decline in community-dwelling elderly people.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Collaborative Method to Develop an Enterprise Architecture in a Public Institution

The growth of organizational complexity degrades business processes efficiency. Enterprise Architecture (EA) is an instrument to manage organizational complexity, through the improvement of organizational self-awareness. EA improves alignment between business and IT to ensure the business value of IT, and enables rationalization of organizational resources. However, depending of organizational culture and characteristics, there are several issues hindering the EA development within an organization. Actual frameworks, like TOGAF, require a significant number of skilled human resources (HR), which some organizations, like public institutions, cannot assign to EA activities. Our research goal is to provide an EA capability to public institutions, enabling these institutions to take advantage of EA benefits. Public institution contexts and stakeholder concerns were explored as well as issues acting as enablers or as inhibitors for an EA development. We propose a collaborative method to develop an EA, applying lean and agile principles, focusing on public institution specificities. Our collaborative method tries to capture organizational knowledge, spread among employees, into an EA model, to map the enterprise cartography of the institution. Our method has been demonstrated and evaluated in the IT sector of the Portuguese Navy.info:eu-repo/semantics/draf

Intertemporal choices: framing effect on household food waste

Food waste has several long-term implications for the environmental, economic, and social domains, with households assuming the major responsibility for these losses. Specifically, the fear of not being a “good” provider is linked to an over-serving behaviour. Despite literature suggesting that this over-serving behaviour could be due to a risk aversion effect towards facing status losses, this was never experimentally tested. So, we hypothesized that status losses would prevent people from reducing their served food quantities, and that this would be explained by a higher risk aversion towards these immediate losses. To accomplish that, 126 participants were presented with binary choice paradigms regarding hypothetical food quantities options (cook just the enough food vs cook more than the enough food). In a within-subjects design, where each of these two options were accompanied by a description of its possible consequences relatively to two different specific domains (environmental, economic, social, and status), we manipulated the temporal framing perspective of those consequences (immediate losses and delayed gains vs immediate gains and delayed losses). The results show that the salience of the status losses increased the served food quantities, while temporal effect had no significant effect in this relationship. Overall, our findings open a path for other researchers to explore the household food waste from an empirically perspective, as well as these have practical implications for consumers, for packaged goods managers, and for public policy officials, since these findings may be a useful insight towards the designing of effective food waste reduction nudging interventions.O desperdício alimentar acarreta implicações a longo prazo em termos ambientais, económicos, e sociais, sendo as famílias os principais responsáveis. O medo de não ser um “bom” anfitrião está associado a um comportamento de preparar comida em excesso. A literatura sugere que este comportamento poder-se-á dever a um efeito de aversão ao risco face às perdas de estatuto, contudo isto nunca foi testado experimentalmente. Desta forma, hipotetizámos que as perdas de estatuto impediriam a redução das quantidades de comida servida, sendo isto explicado por uma aversão ao risco superior para perdas imediatas. Assim, 126 participantes foram apresentados com paradigmas de escolhas binárias relativamente a opções hipotéticas de escolhas de quantidades de comida (cozinhar à justa vs cozinhar de sobra). Num desenho intra-sujeitos, estas duas opções foram acompanhadas por uma descrição das suas possíveis consequências relativamente a dois domínios específicos diferentes (ambiental, económico, social, e de estatuto), sendo manipulado o enquadramento temporal dessas mesmas consequências (perdas imediatas e ganhos futuros vs ganhos imediatos e perdas futuras). Os resultados mostram que as perdas de estatuto aumentaram as quantidades de comida servida, enquanto que o efeito temporal não teve um efeito significativo nesta relação. As nossas descobertas possibilitam que outros investigadores explorem o desperdício alimentar doméstico do ponto de vista empírico, assim como têm implicações práticas para os consumidores, para os responsáveis por mercadorias embaladas, e para os oficiais de políticas públicas, uma vez que poderão ser um insight útil para o desenho de intervenções com vista à redução do desperdício alimentar

Enhancing a Layout-Aware Synthesis Methodology for Analog ICs by Embedding Statistical Knowledge into the Evolutionary Optimization Kernel

Part 18: Electronics: Devices DesignInternational audienceThis paper applies to the scientific area of electronic design automation (EDA) and addresses the automatic sizing of analog integrated circuits (ICs). Particularly, this work presents an innovative approach to enhance a state-of-the-art layout-aware circuit-level optimizer (GENOM-POF), by embedding statistical knowledge from an automatically generated gradient model into the multi-objective multi-constraint optimization kernel based on the NSGA-II algorithm. The approach was validated with typical analog circuit structures, using the UMC 0.13 μm integration technology, showing that, by enhancing the circuit sizing optimization kernel with the gradient model, the optimal solutions are achieved, considerably, faster and with identical or superior accuracy. Finally, the results are Pareto Optimal Fronts (POFs), which consist of a set of fully compliant sizing solutions, allowing the designer to explore the different trade-offs of the solution space, both through the achieved device sizes, or the respective layout solutions

Relatório de estágio em farmácia comunitária

Relatório de estágio realizado no âmbito do Mestrado Integrado em Ciências Farmacêuticas, apresentado à Faculdade de Farmácia da Universidade de Coimbr

Amino acids, glucose metabolism and clinical relevance for phenylketonuria management

It is general knowledge that glycaemia is affected by digested nutrients.Amino acids intake appears to be an important regulator in this regard. Many questions need to be answered, such as the real mediators of this responseand the mechanisms underlying this metabolic behavior. Studies have been undertaken in order to investigate the role of amino acids on metabolic parameters. Their main fndings suggest that the ingestion of free aminoacids have a pivotal role in avoiding glycaemia excursions, improving glucosetolerance. In parallel, several important molecules for glucose metabolism have been exploited. Insulin and glucagon-like peptide - 1 (GLP-1) release seemto be the main triggers of this response. This insulinogenic effect is attributed to some amino acids, particularly the branched-chain amino acids (leucine, isoleucine and valine). GLP-1 may exert its effects by activating its receptor inpancreas and enhancing insulin release by β-cells or through its extrapancreaticactions. The mechanisms that may justify the aforementioned effects remainto be answered, being the mTOR pathway activation a possible key. Thesemetabolic effects may have a special interest within the nutritional management of Phenylketonuria (PKU), an inborn metabolic disease of phenylalanine (Phe) catabolism. Since a Phe restricted diet is the mainstay of PKU treatment, a chronic supplementation with a Phe-free amino acid mixture is used. Although scientifc evidence is scarce, it is hypothesized whether this chronic ingestion may modulate glycaemia