A mobilization regimen to prevent mandibular hypomobility in irradiated patients : an analysis and comparison of two techniques

Radiotherapy, when used in head and neck cancer treatment, can produce side effects in the patients, such as decreased salivary production, xerostomia, opportunistic infections, radiation caries, dysphagia, local discomfort and the limitation of mouth opening. The aim of this study was to evaluate the amplitude of mouth opening in patients before and immediately after the completion of radiotherapy, comparing the effectiveness of two physiotherapy exercises. The irradiated sites included the masticatory muscles. The results demonstrated that there were no statistically significant differences between the two instituted exercises; however there was a trend towards better clinical results in group 2. The amplitude of mouth opening showed a trend towards reduction, but this was not statistically significant. When the pterygoid and sternocleidomatoid muscles were included in the irriated field, patients were observed to have more morbidity. This indicates the great importance of these muscles in mouth opening. Based on the results obtained within this study, it is not possible to conclude that physiotherapy exercies are efficacious in preventing trismus. Future longitudinal studies are required to verify the onset of trismus in radiotherapy patients

Variação da técnica de drenagem do seio maxilar após remoção de corpo estranho pela abordagem descrita por Caldwel-Luc

In this paper, an improvement of the maxillary sinus drainage after the remotion of foreign bodies by Caldwell-Luc surgery is developed. Three patients with tooth or radicular apex introduced into the maxillary antrum during dental extraction were submitted to the surgery. In contrast to the opening to the nasal cavity, two probes were installed to perform the irrigation and aspiration of the antrum after the surgery. The conclusions are that the use of the probes is an advance in the Caldwell-Luc surgery. With the irrigation and aspiration, the opening to the nasal cavity is not necessary and the result is a comfortable recovery to the patient. The Caldwell-Luc surgery is a safe and simple procedure to remove foreign bodies from the maxillary sinus.Neste trabalho desenvolve-se uma variação da drenagem do seio maxilar após remoção de corpo estranho pela abordagem de Caldwell-Luc. Três pacientes com dente ou resto radicular introduzidos durante exodontias no seio maxilar foram operados e ao invés de contra-abertura nasal procedeu-se a instalação de sondas para a irrigação e aspiração do seio maxilar no período pós operatório imediato. Conclui-se que: O emprego de sondas de irrigação e aspiração reflete um avanço na técnica de Caldwell-Luc; A lavagem pós-operatória do seio maxilar dispensa a realização de contra-abertura nasal e oferece conforto para o paciente no período pós-operatório; A cirurgia de Caldwell-Luc é uma técnica segura e de simples execução para a remoção de corpos estranhos do seio maxilar

Tratamento do mieloma múltiplo com VMCP: revisão de 52 casos

Cinqüenta e dois pacientes estudados entre novembro de 1987 e agosto de 1992 tendo sido submetidos a um ou mais ciclos de quimioterapia com VMCP (vincristina 2 mg IV dl; melphalan 4 mg/m2 VO d2-5; ciclofosfamida 100 mg/rrf VO d2-5 e prednisona 100 mg VO d2-5 - repetidos a cada 28 dias, ou conforme a toxicidade hematológica). Vinte e seis pacientes foram submetidos a radioterapia concomitante. Foi utilizado o estadiamento proposto pelo SWOG (Durie e Salmon, 1975), onde 15 (28,8%) pacientes foram estadiados como IIIA e 32 (61,5%) como IIIB, quatro (7,4%>) como II e um (2,2%) como I. Os critérios de resposta foram os mesmos adotados pelo SWOG; porém, consideramos também como Resposta Parcial (RP) a melhora do PS em um ponto ou mais. Sete pacientes entraram em Remissão Completa, 12 em Remissão Parcial e 20 foram considerados com Doença Está vele 13 não responderam ao tratamento. A Sobrevida Mediana para todos os pacientes, calculada pelo método de Kaplan-Meier, foi de 41 meses. A toxicidade foi tolerável na maioria dos pacientes, sendo grau 3-4 em 16 (30,8%) pacientes em pelo menos um episódio. A principal toxicidade dose limitante foi hematológica. Três pacientes morreram por leucopenia e infecção e um por toxicidade gastrointestinal (7,6%>). Oito pacientes estão perdidos do follow-up. Os autores consideram o esquema eficaz e com resultados compatíveis com os da literatura, com toxicidade dentro das expectativas

