Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is an inflammatory disorder partially resistant to glucocorticoids. A reduced histone deacetylase (HDAC) activity has been proposed to explain this resistance. Haemophilus influenzae frequently colonizes the airways of COPD patients, where it...

Several studies investigating the relationship between body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), and/or body fat (BF) with macronutrient composition of the diet have suggested that dietary composition may play an important role to overweight/obesity in childhood, but its relation remains inc...

Background: Lateral, or Horizontal, Gene Transfers are a type of asymmetric evolutionary events where genetic material is transferred from one species to another. In this paper we consider LGT networks, a general model of phylogenetic networks with lateral gene transfers which consist, roughly, of ...

Cervical cancer (CC) is the second most common cancer worldwide, strongly linked to high-risk human papilloma virus infection. Although screening programs have led to a relevant reduction in the incidence and mortality due to CC in developed countries, it is still an important cause of mortality in...

Periodontal disease (PD) is the result of an infection and chronic inflammation of the gingiva that may lead to its destruction and, in severe cases, alveolar bone and tooth loss. The ultimate goal of periodontal treatment is to achieve periodontal soft and hard tissues regeneration. We previously ...

Background: Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an environmentally ubiquitous Gram-negative bacterium and important opportunistic human pathogen, causing severe chronic respiratory infections in patients with underlying conditions such as cystic fibrosis (CF) or bronchiectasis. In order to identify mechanism...

Background: Antibodies to citrullinated proteins (ACPA) occur years before RA diagnosis. Porphyromonas gingivalis expresses its own peptidylarginine deiminase (PPAD), and is a proposed aetiological factor for the ACPA response. Smoking is a risk factor for both ACPA-positive RA and periodontitis. W...

Background: TNM staging of cancer is used to establish the treatment and prognosis for cancer patients, and also allows the assessment of screening programmes and hospital performance. Collection of staging data is becoming a cornerstone for cancer registries. The objective of the study was to asse...

Background: The aim of the study was to determine clinical and microbiological differences between patients with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) catheter-related bacteraemia (CRB) undergoing or not undergoing haemodialysis, and to compare outcomes. Methods: Prospective multicentr...

Introduction It is desirable for patients to play active roles in the choice of renal replacement therapy (RRT). Patient decision aid tools (PDAs) have been developed to allow the patients to choose the option best suited to their individual needs. Material and Methods An observational, prospective...

The FOXP3 gene encodes for a protein (Foxp3) involved in the development and functional activity of regulatory T cells (CD4+/CD25+/Foxp3+), which exert regulatory and suppressive roles over the immune system. After allogeneic stem cell transplantation, regulatory T cells are known to mitigate graft...

In 1981, Borsik and Dobos studied the aggregation problem for metric spaces. Thus, they characterized those functions that allow one to merge a collection of metrics providing a single metric as a result (Borsik and Dobos in Math. Slovaca 31:193-205, 1981). Later on, in 1994, the notion of partial ...

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are deregulated in several tumors, although their role in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is mostly unknown. We have examined the expression of the lncRNA HOX antisense intergenic RNA myeloid 1 (HOTAIRM1) in 241 AML patients. We have correlated HOTAIRM1 expression with a...

In this paper we present a few fixed point results in the framework of topological posets. To this end, we introduce an appropriate notion of completeness and order-continuity. Special attention is paid to the case that the topology of the topological poset is induced by an extended quasi-metric. F...

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a heterogeneous disease whose prognosis is mainly related to the biological risk conferred by cytogenetics and molecular profiling. In elderly patients (>= 60 years) with normal karyotype AML miR-3151 have been identified as a prognostic factor. However, miR-3151 pro...

Background: Lipoaspirated fat grafts are used to reconstruct volume defects in breast surgery. Although intraoperative treatment decisions are influenced by volume changes observed immediately after grafting, clinical effect and patient satisfaction are dependent on volume retention over time. The ...

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and macrophages are fundamental components of the stem cell niche and function coordinately to regulate haematopoietic stem cell self-renewal and mobilization. Recent studies indicate that mitophagy and healthy mitochondrial function are critical to the survival of ste...

BACKGROUND: Human evidence on the effects of early life phthalate exposure on obesity and cardiovascular disease risks, reported by experimental studies, is limited to a few cross-sectional studies. OBJECTIVES: We evaluated the associations between prenatal phthalate exposure and childhood growth a...

Differential redox homeostasis in normal and malignant cells suggests that pro-oxidant-induced upregulation of cellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) should selectively target cancer cells without compromising the viability of untransformed cells. Consequently, a pro-oxidant deviation well-tolerate...

Background: Diverse enzymatic and non-enzymatic antioxidants provide protection against reactive oxygen species in humans and other organisms. The nonenzymatic antioxidants include low molecular mass molecules such as plant-derived phenols. Aim of study: This study identified the major phenolic com...