Sustainability Empowerment and Lifestyles: ICTs for New Food Behavioral Models

Abstract. Recognizing the important role that modern Information and Communication Technologies (ICts), and in particular the Internet, can play in determining the so-called "Sustainability Empowerment" ("the ability to make the Right to Sustainability a constitutive principle of a new global society where well-being and its sustainability, in time and space, constitute its fundamental strategic goal"), the present paper highlights a web project that takes for example the short supply chain model as a reference to a sustainable food lifestyle. This with the purpose of highlighting the importance to guide the visitors to new patterns of food behavior most functional to the maintenance in time and space of a new well-being paradigm

Modulation of apoptosis by caprine herpesvirus 1 infection in a neuronal cell line

Caprine herpesvirus type 1 (CpHV-1), like other members of the alpha subfamily of herpesviruses, establishes latent infections in trigeminal ganglion neurons. Our groups previously demonstrated that CpHV-1 induces apoptosis in goat peripheral blood mononuclear cells and in an epithelial bovine cell line, but the ability of CpHV-1 to induce apoptosis in neuronal cells remains unexplored. In this report, the susceptibility of Neuro 2A cells to infection by CpHV-1 was examined. Following infection of cultured cells with CpHV-1, expression of cell death genes was evaluated using real-time PCR and Western blot assays. Analysis of virus-infected cells revealed activation of caspase-8, a marker for the extrinsic pathway of apoptosis, and caspase-9, a marker for the intrinsic pathway of apoptosis at 12 and 24 h post-infection. Significant increase in the levels of cleaved caspase-3 was also observed at the acme of cytopathic effect at 24 h post-infection. In particular, at 3 and 6 h post-infection, several proapototic genes were under-expressed. At 12 h post-infection several proapototic genes such as caspases, TNF, Cd70, and Traf1 were over expressed while Bcl2a1a, Fadd, and TNF genes were underexpressed. In conclusion, the simultaneous activation of caspase-8 and caspase-9 suggests that CpHV-1 can trigger the death-receptor pathway and the mitochondrial pathway separately and in parallel. Our findings are significant because this is the first published study showing the effect of CpHV-1 infection in neuronal cells in terms of gene expression and apoptosis modulation

Deep gray matter volume loss drives disability worsening in multiple sclerosis.

OBJECTIVE: Gray matter (GM) atrophy occurs in all multiple sclerosis (MS) phenotypes. We investigated whether there is a spatiotemporal pattern of GM atrophy that is associated with faster disability accumulation in MS. METHODS: We analyzed 3,604 brain high-resolution T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging scans from 1,417 participants: 1,214 MS patients (253 clinically isolated syndrome [CIS], 708 relapsing-remitting [RRMS], 128 secondary-progressive [SPMS], and 125 primary-progressive [PPMS]), over an average follow-up of 2.41 years (standard deviation [SD] = 1.97), and 203 healthy controls (HCs; average follow-up = 1.83 year; SD = 1.77), attending seven European centers. Disability was assessed with the Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS). We obtained volumes of the deep GM (DGM), temporal, frontal, parietal, occipital and cerebellar GM, brainstem, and cerebral white matter. Hierarchical mixed models assessed annual percentage rate of regional tissue loss and identified regional volumes associated with time-to-EDSS progression. RESULTS: SPMS showed the lowest baseline volumes of cortical GM and DGM. Of all baseline regional volumes, only that of the DGM predicted time-to-EDSS progression (hazard ratio = 0.73; 95% confidence interval, 0.65, 0.82; p < 0.001): for every standard deviation decrease in baseline DGM volume, the risk of presenting a shorter time to EDSS worsening during follow-up increased by 27%. Of all longitudinal measures, DGM showed the fastest annual rate of atrophy, which was faster in SPMS (-1.45%), PPMS (-1.66%), and RRMS (-1.34%) than CIS (-0.88%) and HCs (-0.94%; p < 0.01). The rate of temporal GM atrophy in SPMS (-1.21%) was significantly faster than RRMS (-0.76%), CIS (-0.75%), and HCs (-0.51%). Similarly, the rate of parietal GM atrophy in SPMS (-1.24-%) was faster than CIS (-0.63%) and HCs (-0.23%; all p values <0.05). Only the atrophy rate in DGM in patients was significantly associated with disability accumulation (beta = 0.04; p < 0.001). INTERPRETATION: This large, multicenter and longitudinal study shows that DGM volume loss drives disability accumulation in MS, and that temporal cortical GM shows accelerated atrophy in SPMS than RRMS. The difference in regional GM atrophy development between phenotypes needs to be taken into account when evaluating treatment effect of therapeutic interventions. Ann Neurol 2018;83:210-222

La disfunzione atriale sinistra causata da depositi fibrillari di amiloide è associata ad un peggioramento della funzione ventricolare sinistra nei pazienti affetti da amilodosi cardiaca.

Il termine amiloidosi indica un insieme eterogeneo di patologie causate dalla deposizione extracellulare di proteine autologhe in forma di fibrille insolubili, che induce la progressiva alterazione architettonica e funzionale degli organi e dei tessuti interessati. La CMR con gadolinio è in grado di evidenziare anche depositi di amiloide nelle pareti degli atri , ai quali però non è mai stato associato un chiaro significato clinico. In seguito a queste osservazioni ci siamo posti come obiettivo quello di valutare se la deposizione di amiloide nello spessore della parete atriale, riscontrabile mediante CMR potesse avere un ruolo nel grado di dilatazione e di disfunzione atriale in corso di amiloidosi cardiaca e, più in generale, della funzione cardiaca globale. Un gruppo di pazienti, con diagnosi nota di amiloidosi cardiaca (AC), è stato sottoposto a CMR, con utilizzo del gadolinio (CMRGad). In tutti i pazienti selezionati è stato possibile evidenziare il late enhancement del gadolinio del ventricolo sinistro con il pattern tipico per AC, il cosiddetto zebra-pattern. In alcuni di questi, è stato riscontrato un interessamento anche dello spessore dell'atrio sinistro. Abbiamo deciso, dunque, di raggruppare da un lato i pazienti con evidenza di LGA atriale (Atria +), dall'altro i restanti pazienti senza evidenziabile coinvolgimento dell'atrio sinistro (Atria -). I pazienti appartenenti al gruppo Atria + presentavano un peggioramento statisticamente significatico della funzione atriale e della frazione di eiezione ventricolare sinistra rispetto ai pazienti appartenenti al gruppo Atria -. I nostri dati suggeriscono che Il coinvolgimento dell'atrio potrebbe essere legato o ad un particolare sottotipo di amiloide o ad un diverso stadio di amiloidosi cardiaca. Tali evidenze indicano che la mortalità sia più alta nei pazienti Atria+ rispetto ai soggetti Atria-