Long term results in the life quality of children with obstructive sleep disorders Summary

Obst ructive Sleep Disorders (OSD) affect mostly the pediatric population. Within this group, its main etiology is adenotonsillar hyperplasia, being adenoidectomy or adenotonsillectomy the best treatment option for quality of life improvement. Aim: To asses quality of life of children with OSD after adenoidectomy/adenotonsillectomy. Method: A prospective study was carried out with 48 children, between 2 and 11 years, with clinical manifestations of OSD and obstructive adenotonsillar hyperplasia. The OSA18 questionnaire was answered by the parents to evaluate their children's quality of life before surgery; at about thirty days and at least eleven months after the procedure. A higher score meant a worse quality of life. Results: Before surgery, the average OSA18 score was 82.83(SD=12.57), with an average global score for quality of life of 6.04(SD=1.66). Within thirty days after surgery, the average OSA18 score was 34.3 (SD=9.95) with an average global score of 9.6(SD=0.81), both showing significant reduction (p< 0.001). Thirty-four children (70.83%) were re-evaluated between 11 and 30 months (average=16.85; SD=5.16). The average OSA18 score was 35.44 (SD=19.95) with an average global score of 9.28 (SD=1.78). The postoperative evaluations weren't significantly different. Conclusion: surgery improves the quality of life of children with OSD, and such improvement maintains for the long run

Distortion-product otoacoustic emissions and auditory brainstem responses sensitivity assessment in cisplatin-induced ototoxicity in rats

SummaryCisplatin (cis-diamminedicloroplatinum) is an antineoplastic drug used in the treatment of a variety of cancers, especially head-and-neck cancer. Its ototoxicity, however, has been noted as a common side-effect which limits its use and causes significant morbidity.Aimto assess distortion-product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAE) and brainstem evoked response audiometry (BERA) sensitivity to detect secondary ototoxicity caused by different doses and means of administration of cisplatin in rats.Study DesignExperimental.Materials and MethodsMale Wistar rats were intraperitoneally (i.p.) injected with 24 mg/kg cisplatin, divided into three equal doses (8mg/kg) or a single i.p. injection of 16 mg/kg. The animals were evaluated by distortion product otoacoustic emission (DPOAE) or brainstem evoked response audiometry (BERA) on the 3rd and 4th days after the cisplatin injection.ResultsTreatment with cisplatin 24 mg/kg resulted in significant DPOAE decrease and it raised the BERA electrophysiological threshold. The 16mg/kg dose could not significantly reduce the DPOAE amplitude, but it raised the animals' hearing thresholds – detected by the BERA.ConclusionIn rats, BERA was more sensitivity than DPOAE at detecting cisplatin-induced ototoxicity in rats considering different doses and means of administration

A list of land plants of Parque Nacional do Caparaó, Brazil, highlights the presence of sampling gaps within this protected area

Brazilian protected areas are essential for plant conservation in the Atlantic Forest domain, one of the 36 global biodiversity hotspots. A major challenge for improving conservation actions is to know the plant richness, protected by these areas. Online databases offer an accessible way to build plant species lists and to provide relevant information about biodiversity. A list of land plants of “Parque Nacional do Caparaó” (PNC) was previously built using online databases and published on the website "Catálogo de Plantas das Unidades de Conservação do Brasil." Here, we provide and discuss additional information about plant species richness, endemism and conservation in the PNC that could not be included in the List. We documented 1,791 species of land plants as occurring in PNC, of which 63 are cited as threatened (CR, EN or VU) by the Brazilian National Red List, seven as data deficient (DD) and five as priorities for conservation. Fifity-one species were possible new ocurrences for ES and MG states

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear un derstanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5–7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8–11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world’s most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepre sented in biodiversity databases.13–15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may elim inate pieces of the Amazon’s biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological com munities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple or ganism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region’s vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most ne glected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lostinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio