A Multi Size-Level Assessment of Benthic Marine Communities in a Coastal Environment: Are They Different Sides of the Same Coin?

Organism body size has been demonstrated to be a discriminating element in shaping the response of living beings to environmental factors, thus playing a fundamental role in community structuring. Despite the importance of studies elucidating relations among communities of different size levels in ecosystems, the attempts that have been made in this sense are still very scarce and a reliable approach for these research still has to be defined. We characterized the benthic communities of bacteria, microbial eukaryotes, meiofauna and macrofauna in a coastal environment, encompassing a 10000-fold gradient in body size, testing and discussing a mixed approach of molecular fingerprinting for microbes and morphological observations for meio- and macrofauna. We found no correlation among structures of the different size-level communities: this suggests that community composition at one size-level could have no (or very low) influence on the community composition at other size-levels. Moreover, each community responds in a different way to the environmental parameters and with a degree of sensitivity which seems to increase with organism size. Therefore, our data indicate that the characterization of all the different size levels is clearly a necessity in order to study the dynamics really acting in a system

Preprocesamiento alternativo de imágenes 3D de MRA

En los últimos años el avance de los sistemas de cómputo han permitido un sustancial progreso en las aplicaciones del procesamiento digital de imágenes. Este avance se refleja especialmente en el grado de mejoramiento de las imágenes de tomografía axial computada, ecografía y resonancia magnética nuclear. Una aplicación interesante del procesamiento de imágenes es la identificación del estrechamiento en los vasos. Particularmente en el registro de imágenes mediante MRA se requiere el realce de las imágenes para visualizar nítidamente vasos pequeños. En este marco, se han propuesto trabajos que usan como pre-procesamiento el máximo local medio (LMM) para aumentar la detectabilidad de vasos pequeños. A cada dato correspondiente a un voxel en el volumen original tridimensional (3- D), se aplica el LMM a una línea en el cubo centrada en el voxel de interes y se forma el juego de datos 3-D LMM. A los datos 3-D LMM se le aplica la proyección de máxima intensidad (MIP) para producir la imagen bidimensional (2-D) LMM-MIP que aumenta la detectabilidad de vasos pequeños. En este contexto se propone una modificación de los algoritmos de LMM empleando la mediana en el pre-procesamientoIII Workshop de Computación Gráfica, Imágenes y Visualización (WCGIV)Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Preprocesamiento alternativo de imágenes 3D de MRA

En los últimos años el avance de los sistemas de cómputo han permitido un sustancial progreso en las aplicaciones del procesamiento digital de imágenes. Este avance se refleja especialmente en el grado de mejoramiento de las imágenes de tomografía axial computada, ecografía y resonancia magnética nuclear. Una aplicación interesante del procesamiento de imágenes es la identificación del estrechamiento en los vasos. Particularmente en el registro de imágenes mediante MRA se requiere el realce de las imágenes para visualizar nítidamente vasos pequeños. En este marco, se han propuesto trabajos que usan como pre-procesamiento el máximo local medio (LMM) para aumentar la detectabilidad de vasos pequeños. A cada dato correspondiente a un voxel en el volumen original tridimensional (3- D), se aplica el LMM a una línea en el cubo centrada en el voxel de interes y se forma el juego de datos 3-D LMM. A los datos 3-D LMM se le aplica la proyección de máxima intensidad (MIP) para producir la imagen bidimensional (2-D) LMM-MIP que aumenta la detectabilidad de vasos pequeños. En este contexto se propone una modificación de los algoritmos de LMM empleando la mediana en el pre-procesamientoIII Workshop de Computación Gráfica, Imágenes y Visualización (WCGIV)Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Current status of MEDSCOPE CS-Tools

Presentación realizada en: 13º Mediterranean Climate Outlook Forum (MedCOF) celebrado de forma online entre el 15 de octubre y el 26 de noviembre de 2019

Dependence of immunoglobulin class switch recombination in B Cells on vesicular release of ATP and CD73 ectonucleotidase activity

Immunoglobulin (Ig) isotype diversification by class switch recombination (CSR) is an essential process for mounting a protective humoral immune response. Ig CSR deficiencies in humans can result from an intrinsic B cell defect; however, most of these deficiencies are still molecularly undefined and diagnosed as common variable immunodeficiency (CVID). Here, we show that extracellular adenosine critically contributes to CSR in human naive and IgM memory B cells. In these cells, coordinate stimulation of B cell receptor and toll-like receptors results in the release of ATP stored in Ca2+-sensitive secretory vesicles. Plasma membrane ectonucleoside triphosphate diphosphohydrolase 1 CD39 and ecto-5′-nucleotidase CD73 hydrolyze ATP to adenosine, which induces CSR in B cells in an autonomous fashion. Notably, CVID patients with impaired class-switched antibody responses are selectively deficient in CD73 expression in B cells, suggesting that CD73-dependent adenosine generation contributes to the pathogenesis of this disease

CSTools: a new R package for the calibration, combination, downscaling and analysis of seasonal forecasts

Póster presentado en: EGU General Assembly 2019 celebrada del 7 al 12 de abril en Viena, Austria.MEDSCOPE is co-funded by the H2020 ERA-Net ERA4CS European Research Area for Climate Services (Grant 690462)

Hemorrhagic transformation in acute ischemic stroke patients and atrial fibrillation: time to initiation of anticoagulants and outcome

Background: In patients with acute ischemic stroke and atrial fibrillation, early anticoagulation prevents ischemic recurrence but with the risk of hemorrhagic transformation (HT). The aims of this study were to evaluate in consecutive patients with acute stroke and atrial fibrillation (1) the incidence of early HT, (2) the time to initiation of anticoagulation in patients with HT, (3) the association of HT with ischemic recurrences, and (4) the association of HT with clinical outcome at 90 days. Methods and Results: HT was diagnosed by a second brain computed tomographic scan performed 24 to 72 hours after stroke onset. The incidence of ischemic recurrences as well as mortality or disability (modified Rankin Scale scores >2) were evaluated at 90 days. Ischemic recurrences were the composite of ischemic stroke, transient ischemic attack, or systemic embolism. Among the 2183 patients included in the study, 241 (11.0%) had HT. Patients with and without HT initiated anticoagulant therapy after a mean 23.3 and 11.6 days, respectively, from index stroke. At 90 days, 4.6% (95% confidence interval, 2.3–8.0) of the patients with HT had ischemic recurrences compared with 4.9% (95% confidence interval, 4.0–6.0) of those without HT; 53.1% of patients with HT were deceased or disabled compared with 35.8% of those without HT. On multivariable analysis, HT was associated with mortality or disability (odds ratio, 1.71; 95% confidence interval, 1.24–2.35). Conclusions: In patients with HT, anticoagulation was initiated about 12 days later than patients without HT. This delay was not associated with increased detection of ischemic recurrence. HT was associated with increased mortality or disability

Prescription appropriateness of anti-diabetes drugs in elderly patients hospitalized in a clinical setting: evidence from the REPOSI Register

Diabetes is an increasing global health burden with the highest prevalence (24.0%) observed in elderly people. Older diabetic adults have a greater risk of hospitalization and several geriatric syndromes than older nondiabetic adults. For these conditions, special care is required in prescribing therapies including anti- diabetes drugs. Aim of this study was to evaluate the appropriateness and the adherence to safety recommendations in the prescriptions of glucose-lowering drugs in hospitalized elderly patients with diabetes. Data for this cross-sectional study were obtained from the REgistro POliterapie-Società Italiana Medicina Interna (REPOSI) that collected clinical information on patients aged ≥ 65 years acutely admitted to Italian internal medicine and geriatric non-intensive care units (ICU) from 2010 up to 2019. Prescription appropriateness was assessed according to the 2019 AGS Beers Criteria and anti-diabetes drug data sheets.Among 5349 patients, 1624 (30.3%) had diagnosis of type 2 diabetes. At admission, 37.7% of diabetic patients received treatment with metformin, 37.3% insulin therapy, 16.4% sulfonylureas, and 11.4% glinides. Surprisingly, only 3.1% of diabetic patients were treated with new classes of anti- diabetes drugs. According to prescription criteria, at admission 15.4% of patients treated with metformin and 2.6% with sulfonylureas received inappropriately these treatments. At discharge, the inappropriateness of metformin therapy decreased (10.2%, P < 0.0001). According to Beers criteria, the inappropriate prescriptions of sulfonylureas raised to 29% both at admission and at discharge. This study shows a poor adherence to current guidelines on diabetes management in hospitalized elderly people with a high prevalence of inappropriate use of sulfonylureas according to the Beers criteria