El césped del vecino es más verde: Flora de patios a través de un gradiente social

Urban backyards have considerable potential for biodiversity conservation and the enhancement of food security. However, these spaces are poorly planned, there is little information on the diversity of flora present in the backyards of different social clases. We quantified and compared plant diversity of the backyards of two neighborhoods in the metropolitan area of Maringa, by calculating diversity indices, bivariate correlations, the planting potencial, and outline planning guidelines, with the goal of increasing the presence of woody vegetation, strengthen the food security and contribute to the conservation of biological diversity, including the preservation of endangered plant speciesAgradecemos al Ministerio de Agricultura, Alimentación y Medio Ambiente del gobierno español, por la financiación al Proyecto Ecología Urbana en Regiones Metropolitanas de Brasil: Paisaje, Calidad de Vida y Desarrollo Humano [Plan Nacional de I+D+i (CSO2009-12689)

Growing a population of Cynara cardunculus L. for further selection as a reference energy crop

A population of cultivated cardoon (Cynara cardunculus var. altilis DC) was grown in Madrid (Spain) as a reference crop to select outstanding individuals for energy applications. The work was carried out within the frame of the Spanish funded projects PROBIOCOM (INIA) and FP13-ENER. Seeds for this work were produced by one of the partners of PROBIOCOM - the Agro-Energy Group of UPM - and came from a clonal crop (in vitro propagated plants) previously grown in Madrid. IMIDRA, as Head of that Project, established the reference crop according to the protocol for cardoon energy crop and was responsible for the crop. Seeds were sown in seed trays and once the plants had true leaves they were transplanted into the field. Collection of field data involved 449 individuals at the rosette stage and the dataset comprised the measurement of plant height, rosette diameter and leaf length; leaf type was determined as well. Individuals exhibiting larger leaf size were selected and categorized into two categories: undivided-like leaf blade (16 individuals) and pinnately lobed leaf blade (12 individuals). For these individuals, leaf fresh weight, number of leaves and leaf length of previously selected leaves were determined. Furthermore, three measurements were performed with a SPAD chlorophyll meter and the Munsell color chart. Morphological features were taken according CPVO-OCVV and UPOV protocols. Most plants exhibited pinnately leaves which generally resulted in larger sizes than the undivided-like leaf plants. Results suggested that the morphological plant type could be used as a preliminary selection criterion of C. cardunculus for biomass production; however, further studies are needed at harvest time to confirm this trend

Treatment with tocilizumab or corticosteroids for COVID-19 patients with hyperinflammatory state: a multicentre cohort study (SAM-COVID-19)

Objectives: The objective of this study was to estimate the association between tocilizumab or corticosteroids and the risk of intubation or death in patients with coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) with a hyperinflammatory state according to clinical and laboratory parameters. Methods: A cohort study was performed in 60 Spanish hospitals including 778 patients with COVID-19 and clinical and laboratory data indicative of a hyperinflammatory state. Treatment was mainly with tocilizumab, an intermediate-high dose of corticosteroids (IHDC), a pulse dose of corticosteroids (PDC), combination therapy, or no treatment. Primary outcome was intubation or death; follow-up was 21 days. Propensity score-adjusted estimations using Cox regression (logistic regression if needed) were calculated. Propensity scores were used as confounders, matching variables and for the inverse probability of treatment weights (IPTWs). Results: In all, 88, 117, 78 and 151 patients treated with tocilizumab, IHDC, PDC, and combination therapy, respectively, were compared with 344 untreated patients. The primary endpoint occurred in 10 (11.4%), 27 (23.1%), 12 (15.4%), 40 (25.6%) and 69 (21.1%), respectively. The IPTW-based hazard ratios (odds ratio for combination therapy) for the primary endpoint were 0.32 (95%CI 0.22-0.47; p < 0.001) for tocilizumab, 0.82 (0.71-1.30; p 0.82) for IHDC, 0.61 (0.43-0.86; p 0.006) for PDC, and 1.17 (0.86-1.58; p 0.30) for combination therapy. Other applications of the propensity score provided similar results, but were not significant for PDC. Tocilizumab was also associated with lower hazard of death alone in IPTW analysis (0.07; 0.02-0.17; p < 0.001). Conclusions: Tocilizumab might be useful in COVID-19 patients with a hyperinflammatory state and should be prioritized for randomized trials in this situatio

