Tecnología y caracterización de productos cárnicos curados obtenidos a partir de cerdo chato murciano

El cerdo Chato Murciano es una raza de cerdo autóctona de la Región de Murcia, que ha pasado de estar en peligro de extinción, a encontrarse en fase de recuperación y expansión. Para la consolidación de la raza, es necesario ajustar la calidad y la tecnología de procesado de los productos cárnicos derivados, lo que permitirá incrementar su valor, y la aparición de una industria local sostenible. Se ha realizado la caracterización del lomo y del jamón curado, obtenidos a partir de cerdo Chato Murciano, con el objetivo de mejorar el proceso de elaboración, así como de conseguir su estandarización. Para ello, se ha estudiado la evolución de la composición físico-química y de la concentración de aminoácidos libres y ácidos grasos libres, así como de las características sensoriales de ambos productos. Del estudio del lomo curado durante su proceso de elaboración, puede afirmarse que las modificaciones más significativas tienen lugar en el contenido en humedad, grasa intramuscular y cenizas. También se observan cambios significativos en las fracciones proteicas y lipídicas, liberándose aminoácidos como arginina y ácido glutámico, y ácidos grasos como oleico y linoleico, que conforman su perfil de olor, sabor y flavor. Por otra parte, se ha visto que el lomo curado de Chato Murciano presenta características diferentes a las del lomo curado de cruces comerciales de cerdo blanco, fundamentalmente en relación al contenido en grasa intramuscular y ácidos grasos monoinsaturados. Estas diferencias se ven reflejadas en el estudio sensorial, en el que el lomo de Chato Murciano presenta puntuaciones superiores a las del cerdo blanco en los atributos de intensidad de color, brillo, nivel y tamaño de veteado, intensidad de olor y olor a curado, dureza, intensidad de flavor, flavor a curado y regusto, e inferiores en el caso de atributos como el sabor dulce y la adhesividad. Respecto al jamón curado, las modificaciones más significativas se producen hasta el mes 22 de procesado, tanto en la composición, como en el contenido en aminoácidos libres y ácidos grasos libres. En el análisis sensorial se observa hasta los 22 meses que, al aumentar el tiempo de procesado, mejoran la intensidad del color rojo, el color de la grasa, todos los atributos de olor y flavor estudiados, y todos los de textura, con la excepción de la jugosidad. Se ha constatado, por tanto, que a partir del cerdo Chato Murciano se obtienen productos derivados de alta calidad, que además son bien aceptados por el consumidor.Ciencias de la Alimentació

Seed Oil from Mediterranean Aromatic and Medicinal Plants of the Lamiaceae Family as a Source of Bioactive Components with Nutritional

The potential use as food ingredients of 12 commercial seed species belonging to the Lamiaceae family constitutes the main goal of this research. For that, the oil yield, the lipid profile, tocopherol content, phenolic profile and antioxidant capacities were determined. Seeds from Satureja hortensis, S. montana, Lavandula angustifolia, L. latifolia and Origanum vulgare can be considered as important sources of !-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (50.5; 52.4; 52.1; 48.5 and 45.5 g/100 g, respectively), likewise for seed oils from Salvia lavandulifolia and Rosmarinus o cinalis regarding !-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (52.2 and 50.0 g/100 g, respectively). The total tocopherol concentration varied between 42.8 and 113.8 mg/100 g of oil. The highest antioxidant capacities corresponded to Thymbra capitata and Origanum vulgare seed oils, in which carvacrol was the major phenolic monoterpene quantified. The presence of cinnamoyl-apigenin derivatives and hydroxycoumarin-apigenin-derivatives in spike lavender is described for the first time. Most of these seeds can be considered as an important source of oil rich in bioactive components of interest for human nutrition.Ciencias de la Alimentació

COVID-19 in hospitalized HIV-positive and HIV-negative patients : A matched study

CatedresObjectives: We compared the characteristics and clinical outcomes of hospitalized individuals with COVID-19 with [people with HIV (PWH)] and without (non-PWH) HIV co-infection in Spain during the first wave of the pandemic. Methods: This was a retrospective matched cohort study. People with HIV were identified by reviewing clinical records and laboratory registries of 10 922 patients in active-follow-up within the Spanish HIV Research Network (CoRIS) up to 30 June 2020. Each hospitalized PWH was matched with five non-PWH of the same age and sex randomly selected from COVID-19@Spain, a multicentre cohort of 4035 patients hospitalized with confirmed COVID-19. The main outcome was all-cause in-hospital mortality. Results: Forty-five PWH with PCR-confirmed COVID-19 were identified in CoRIS, 21 of whom were hospitalized. A total of 105 age/sex-matched controls were selected from the COVID-19@Spain cohort. The median age in both groups was 53 (Q1-Q3, 46-56) years, and 90.5% were men. In PWH, 19.1% were injecting drug users, 95.2% were on antiretroviral therapy, 94.4% had HIV-RNA < 50 copies/mL, and the median (Q1-Q3) CD4 count was 595 (349-798) cells/μL. No statistically significant differences were found between PWH and non-PWH in number of comorbidities, presenting signs and symptoms, laboratory parameters, radiology findings and severity scores on admission. Corticosteroids were administered to 33.3% and 27.4% of PWH and non-PWH, respectively (P = 0.580). Deaths during admission were documented in two (9.5%) PWH and 12 (11.4%) non-PWH (P = 0.800). Conclusions: Our findings suggest that well-controlled HIV infection does not modify the clinical presentation or worsen clinical outcomes of COVID-19 hospitalization

