1,351 research outputs found
Intra-articular injections for the treatment of osteoarthritis: focus on the clinical use of hyaluronic acid.
Osteoarthritis (OA), also called degenerative joint disease, is the most frequently occurring chronic musculoskeletal disease, particularly affecting the aging population. The use of viscosupplementation, i.e. intra-articular (IA) hyaluronic acid (HA) drug therapy, to treat OA, is growing worldwide, due to important results obtained from several clinical trials, which reported IA HA-related improvements in functional activity and pain management. This review is an update of the IA use of this compound in the treatment of OA, with clinical evidence from the last few years being discussed and used to delineate new trends for the future
High accuracy CO line intensities determined from theory and experiment
Atmospheric CO concentrations are being closely monitored by remote
sensing experiments which rely on knowing line intensities with an uncertainty
of 0.5\%\ or better. Most available laboratory measurements have uncertainties
much larger than this. We report a joint experimental and theoretical study
providing rotation-vibration line intensities with the required accuracy. The
{\it ab initio} calculations are extendible to all atmospherically important
bands of CO and to its isotologues. As such they will form the basis for
detailed CO spectroscopic line lists for future studies.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, 1 tabl
A variable neurodegenerative phenotype with polymerase gamma mutation
mtDNA replication and repair, causes mitochondrial diseases including autosomal dominant
progressive external ophthalmoplegia (PEO),1 childhood hepato-encephalopathy (Alpers–
Huttenlocher syndrome), adult-onset spinocerebellar ataxia, and sensory nerve degeneration with
dysarthria and ophthalmoparesis (SANDO)
Exon Skipping and Myoblast Transplantation: Single or Combined Potential Options for Treatment of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy
Extreme-Point-based Heuristics for the Three-Dimensional Bin Packing problem
One of the main issues in addressing three-dimensional packing problems is finding an efficient and accurate definition of the points at which to place the items inside the bins, because the performance of exact and heuristic solution methods is actually strongly influenced by the choice of a placement rule. We introduce the extreme point concept and present a new extreme point-based rule for packing items inside a three-dimensional container. The extreme point rule is independent from the particular packing problem addressed and can handle additional constraints, such as fixing the position of the items. The new extreme point rule is also used to derive new constructive heuristics for the three-dimensional bin-packing problem. Extensive computational results show the effectiveness of the new heuristics compared to state-of-the-art results. Moreover, the same heuristics, when applied to the two-dimensional bin-packing problem, outperform those specifically designed for the proble
An in-line coaxial-to-waveguide transition for q-band single-feed-per-beam antenna systems
An in-line transition between a coaxial cable and rectangular waveguide operating in Q-band (33–50 GHz) is presented. The aim of the work is to minimize the modifications in the waveguide to the strictly necessary to overcome the manufacturing issues due to the high frequencies involved. In addition, the transition is compact and it does not increase the space occupation on the transverse section, this suggests its application in horn antennas clusters arrangement. The operating principle consists of both a modal conversion and an impedance matching between the devices. The modal conversion is realized in an intermediate region, where the coaxial penetrates in the waveguide: the device geometry is designed so that the electric field in the transition is a trade-off between the TEM mode of the coaxial and the TE10 of the guide. A shaped waveguide backshort and a reactive air gap in the coaxial cable co-participate to achieve the matching. An optimized Chebyshev stepped transformer completes the transition to fulfil the impedance mismatch with the full waveguide. The design issues and technological aspects are considered. The influences of the feeding pin misalignment, the presence of groove is included in the analysis and these practical aspects are discussed and numerically validated via the scattering parameters analysis of the proposed design. The return loss is higher than 25 dB over the whole Q-band
A yeast-based repurposing approach for the treatment of mitochondrial DNA depletion syndromes led to the identification of molecules able to modulate the dNTP pool
Mitochondrial DNA depletion syndromes (MDS) are clinically heterogenous and often severe diseases, characterized by a reduction of the number of copies of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in affected tissues. In the context of MDS, yeast has proved to be both an excellent model for the study of the mechanisms underlying mitochondrial pathologies and for the discovery of new therapies via high-throughput assays. Among the several genes involved in MDS, it has been shown that recessive mutations in MPV17 cause a hepatocerebral form of MDS and Navajo neurohepatopathy. MPV17 encodes a non selective channel in the inner mitochondrial membrane, but its physiological role and the nature of its cargo remains elusive. In this study we identify ten drugs active against MPV17 disorder, modelled in yeast using the homologous gene SYM1. All ten of the identified molecules cause a concomitant increase of both the mitochondrial deoxyribonucleoside triphosphate (mtdNTP) pool and mtDNA stability, which suggests that the reduced availability of DNA synthesis precursors is the cause for the mtDNA deletion and depletion associated with Sym1 deficiency. We finally evaluated the effect of these molecules on mtDNA stability in two other MDS yeast models, extending the potential use of these drugs to a wider range of MDS patients
On the Evaluation of the Hyperthermic Efficiency of Magnetic Scaffolds
Goal: Deep-seated tumors (DST) can be treated using thermoseeds exposed to a radiofrequency magnetic field for performing local interstitial hyperthermia treatment (HT). Several research efforts were oriented to the manufacturing of novel biocompatible magnetic nanostructured thermo-seeds, called magnetic scaffolds (MagS). Several iron-doped bioceramics or magnetic polymers in various formulations are available. However, the crucial evaluation of their heating potential has been carried out with significantly different, lab specific, variable experimental conditions and protocols often ignoring the several error sources and inaccuracies estimation. Methods: This work comments and provides a perspective analysis of an experimental protocol for the estimation methodology of the specific absorption rate (SAR) of MagS for DST HT. Numerical multiphysics simultions have been performed to outline the theoretical framework. After the in silico analysis, an experimental case is considered and tested. Results: From the simulations, we found that large overestimation in the SAR values can be found, due to the axial misplacement in the radiofrequency coil, while the radial misplacement has a lower impact on the estimated SAR value. Conclusions: The averaging of multiple temperature records is needed to reliably and effectively estimate the SAR of MagS for DST HT
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