Nutritional interventions for patients with melanoma: From prevention to therapy—an update

Melanoma is an aggressive skin cancer, whose incidence rates have increased over the past few decades. Risk factors for melanoma are both intrinsic (genetic and familiar predisposition) and extrinsic (environment, including sun exposure, and lifestyle). The recent advent of targeted and immune-based therapies has revolutionized the treatment of melanoma, and research is focusing on strategies to optimize them. Obesity is an established risk factor for several cancer types, but its possible role in the etiology of melanoma is controversial. Body mass index, body surface area, and height have been related to the risk for cutaneous melanoma, although an ‘obesity paradox’ has been described too. Increasing evidence suggests the role of nutritional factors in the prevention and management of melanoma. Several studies have demonstrated the impact of dietary attitudes, specific foods, and nutrients both on the risk for melanoma and on the progression of the disease, via the effects on the oncological treatments. The aim of this narrative review was to summarize the main literature results regarding the preventive and therapeutic role of nutritional schemes, specific foods, and nutrients on melanoma incidence and progression

A School-Based Program to Promote Well-Being in Preadolescents: Results From a Cluster Quasi-Experimental Controlled Study

Diario della Salute [My Health Diary] is a school-based program designed to enhance the subjective well-being and health of 12- to 13-year-old students. We hypothesized that providing students with the social and emotional skills to fulfill their potential and deal with common developmental tasks of adolescence (e.g., onset of puberty, identity development, increased responsibilities and academic demands) would result in improved well-being and health. The program comprises five standardized interactive lessons concerning common psychosocial and health issues in adolescence, and two narrative booklets addressed to both students and their parents. We evaluated the effectiveness of the program in terms of the students' subjective well-being, aggressive behavior, and health behavior. Using a quasi-experimental study design, schools in the intervention group implemented the full program and those in the comparison group received their regular curriculum. We administered measures of the study's objectives both before and after program implementation. Statistical analyses accounted for within-school clustering, potential socioeconomic and demographic confounding, and pre-implementation levels of these measures. We sampled 62 schools and allocated 2630 students to either an intervention or comparison group. Sociodemographic characteristics and baseline outcomes were balanced across study groups. Unexpectedly, respondents in the intervention group had 0.38 greater mean adjusted score of the WHO/Europe Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children Symptom Checklist instrument than respondents in the comparison group, indicating a reduction in subjective well-being. We did not observe any program effects on aggressive and health behaviors. The apparent reduction in subjective well-being reflected by an increased perception of psychosomatic complaints is suggestive of either increased emotional competence or, potentially, iatrogenic program effects. While greater emotional competence is positively associated with well-being over the course of life, the program in its present form should not be disseminated due to the possibility of adverse unintended effects

Predictive value of baseline [18f]fdg pet/ct for response to systemic therapy in patients with advanced melanoma

Background/Aim: To evaluate the association between baseline [18F]FDG-PET/CT tumor burden parameters and disease progression rate after first-line target therapy or immunotherapy in advanced melanoma patients. Materials and Methods: Forty four melanoma patients, who underwent [18F]FDG-PET/CT before first-line target therapy (28/44) or immunotherapy (16/44), were retrospectively analyzed. Whole-body and per-district metabolic tumor volume (MTV) and total lesion glycolysis (TLG) were calculated. Therapy response was assessed according to RECIST 1.1 on CT scan at 3 (early) and 12 (late) months. PET parameters were compared using the Mann–Whitney test. Optimal cut-offs for predicting progression were defined using the ROC curve. PFS and OS were studied using Kaplan–Meier analysis. Results: Median (IQR) MTVwb and TLGwb were 13.1 mL and 72.4, respectively. Non-responder patients were 38/44, 26/28 and 12/16 at early evaluation, and 33/44, 21/28 and 12/16 at late evaluation in the whole-cohort, target, and immunotherapy subgroup, respectively. At late evaluation, MTVbone and TLGbone were higher in non-responders compared to responder patients (all p < 0.037) in the whole-cohort and target subgroup and MTVwb and TLGwb (all p < 0.022) in target subgroup. No significant differences were found for the immunotherapy subgroup. No metabolic parameters were able to predict PFS. Controversially, MTVlfn, TLGlfn, MTVsoft + lfn, TLGsoft + lfn, MTVwb and TLGwb were significantly associated (all p < 0.05) with OS in both the whole-cohort and target therapy subgroup. Conclusions: Higher values of whole-body and bone metabolic parameters were correlated with poorer outcome, while higher values of whole-body, lymph node and soft tissue metabolic parameters were correlated with OS

On Parameter Tuning in Search Based Software Engineering

Abstract. When applying search-based software engineering (SBSE) techniques one is confronted with a multitude of different parameters that need to be chosen: Which population size for a genetic algorithm? Which selection mechanism to use? What settings to use for dozens of other parameters? This problem not only troubles users who want to apply SBSE tools in practice, but also researchers performing experimentation – how to compare algorithms that can have different parameter settings? To shed light on the problem of parameters, we performed the largest empirical analysis on parameter tuning in SBSE to date, collecting and statistically analysing data from more than a million experiments. As case study, we chose test data generation, one of the most popular problems in SBSE. Our data confirm that tuning does have a critical impact on algorithmic perfor-mance, and over-fitting of parameter tuning is a dire threat to external validity of empirical analyses in SBSE. Based on this large empirical evidence, we give guidelines on how to handle parameter tuning

Are Fusion Transcripts in Relapsed/ Metastatic Head and Neck Cancer Patients Predictive of Response to Anti-EGFR Therapies?