How do women living with HIV experience menopause? Menopausal symptoms, anxiety and depression according to reproductive age in a multicenter cohort

CatedresBackground: To estimate the prevalence and severity of menopausal symptoms and anxiety/depression and to assess the differences according to menopausal status among women living with HIV aged 45-60 years from the cohort of Spanish HIV/AIDS Research Network (CoRIS). Methods: Women were interviewed by phone between September 2017 and December 2018 to determine whether they had experienced menopausal symptoms and anxiety/depression. The Menopause Rating Scale was used to evaluate the prevalence and severity of symptoms related to menopause in three subscales: somatic, psychologic and urogenital; and the 4-item Patient Health Questionnaire was used for anxiety/depression. Logistic regression models were used to estimate odds ratios (ORs) of association between menopausal status, and other potential risk factors, the presence and severity of somatic, psychological and urogenital symptoms and of anxiety/depression. Results: Of 251 women included, 137 (54.6%) were post-, 70 (27.9%) peri- and 44 (17.5%) pre-menopausal, respectively. Median age of onset menopause was 48 years (IQR 45-50). The proportions of pre-, peri- and post-menopausal women who had experienced any menopausal symptoms were 45.5%, 60.0% and 66.4%, respectively. Both peri- and post-menopause were associated with a higher likelihood of having somatic symptoms (aOR 3.01; 95% CI 1.38-6.55 and 2.63; 1.44-4.81, respectively), while post-menopause increased the likelihood of having psychological (2.16; 1.13-4.14) and urogenital symptoms (2.54; 1.42-4.85). By other hand, post-menopausal women had a statistically significant five-fold increase in the likelihood of presenting severe urogenital symptoms than pre-menopausal women (4.90; 1.74-13.84). No significant differences by menopausal status were found for anxiety/depression. Joint/muscle problems, exhaustion and sleeping disorders were the most commonly reported symptoms among all women. Differences in the prevalences of vaginal dryness (p = 0.002), joint/muscle complaints (p = 0.032), and sweating/flush (p = 0.032) were found among the three groups. Conclusions: Women living with HIV experienced a wide variety of menopausal symptoms, some of them initiated before women had any menstrual irregularity. We found a higher likelihood of somatic symptoms in peri- and post-menopausal women, while a higher likelihood of psychological and urogenital symptoms was found in post-menopausal women. Most somatic symptoms were of low or moderate severity, probably due to the good clinical and immunological situation of these women

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

Switching TNF antagonists in patients with chronic arthritis: An observational study of 488 patients over a four-year period

The objective of this work is to analyze the survival of infliximab, etanercept and adalimumab in patients who have switched among tumor necrosis factor (TNF) antagonists for the treatment of chronic arthritis. BIOBADASER is a national registry of patients with different forms of chronic arthritis who are treated with biologics. Using this registry, we have analyzed patient switching of TNF antagonists. The cumulative discontinuation rate was calculated using the actuarial method. The log-rank test was used to compare survival curves, and Cox regression models were used to assess independent factors associated with discontinuing medication. Between February 2000 and September 2004, 4,706 patients were registered in BIOBADASER, of whom 68% had rheumatoid arthritis, 11% ankylosing spondylitis, 10% psoriatic arthritis, and 11% other forms of chronic arthritis. One- and two-year drug survival rates of the TNF antagonist were 0.83 and 0.75, respectively. There were 488 patients treated with more than one TNF antagonist. In this situation, survival of the second TNF antagonist decreased to 0.68 and 0.60 at 1 and 2 years, respectively. Survival was better in patients replacing the first TNF antagonist because of adverse events (hazard ratio (HR) for discontinuation 0.55 (95% confidence interval (CI), 0.34-0.84)), and worse in patients older than 60 years (HR 1.10 (95% CI 0.97-2.49)) or who were treated with infliximab (HR 3.22 (95% CI 2.13-4.87)). In summary, in patients who require continuous therapy and have failed to respond to a TNF antagonist, replacement with a different TNF antagonist may be of use under certain situations. This issue will deserve continuous reassessment with the arrival of new medications. © 2006 Gomez-Reino and Loreto Carmona; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

Reproducibility of fluorescent expression from engineered biological constructs in E. coli

We present results of the first large-scale interlaboratory study carried out in synthetic biology, as part of the 2014 and 2015 International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competitions. Participants at 88 institutions around the world measured fluorescence from three engineered constitutive constructs in E. coli. Few participants were able to measure absolute fluorescence, so data was analyzed in terms of ratios. Precision was strongly related to fluorescent strength, ranging from 1.54-fold standard deviation for the ratio between strong promoters to 5.75-fold for the ratio between the strongest and weakest promoter, and while host strain did not affect expression ratios, choice of instrument did. This result shows that high quantitative precision and reproducibility of results is possible, while at the same time indicating areas needing improved laboratory practices.Peer reviewe