Clinical Study Statins Do Not Influence Long-Term Rituximab Clinical Efficiency in Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients

Objective. This longitudinal study aims to determine if statins inhibit the response to rituximab in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. Methods. 41 patients initiating rituximab were included; 17 patients were exposed to the combination of statins and rituximab. The total cholesterol, erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), and C-reactive protein (CRP) were assessed. The clinical response was evaluated using Disease Activity Score (DAS28) and European League against Rheumatism (EULAR) response at 6 and 18 months. Results. A tendency of increasing in DAS28 was observed in statin-exposed group but the correlation was very weak (at 18 months: = 0.013, = 0.952). The statin-exposed status was negatively and very weakly correlated with EULAR response at 6 months ( = −0.073, = 0.661) and 18 months ( = −0.197, = 0.244). There was a negative correlation between statin-exposed status and inflammatory markers values (ESR and CRP); however, the correlation was very weak. The use of statin did not influence the cardiovascular risk measured by modified Systematic Coronary Risk Evaluation (mSCORE). Conclusions. Long-term significant inhibitory effects of statins on rituximab treatment in RA have not been proved using clinical response scores or biologic markers

BCL-2 Expression is Prognostic for Improved Survival in Non-small Cell Lung Cancer

ObjectiveWe used a large patient population to identify immunohistochemical biomarkers to enable improved prognostication in patients with non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC).MethodsA tissue microarray was constructed using duplicate 0.6 mm cores of formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue blocks from 609 patients with NSCLC. Immunohistochemical was used to detect 11 biomarkers including epidermal growth factor receptor, Her2, Her3, p53, p63, bcl-1, bcl-2, Thyroid transcription factor, carcinoembryonic antigen, chromogranin, and synaptophysin. A clinical database was generated prospectively at the time of tissue collection. Survival outcomes were obtained from a Provincial Cancer Registry database. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to look for a relationship between biomarker expression, smoking history, and survival.ResultsSurvival data for 535 cases were available. As of June 2005, 429 patients (80%) had died; of these 286 (54%) died of lung cancer, 117 (22%) died of other known causes, and for 26 (5%) the cause of death was not available. Univariate analysis revealed that bcl-2 (p = 0.007) was the only biomarker prognostic for improved overall survival (OS). bcl-2 (p = 0.021) and p63 (p = 0.025) were both found to be prognostic for improved disease-specific survival (DSS). Multivariate analysis (using age and biomarker expression) revealed that bcl-2 expression is prognostic for improved OS (p = 0.005) and DSS (p = 0.021).ConclusionsOur results suggest that bcl-2 expression is prognostic for improved OS and DSS in NSCLC. Testing for bcl-2 expression in a prospective study will help to determine its clinical relevance in prognostication

Evaluation of the energy efficiency of an industrial consumer in trigeneration mode

The optimization of the energy supply solution of an industrial facility is a main objective of any management program within a company, having as desideratum: quality, safety and flexibility in energy supply. The electricity and heat supply (heat and cold) using a trigeneration plant is a modern technological solution, with high energy efficiency performance and low impact on the environment. Also, this technology is economically efficient, assuring the reduction of the global energy consumption of the industrial society, and implicitly the increasing of the profit. The input data considered in this paper are the values and the characteristics of the demands of the three energy forms belonging to the analysed industrial consumer. The structure of the thermal energy both as heat (technological steam, heating, domestic hot water) and cold (air conditioning) is considered. The consumption of the electricity covers the need of both the technological process and of the buildings (power supply and lighting). In a first stage, the most suitable technological solution for the specific conditions and characteristics of the needs is chosen. The multicriteria analysis of the proposed technological solution is performed during the next stage

Опухоли почек у детей - опухоль Вильмса

Renal tumours represent between 4.4 and 6.3% of all malignant tumours of the children, which requires a thorough knowledge of the types of tumours that can appear at this age group with the purpose of diagnosing and adequately treating these pathologies.Tumorile renale reprezintă între 4,4% și 6,3% din formațiunile tumorale maligne ale populației pediatrice1, ceea ce face necesară o cunoaștere a tipurilor de formațiuni tumorale ce pot apărea la aceasta categorie de vârsta în scopul unui diagnostic si tratament adecvat.Опухоли почек составляют от 4,4 % до 6,3 % злокачественных опухолй в педиатрической популяции, что делает необходимым знание типов опухолей, которые могут возникать в этой возрастной группе, для правильной диагностики и лечения

