Objectives To describe changes in umbilical artery (UA) Doppler flow in monochorionic diamniotic (MCDA) twins affected by selective intrauterine growth restriction (sIUGR), to correlate Doppler findings with pregnancy course and perinatal outcome, and to report postnatal follow-up. Methods This was a retrospective study of 140 MCDA twins with sIUGR. UA end-diastolic flow, defined as Doppler wav...

– The elastic properties of two-component bilayer membranes are studied using a coarse grain model for amphiphilic molecules. The two species of amphiphiles considered here differ only in their length. Molecular Dynamics simulations are performed in order to analyze the shape fluctuations of the two-component bilayer membranes and to determine their bending rigidity. Both the bending rigidity a...

Patients who enter into the most advanced phase of chronic kidney disease, that is, end-stage renal disease (ESRD), show an exceptionally high risk. Although the proportion of patients dying because of cardiovascular disease in this population does not differ from the corresponding proportion in the general population,1 the absolute risk for all-cause and cardiovascular death is so high that th...

Background The most affected vessels in Giant cell arteritis (GCA) are the temporary arteries, but some patients extracranial large also involved (LV-GCA). Tocilizumab (TCZ), a monoclonal anti-interleukin-6 receptor1 antibody, has been approved as glucocorticoid (GC) sparing agent with GCA. Recently, new therapeutic protocols that combine rapid GC tapering and TCZ emerging, their effects on cir...

Background Giant Cell Arteritis (GCA) is a systemic inflammatory disease that affects large and medium-sized arteries. It the most common vasculitis in people older than 50 years of age [1]. Temporal artery biopsies (TABs) are routinely performed for diagnosis, giving invaluable opportunity to analyze inflamed tissues. Different histological patterns inflammation can be found TABs: transmural (...

The risk of acute leukemia in patients treated for Hodgkin’s disease is significantly higher after combined modality programs than after chemotherapy alone and is correlated with the extent of radiotherapy and type and duration of chemotherapy: a case-control study ERCOLE BRUSAMOLINO,* ANNA PAOLA ANSELMO,° CATHERINE KLERSY,# MARIAQUILA SANTORO,@ ESTER ORLANDI,* GUIDO PAGNUCCO,* FRANCESCA LUNGHI...

Of the patients beginning with dialysis, 60–85% of them may account for hypertension, and dialysis alone is capable of controlling hypertension in over 50% of these patients [1]; resistant hypertension and paradoxical blood pressure (BP) elevation during dialysis are possible but relatively infrequent complications [1]. Nevertheless, there is no widely accepted definition of intradialytic hyper...

Several approaches to evaluate an overall trend including Registries with different length of activity with a defined period of time have been evaluated in the cancer trend study of the Italian Network of Cancer Registries (AIRT). The study used the nine Registries of the pool AIRT in the period 1986-1997. Data for 1986-1993 from the Registry of Ragusa have been excluded to simulate the inclusi...

One of the most important questions in tumor biology is the understanding of the mechanisms responsible for the resistance of cancer cells to radiotherapy. In the present study, the possible role played by cell-cell interactions in determining the response of tumor cells to ionizing radiation was investigated. HT-29 colon adenocarcinoma spheroids were irradiated with a dose of 15 Gy in two diff...