Broadened T-cell Repertoire Diversity in ivIg-treated SLE Patients is Also Related to the Individual Status of Regulatory T-cells

Intravenous IgG (ivIg) is a therapeutic alternative for lupus erythematosus, the mechanism of which remains to be fully understood. Here we investigated whether ivIg affects two established sub-phenotypes of SLE, namely relative oligoclonality of circulating T-cells and reduced activity of CD4 + Foxp3+ regulatory T-cells (Tregs) reflected by lower CD25 surface density.Octapharma research funding; Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia postdoctoral fellowships: (SFRH/BPD/20806/2004, SFRH/BPD/34648/2007); FCT Programa Pessoa travel grant

Paternal resistance training modulates calcaneal tendon proteome in the offspring exposed to high-fat diet

The increase in high-energy dietary intakes is a well-known risk factor for many diseases, and can also negatively impact the tendon. Ancestral lifestyle can mitigate the metabolic harmful effects of offspring exposed to high-fat diet (HF). However, the influence of paternal exercise on molecular pathways associated to offspring tendon remodeling remains to be determined. We investigated the effects of 8 weeks of paternal resistance training (RT) on offspring tendon proteome exposed to standard diet or HF diet. Wistar rats were randomly divided into two groups: sedentary fathers and trained fathers (8 weeks, three times per week, with 8–12 dynamic movements per climb in a stair climbing apparatus). The offspring were obtained by mating with sedentary females. Upon weaning, male offspring were divided into four groups (five animals per group): offspring from sedentary fathers were exposed either to control diet (SFO-C), or to high-fat diet (SFO-HF); offspring from trained fathers were exposed to control diet (TFO-C) or to a high-fat diet (TFO-HF). The Nano-LC-MS/MS analysis revealed 383 regulated proteins among offspring groups. HF diet induced a decrease of abundance in tendon proteins related to extracellular matrix organization, transport, immune response and translation. On the other hand, the changes in the offspring tendon proteome in response to paternal RT were more pronounced when the offspring were exposed to HF diet, resulting in positive regulation of proteins essential for the maintenance of tendon integrity. Most of the modulated proteins are associated to biological pathways related to tendon protection and damage recovery, such as extracellular matrix organization and transport. The present study demonstrated that the father’s lifestyle could be crucial for tendon homeostasis in the first generation. Our results provide important insights into the molecular mechanisms involved in paternal intergenerational effects and potential protective outcomes of paternal RT

A review of techniques for spatial modeling in geographical, conservation and landscape genetics

Most evolutionary processes occur in a spatial context and several spatial analysis techniques have been employed in an exploratory context. However, the existence of autocorrelation can also perturb significance tests when data is analyzed using standard correlation and regression techniques on modeling genetic data as a function of explanatory variables. In this case, more complex models incorporating the effects of autocorrelation must be used. Here we review those models and compared their relative performances in a simple simulation, in which spatial patterns in allele frequencies were generated by a balance between random variation within populations and spatially-structured gene flow. Notwithstanding the somewhat idiosyncratic behavior of the techniques evaluated, it is clear that spatial autocorrelation affects Type I errors and that standard linear regression does not provide minimum variance estimators. Due to its flexibility, we stress that principal coordinate of neighbor matrices (PCNM) and related eigenvector mapping techniques seem to be the best approaches to spatial regression. In general, we hope that our review of commonly used spatial regression techniques in biology and ecology may aid population geneticists towards providing better explanations for population structures dealing with more complex regression problems throughout geographic space

Photography-based taxonomy is inadequate, unnecessary, and potentially harmful for biological sciences

The question whether taxonomic descriptions naming new animal species without type specimen(s) deposited in collections should be accepted for publication by scientific journals and allowed by the Code has already been discussed in Zootaxa (Dubois & Nemésio 2007; Donegan 2008, 2009; Nemésio 2009a–b; Dubois 2009; Gentile & Snell 2009; Minelli 2009; Cianferoni & Bartolozzi 2016; Amorim et al. 2016). This question was again raised in a letter supported by 35 signatories published in the journal Nature (Pape et al. 2016) on 15 September 2016. On 25 September 2016, the following rebuttal (strictly limited to 300 words as per the editorial rules of Nature) was submitted to Nature, which on 18 October 2016 refused to publish it. As we think this problem is a very important one for zoological taxonomy, this text is published here exactly as submitted to Nature, followed by the list of the 493 taxonomists and collection-based researchers who signed it in the short time span from 20 September to 6 October 2016