Analysis of Clinical Parameters, Drug Consumption and Use of Health Resources in a Southern European Population with Alcohol Abuse Disorder during COVID-19 Pandemic

The disruption in healthcare attention to people with alcohol dependence, along with psychological decompensation as a consequence of lockdown derived from the COVID-19 pandemic could have a negative impact on people who suffer from alcohol abuse disorder. Observational real world data pre-post study included 9966 men aged >16 years registered as having the diagnosis of alcohol abuse disorder in the electronic medical records (EMR) of the Aragon Regional Health Service (Spain). Clinical (Glutamate-oxaloacetate -GOT-, Glutamate pyruvate -GPT-, creatinine, glomerular filtration, systolic blood pressure -SBP-, diastolic blood pressure -DBP-, total cholesterol, LDL, HDL, triglycerides, and body mass index -BMI-), pharmacological (dose per inhabitant per day, DHD, of drugs used in addictive disorders, benzodiazepines and antidepressants) and health resource use variables (primary and specialized care) were considered. A Student''s t-test for matched samples was performed to analyze the changes in clinical variables between alcohol abuse disorder patients with and without COVID-19. Only creatinine and LDL showed a significant but clinically irrelevant change six months after the end of the strict lockdown. The total number of DHDs for all drugs included in the study (except for benzodiazepines), decreased. In the same way, the use of health services by these patients also decreased. The impact of COVID-19 among this group of patients has been moderate. The reorganization of health and social services after the declaration of the state of alarm in our country made possible the maintenance of care for this vulnerable population

Prevalence and risk factors for wheeze, decreased forced expiratory volume in 1 s and bronchoconstriction in young children living in Havana, Cuba: a population-based cohort study

Objectives: Asthma has not been extensively studied in low-income and middle-income countries, where risk factors and access to treatment may differ from more affluent countries. We aimed to identify the prevalence of asthma and local risk factors in Havana, Cuba.Setting: Four municipalities in Havana, Cuba.Participants: A population-based cohort study design of young children living in Havana, Cuba. Children were recruited from primary care centres at age 12–15 months.Primary and secondary outcome measures: Data on wheeze in the past 12 months, asthma treatment and environmental exposures collected regularly until the age of 6 years, when forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1) and reversibility to aerosolised salbutamol were also measured.Results: 1106 children provided data at the age of 6 years old. The prevalence of wheeze in the previous 12 months was 422 (38%), and 294 (33%) of the study population had bronchodilatation of 12% or more in FEV1 after administration of inhaled salbutamol. In the previous 12 months, 182 (16%) of the children had received inhaled corticosteroids, 416 (38%) salbutamol inhalers and 283 (26%) a course of systemic steroids.Wheeze in the first year and a family history of asthma were both positively associated with bronchodilatation to inhaled salbutamol (1.94%; 95% CI 0.81 to 3.08 and 1.85%; CI 0.14 to 3.57, respectively), while paracetamol use in the first year was associated with wheeze at 6 years (OR 1.64, 95% CI 1.14 to 2.35). There were large differences in FEV1, bronchodilatation and risk of wheeze across different geographical areas.Conclusions: Asthma is common in young children living in Havana, and the high prevalence of systemic steroids administrated is likely to reflect the underuse of regular inhaled corticosteroids. If replicated in other comparable low-income and middle-income countries, this represents an important global public health issue

Biomonitoring of Mycotoxins in Plasma of Patients with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Disease

Exposure to environmental contaminants might play an important role in neurodegenerative disease pathogenesis, such as Parkinson ' s disease (PD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD). For the first time in Spain, the plasmatic levels of 19 mycotoxins from patients diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease (44 PD and 24 AD) and from their healthy companions (25) from La Rioja region were analyzed. The studied mycotoxins were aflatoxins B1, B2, G1, G2 and M1, T-2 and HT-2, ochratoxins A (OTA) and B (OTB), zearalenone, sterigmatocystin (STER), nivalenol, deoxynivalenol, 3-acetyldeoxynivalenol, 15-acetyldeoxynivalenol, deepoxy-deoxynivalenol, neosolaniol, diacetoxyscirpenol and fusarenon-X. Samples were analyzed by LC-MS/MS before and after treatment with beta-glucuronidase/arylsulfatase in order to detect potential metabolites. Only OTA, OTB and STER were detected in the samples. OTA was present before (77% of the samples) and after (89%) the enzymatic treatment, while OTB was only detectable before (13%). Statistically significant differences in OTA between healthy companions and patients were observed but the observed differences might seem more related to gender (OTA levels higher in men, p-value = 0.0014) than the disease itself. STER appeared only after enzymatic treatment (88%). Statistical analysis on STER, showed distributions always different between healthy controls and patients (patients' group > controls, p-value < 0.0001). Surprisingly, STER levels weakly correlated positively with age in women (rho = 0.3384), while OTA correlation showed a decrease of levels with age especially in the men with PD (rho = -0.4643)

Optical Nanoantennas for Multiband Surface-Enhanced Infrared and Raman Spectroscopy

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Integrative epigenomics in Sjögren´s syndrome reveals novel pathways and a strong interaction between the HLA, autoantibodies and the interferon signature

Primary Sjögren's syndrome (SS) is a systemic autoimmune disease characterized by lymphocytic infiltration and damage of exocrine salivary and lacrimal glands. The etiology of SS is complex with environmental triggers and genetic factors involved. By conducting an integrated multi-omics study, we confirmed a vast coordinated hypomethylation and overexpression effects in IFN-related genes, what is known as the IFN signature. Stratified and conditional analyses suggest a strong interaction between SS-associated HLA genetic variation and the presence of Anti-Ro/SSA autoantibodies in driving the IFN epigenetic signature and determining SS. We report a novel epigenetic signature characterized by increased DNA methylation levels in a large number of genes enriched in pathways such as collagen metabolism and extracellular matrix organization. We identified potential new genetic variants associated with SS that might mediate their risk by altering DNA methylation or gene expression patterns, as well as disease-interacting genetic variants that exhibit regulatory function only in the SS population. Our study sheds new light on the interaction between genetics, autoantibody profiles, DNA methylation and gene expression in SS, and contributes to elucidate the genetic architecture of gene regulation in an autoimmune population

Biodistribution, clearance, and long‐term fate of clinically relevant nanomaterials

Realization of the immense potential of nanomaterials for biomedical applications will require a thorough understanding of how they interact with cells, tissues, and organs. There is evidence that, depending on their physicochemical properties and subsequent interactions, nanomaterials are indeed taken up by cells. However, the subsequent release and/or intracellular degradation of the materials, transfer to other cells, and/or translocation across tissue barriers are still poorly understood. The involvement of these cellular clearance mechanisms strongly influences the long-term fate of used nanomaterials, especially if one also considers repeated exposure. Several nanomaterials, such as liposomes and iron oxide, gold, or silica nanoparticles, are already approved by the American Food and Drug Administration for clinical trials; however, there is still a huge gap of knowledge concerning their fate in the body. Herein, clinically relevant nanomaterials, their possible modes of exposure, as well as the biological barriers they must overcome to be effective are reviewed. Furthermore, the biodistribution and kinetics of nanomaterials and their modes of clearance are discussed, knowledge of the long-term fates of a selection of nanomaterials is summarized, and the critical points that must be considered for future research are addressed