Prediction of benefit from combined chemotherapy and the antiepidermal growth factor receptor cetuximab is a not yet solved question in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). In a selected series of 14 long progression-free survival (PFS) and 26 short PFS patients by whole gene and microRNA expression analysis, we developed a model potentially predictive of cetuximab sensitivity. To better decipher the "omics" profile of our patients, we detected transcript fusions by RNA-seq through a Pan-Cancer panel targeting 1385 cancer genes. Twenty-seven different fusion transcripts, involving mRNA and long noncoding RNA (lncRNA), were identified. The majority of fusions (81%) were intrachromosomal, and 24 patients (60%) harbor at least one of them. The presence/absence of fusions and the presence of more than one fusion were not related to outcome, while the lncRNA-containing fusions resulted enriched in long PFS patients (P= 0.0027). The CD274-PDCD1LG2 fusion was present in 7/14 short PFS patients harboring fusions and was absent in long PFS patients (P= 0.0188). Among the short PFS patients, those harboring this fusion had the worst outcome (P= 0.0172) and increased K-RAS activation (P= 0.00147). The associations between HNSCC patient's outcome following cetuximab treatment and lncRNA-containing fusions or the CD274-PDCD1LG2 fusion deserve validation in prospective clinical trials

Neotropical Freshwater Fishes: A dataset of occurrence and abundance of freshwater fishes in the Neotropics

The Neotropical region hosts 4225 freshwater fish species, ranking first among the world's most diverse regions for freshwater fishes. Our NEOTROPICAL FRESHWATER FISHES data set is the first to produce a large-scale Neotropical freshwater fish inventory, covering the entire Neotropical region from Mexico and the Caribbean in the north to the southern limits in Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, and Uruguay. We compiled 185,787 distribution records, with unique georeferenced coordinates, for the 4225 species, represented by occurrence and abundance data. The number of species for the most numerous orders are as follows: Characiformes (1289), Siluriformes (1384), Cichliformes (354), Cyprinodontiformes (245), and Gymnotiformes (135). The most recorded species was the characid Astyanax fasciatus (4696 records). We registered 116,802 distribution records for native species, compared to 1802 distribution records for nonnative species. The main aim of the NEOTROPICAL FRESHWATER FISHES data set was to make these occurrence and abundance data accessible for international researchers to develop ecological and macroecological studies, from local to regional scales, with focal fish species, families, or orders. We anticipate that the NEOTROPICAL FRESHWATER FISHES data set will be valuable for studies on a wide range of ecological processes, such as trophic cascades, fishery pressure, the effects of habitat loss and fragmentation, and the impacts of species invasion and climate change. There are no copyright restrictions on the data, and please cite this data paper when using the data in publications.Fil: Tonella, Lívia Helena. Universidade Estadual de Maringá. Departamento de Engenharia Química. Laboratorio de Pesquisa.; BrasilFil: Ruaro, Renata. Universidade Estadual de Maringá. Departamento de Engenharia Química. Laboratorio de Pesquisa.; BrasilFil: Daga, Vanessa Salete. Universidade Federal do Paraná; BrasilFil: Garcia, Diego Azevedo Zoccal. Universidade Estadual de Londrina; BrasilFil: Barroso Vitorino Júnior, Oscar. Instituto Natureza do Tocantins-Naturatins; BrasilFil: Lobato de Magalhães, Tatiana. Universidad Autonoma de Queretaro.; MéxicoFil: Reis, Roberto Esser. Museu de Ciências e Tecnologia; BrasilFil: Di Dario, Fabio. Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro; BrasilFil: Petry, Ana Cristina. Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro; BrasilFil: Mincarone, Michael Maia. Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro; BrasilFil: Assis Montag, Luciano Fogaça. Universidade Federal do Pará; BrasilFil: Pompeu, Paulo Santos. Universidade Federal de Lavras; BrasilFil: Teixeira, Adonias Aphoena Martins. Universidade Estadual da Paraiba; BrasilFil: Carmassi, Alberto Luciano. Universidade Federal de Sao Paulo; Brasil. Universidade Federal do São Carlos; BrasilFil: Sánchez, Alberto J.. Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco; MéxicoFil: Giraldo Pérez, Alejandro. Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais; BrasilFil: Bono, Alessandra. Universidad de Vale do Rio dos Sinos; BrasilFil: Datovo, Aléssio. Universidade de Sao Paulo; BrasilFil: Flecker, Alexander S.. Cornell University; Estados UnidosFil: Sanches, Alexandra. Universidade de Sao Paulo; Brasil. Universidade Federal do São Carlos; BrasilFil: Godinho, Alexandre Lima. Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais; BrasilFil: Matthiensen, Alexandre. Embrapa Suínos e Aves; BrasilFil: Peressin, Alexandre. Universidade Federal de Lavras; BrasilFil: Silva Hilsdorf, Alexandre Wagner. Universidade de Mogi das Cruzes; BrasilFil: Barufatti, Alexéia. Universidade Federal da Grande Dourados; BrasilFil: Hirschmann, Alice. Universidade Federal do Pampa; BrasilFil: Jung, Aline. Universidade Do Estado de Mato Grosso (unemat);Fil: Cruz Ramírez, Allan K.. Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco; MéxicoFil: Braga Silva, Alline. Instituto Federal de Goiás; BrasilFil: Cunico, Almir Manoel. Universidade Federal do Paraná; BrasilFil: Tagliaferro, Marina Beatriz. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Austral de Investigaciones Científicas; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto de Diversidad y Ecología Animal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales. Instituto de Diversidad y Ecología Animal; Argentin

Three-Armed Trials Including Placebo and No-Treatment Groups May Be Subject to Publication Bias: Systematic Review

Background: It has been argued that placebos may not have important clinical impacts in general. However, there is increasing evidence of a publication bias among trials published in journals. Therefore, we explored the potential for publication bias in randomized trials with active treatment, placebo, and no-treatment groups. Methods: Three-armed randomized trials of acupuncture, acupoint stimulation, and transcutaneous electrical stimulation were obtained from electronic databases. Effect sizes between treatment and placebo groups were calculated for treatment effect, and effect sizes between placebo and no-treatment groups were calculated for placebo effect. All data were then analyzed for publication bias. Results: For the treatment effect, small trials with fewer than 100 patients per arm showed more benefits than large trials with at least 100 patients per arm in acupuncture and acupoint stimulation. For the placebo effect, no differences were found between large and small trials. Further analyses showed that the treatment effect in acupuncture and acupoint stimulation may be subject to publication bias because study design and any known factors of heterogeneity were not associated with the small study effects. In the simulation, the magnitude of the placebo effect was smaller than that calculated after considering publication bias. Conclusions: Randomized three-armed trials, which are necessary for estimating the placebo effect, may be subject t

Understanding the behaviour of hackers while performing attack tasks in a professional setting and in a public challenge

When critical assets or functionalities are included in a piece of software accessible to the end users, code protections are used to hinder or delay the extraction or manipulation of such critical assets. The process and strategy followed by hackers to understand and tamper with protected software might differ from program understanding for benign purposes. Knowledge of the actual hacker behaviours while performing real attack tasks can inform better ways to protect the software and can provide more realistic assumptions to the developers, evaluators, and users of software protections. Within Aspire, a software protection research project funded by the EU under framework programme FP7, we have conducted three industrial case studies with the involvement of professional penetration testers and a public challenge consisting of eight attack tasks with open participation. We have applied a systematic qualitative analysis methodology to the hackers’ reports relative to the industrial case studies and the public challenge. The qualitative analysis resulted in 459 and 265 annotations added respectively to the industrial and to the public challenge reports. Based on these annotations we built a taxonomy consisting of 169 concepts. They address the hacker activities related to (i) understanding code; (ii) defining the attack strategy; (iii) selecting and customizing the tools; and (iv) defeating the protections. While there are many commonalities between professional hackers and practitioners, we could spot many fundamental differences. For instance, while industrial professional hackers aim at elaborating automated and reproducible deterministic attacks, practitioners prefer to minimize the effort and try many different manual tasks. This analysis allowed us to distill a number of new research directions and potential improvements for protection techniques. In particular, considering the critical role of analysis tools, protection techniques should explicitly attack them, by exploiting analysis problems and complexity aspects that available automated techniques are bad at addressing

Adherence to antibiotic treatment guidelines and outcomes in the hospitalized elderly with different types of pneumonia

Background: Few studies evaluated the clinical outcomes of Community Acquired Pneumonia (CAP), Hospital-Acquired Pneumonia (HAP) and Health Care-Associated Pneumonia (HCAP) in relation to the adherence of antibiotic treatment to the guidelines of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and the American Thoracic Society (ATS) in hospitalized elderly people (65 years or older). Methods: Data were obtained from REPOSI, a prospective registry held in 87 Italian internal medicine and geriatric wards. Patients with a diagnosis of pneumonia (ICD-9 480-487) or prescribed with an antibiotic for pneumonia as indication were selected. The empirical antibiotic regimen was defined to be adherent to guidelines if concordant with the treatment regimens recommended by IDSA/ATS for CAP, HAP, and HCAP. Outcomes were assessed by logistic regression models. Results: A diagnosis of pneumonia was made in 317 patients. Only 38.8% of them received an empirical antibiotic regimen that was adherent to guidelines. However, no significant association was found between adherence to guidelines and outcomes. Having HAP, older age, and higher CIRS severity index were the main factors associated with in-hospital mortality. Conclusions: The adherence to antibiotic treatment guidelines was poor, particularly for HAP and HCAP, suggesting the need for more adherence to the optimal management of antibiotics in the elderly with pneumonia