Criminal procedures and cross-border cooperation in the EU area of criminal justice

This book examines to what extent differences between national and procedural criminal laws hinder the negotiations and the operation of cross-border cooperation instruments. It is based on a comparative analysis of a representative sample of Member States

Promising Hydrogels-Based Dressings for Optimal Treatment of Cutaneous Lesions

Worldwide, cutaneous lesions care represents a daily challenge for the medical system, with an increasing prevalence from year to year (from ~5 million in 2005 to about 8 million in 2018) and high costs for their treatment (between ~$28 billion and ~$97 billion). Injuries are the most frequent and destructive form of skin damage, affecting patients’ quality of life. To promote wound healing, an ideal treatment involves proper dressings that can manage the local pain, inflammation, or infection. Passive or dry traditional dressings, such as cotton, gauze, or lint, have limited therapeutic actions and demand periodic replacement of the dressing. Therefore, an optimal alternative for advanced wound care is represented by hydrogels, one of the five classes of modern dressings, which assure excellent local moisture, due to their high ability to absorb a large volume of water inside their three-dimensional networks. Moreover, hydrogels possess suitable biocompatibility, biodegradability, porosity, elasticity, flexibility, and biological properties similar to the extracellular matrix. This chapter presents the main characteristics of the hydrogels and the recent research regarding the development of new hydrogel dressings, based on natural, semi-synthetic, or synthetic biopolymers, loaded with varied therapeutic agents to stimulate the tissue regeneration of different etiologies cutaneous lesions

Mitochondrial respiratory complex I probed by delayed luminescence spectroscopy.

The role of mitochondrial complex I in ultraweak photon-induced delayed photon emission (delayed luminescence (DL)) of human leukemia Jurkat T cells was probed by using complex I targeting agents like rotenone, menadione, and quercetin. Rotenone, a complex I-specific inhibitor, dose-dependently increased the mitochondrial level of reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH), decreased clonogenic survival, and induced apoptosis. A strong correlation was found between the mitochondrial levels of NADH and oxidized flavin mononucleotide (FMNox) in rotenone-, menadione- and quercetin-treated cells. Rotenone enhanced DL dose-dependently, whereas quercetin and menadione inhibited DL as well as NADH or FMNox. Collectively, the data suggest that DL of Jurkat cells originates mainly from mitochondrial complex I, which functions predomi- nantly as a dimer and less frequently as a tetramer. In individual monomers, both pairs of pyridine nucleotide (NADH/reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate) sites and flavin (FMN-a/FMN-b) sites appear to bind cooperatively their specific ligands. Enhancement of delayed red-light emission by rotenone suggests that the mean time for one-electron reduction of ubiquinone or FMN-a by the terminal Fe/S center (N2) is 20 or 284 μs, respectively. All these findings suggest that DL spectroscopy could be used as a reliable, sensitive, and robust technique to probe electron flow within complex I in situ. © 2013 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentatio

Multiple Bone Metastatic Invasion with Clinical Implications due to Ductal Mammary Carcinoma – Case report and Short Literature Review

Multidisciplinary approach of clinical cases in rehabilitations units can be very complex and divers. Method: We present a case of a woman 30 years old, whose oncological histo-ry begins 9 years ago, when the diagnosis of invasive ductal mammary infiltrating ca-nelular carcinoma grade I was made and treated by tumorectomy (lumpectomy). The pa-tient refused oncological treatment at that time and resorted to alternative medicine dur-ing a period of 7 years: diet without sugar and animal products; regular vitamin B17 treatments; almond kernel cure; high-dose intravenous vitamin C treatment for; intrave-nous ozone therapy; apitherapy with bee venom; oral administration of cannabis oil dur-ing the past four years until now; physical therapy. Results: The evolution is marked by the appearance of multiple bone metastatic lesions. The most worst clinical consequence was a hyperalgesic cervicobrachial neuralgia, due to multiple C6-T3 lytic lesions diag-nosed 2 years ago and C7 compression (close to spinal cord injury), situation which had as medical approach two surgeries interventions, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Con-clusions: The rehabilitation program was adapted to every stage of clinical evolution and was marked by many complications. All the steps were made for functional improvement and for increase the quality of life