Antimicrobial resistance in Gram-negative bacilli in Spain: an experts’ view

Antibiotic resistance in Gram-negative bacilli poses a serious problem for public health. In hospitals, in addition to high mortality rates, the emergence and spread of resistance to practically all antibiotics restricts therapeutic options against serious and frequent infections. The aim of this work is to present the views of a group of experts on the following aspects regarding resistance to antimicrobial agents in Gram-negative bacilli: 1) the current epidemiology in Spain, 2) how it is related to local clinical practice and 3) new therapies in this area, based on currently available evidence. After reviewing the most noteworthy evidence, the most relevant data on these three aspects were presented at a national meeting to 99 experts in infectious diseases, clinical microbiology, internal medicine, intensive care medicine, anaesthesiology and hospital pharmacy. Subsequent local debates among these experts led to conclusions in this matter, including the opinion that the approval of new antibiotics makes it necessary to train the specialists involved in order to optimise how they use them and improve health outcomes; microbiology laboratories in hospitals must be available throughout a continuous timetable; all antibiotics must be available when needed and it is necessary to learn to use them correctly; and the Antimicrobial Stewardship Programs (ASP) play a key role in quickly allocating the new antibiotics within the guidelines and ensure appropriate use of them

Impact of Pneumococcal Vaccination in the Nasopharyngeal Carriage of Streptococcus pneumoniae in Healthy Children of the Murcia Region in Spain.

An epidemiological study of Streptococcus pneumoniae nasopharyngeal carriage in healthy children was carried out five years after the introduction of the 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV13). Study the impact of pediatric vaccination with PCV13, and other associated epidemiological factors on the status of nasopharyngeal carriage, the circulating pneumococcal serotypes, and the antibiotic susceptibility to more frequently used antibiotics. A multi-center study was carried out in Primary Health Care, which included 1821 healthy children aged 1 to 4 years old. All isolates were sent to the Spanish Pneumococcal Reference Laboratory for serotyping and antimicrobial susceptibility testing. At least one dose of PCV13 had been received by 71.9% of children and carriage pneumococcal prevalence was 19.7%. The proportion of PCV13 serotypes was low (14.4%), with an observed predominance of non-vaccine serotypes, 23B, 11A, 10A, 35B/F, and 23A were the five most frequent. A high rate of resistance to penicillin, erythromycin, and trimethoprim sulfamethoxazole was found. A low proportion of PCV13 serotypes were detected, confirming the impact of pediatric vaccination for reducing the serotypes vaccine carriage. High resistance rates to clinically important antibiotics were observed.This work was supported by Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (MINECO)[grant SAF2017-83388].S

Consenso español sobre el hemangioma infantil.

Infantile haemangiomas are benign tumours produced by the proliferation of endothelial cells of blood vessels, with a high incidence in children under the age of one year (4-10%). It is estimated that 12% of them require treatment. This treatment must be administered according to clinical practice guidelines, expert experience, patient characteristics and parent preferences. The consensus process was performed by using scientific evidence on the diagnosis and treatment of infantile haemangiomas, culled from a systematic review of the literature, together with specialist expert opinions. The recommendations issued were validated by the specialists, who also provided their level of agreement. This document contains recommendations on the classification, associations, complications, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up of patients with infantile haemangioma. It also includes action algorithms, and addresses multidisciplinary management and referral criteria between the different specialities involved in the clinical management of this type of patient. The recommendations and the diagnostic and therapeutic algorithms of infantile haemangiomas contained in this document are a useful tool for the proper management of these patients

Discovering HIV related information by means of association rules and machine learning

Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is still one of the main health problems worldwide. It is therefore essential to keep making progress in improving the prognosis and quality of life of affected patients. One way to advance along this pathway is to uncover connections between other disorders associated with HIV/AIDS-so that they can be anticipated and possibly mitigated. We propose to achieve this by using Association Rules (ARs). They allow us to represent the dependencies between a number of diseases and other specific diseases. However, classical techniques systematically generate every AR meeting some minimal conditions on data frequency, hence generating a vast amount of uninteresting ARs, which need to be filtered out. The lack of manually annotated ARs has favored unsupervised filtering, even though they produce limited results. In this paper, we propose a semi-supervised system, able to identify relevant ARs among HIV-related diseases with a minimal amount of annotated training data. Our system has been able to extract a good number of relationships between HIV-related diseases that have been previously detected in the literature but are scattered and are often little known. Furthermore, a number of plausible new relationships have shown up which deserve further investigation by qualified medical experts

Assessment of plasma chitotriosidase activity, CCL18/PARC concentration and NP-C suspicion index in the diagnosis of Niemann-Pick disease type C : A prospective observational study

Niemann-Pick disease type C (NP-C) is a rare, autosomal recessive neurodegenerative disease caused by mutations in either the NPC1 or NPC2 genes. The diagnosis of NP-C remains challenging due to the non-specific, heterogeneous nature of signs/symptoms. This study assessed the utility of plasma chitotriosidase (ChT) and Chemokine (C-C motif) ligand 18 (CCL18)/pulmonary and activation-regulated chemokine (PARC) in conjunction with the NP-C suspicion index (NP-C SI) for guiding confirmatory laboratory testing in patients with suspected NP-C. In a prospective observational cohort study, incorporating a retrospective determination of NP-C SI scores, two different diagnostic approaches were applied in two separate groups of unrelated patients from 51 Spanish medical centers (n = 118 in both groups). From Jan 2010 to Apr 2012 (Period 1), patients with ≥2 clinical signs/symptoms of NP-C were considered 'suspected NP-C' cases, and NPC1/NPC2 sequencing, plasma chitotriosidase (ChT), CCL18/PARC and sphingomyelinase levels were assessed. Based on findings in Period 1, plasma ChT and CCL18/PARC, and NP-C SI prediction scores were determined in a second group of patients between May 2012 and Apr 2014 (Period 2), and NPC1 and NPC2 were sequenced only in those with elevated ChT and/or elevated CCL18/PARC and/or NP-C SI ≥70. Filipin staining and 7-ketocholesterol (7-KC) measurements were performed in all patients with NP-C gene mutations, where possible. In total across Periods 1 and 2, 10/236 (4%) patients had a confirmed diagnosis o NP-C based on gene sequencing (5/118 [4.2%] in each Period): all of these patients had two causal NPC1 mutations. Single mutant NPC1 alleles were detected in 8/236 (3%) patients, overall. Positive filipin staining results comprised three classical and five variant biochemical phenotypes. No NPC2 mutations were detected. All patients with NPC1 mutations had high ChT activity, high CCL18/PARC concentrations and/or NP-C SI scores ≥70. Plasma 7-KC was higher than control cut-off values in all patients with two NPC1 mutations, and in the majority of patients with single mutations. Family studies identified three further NP-C patients. This approach may be very useful for laboratories that do not have mass spectrometry facilities and therefore, they cannot use other NP-C biomarkers for diagnosis

Down syndrome as risk factor for respiratory syncytial virus hospitalization : A prospective multicenter epidemiological study

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection in childhood, particularly in premature infants, is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. To compare the hospitalization rates due to RSV infection and severity of disease between infants with and without Down syndrome (DS) born at term and without other associated risk factors for severe RSV infection. In a prospective multicentre epidemiological study, 93 infants were included in the DS cohort and 68 matched by sex and data of birth (±1 week) and were followed up to 1 year of age and during a complete RSV season. The hospitalization rate for all acute respiratory infection was significantly higher in the DS cohort than in the non-DS cohort (44.1% vs 7.7%, P<.0001). Hospitalizations due to RSV were significantly more frequent in the DH cohort than in the non-DS cohort (9.7% vs 1.5%, P=.03). RSV prophylaxis was recorded in 33 (35.5%) infants with DS. The rate of hospitalization according to presence or absence of RSV immunoprophylaxis was 3.0% vs 15%, respectively. Infants with DS showed a higher rate of hospitalization due to acute lower respiratory tract infection and RSV infection compared to non-DS infants. Including DS infants in recommendations for immunoprophylaxis of RSV disease should be considered

Investigación educativa en las aulas de primaria

Reúne trabajos derivados de la experiencias de diversos docentes en educación primaria en los siguientes temas: Tecnología de Información y Comunicación, educación inclusiva, enseñanza de la música, educación física, enseñanza de la historia, acoso escolar, auto-evaluación, métodos de enseñanza, inteligencia emocional, percepción del alumno, marco cognitivo en comprensión lectora y comunicación escuela-familia