Postharvest heat treatments are being used for disinfestation and disinfection of an increasing variety of crops, including flowers, fruits and vegetables. This review focuses on the effects of heat on the commodity and its postharvest quality. The effects of a postharvest heat treatment on aspects of ripening and development of thermotolerance is discussed. Ethylene production, respiration, so...

Obesity is a major public health issue worldwide. Current pharmacological treatments are largely unsuccessful. Determining the complex pathways that regulate food intake may aid the development of new treatments. The hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid (HPT) axis has well-known effects on energy expenditure, but its role in the regulation of food intake is less well characterised. Evidence suggests ...

Thyroid cancer is the most common endocrine tumor. Thyroidectomy, radioactive iodine, and TSH suppression represent the standard treatment for differentiated thyroid cancer. Since chemotherapy has been shown to be unsuccessful in case of advanced thyroid carcinomas, the research for new therapies is fundamental. In this paper, we reviewed the recent literature reports (pubmed, medline, EMBASE d...

Infective stages of commercially used molluscicidal rhabditide nematodes Phasmarhabditis hermaphrodita contain bacterial symbionts which kill their host by septicaemia. The nematodes feed on the multiplying bacteria and entire host tissue, develop and repeatedly reproduce. Invertebrate cadavers are rapidly (from minutes to hours) removed by scavengers. However nematodes need days to complete th...

Facial and cervical area sinus tracts can be odontogenic or non-odontogenic, and so clinicians should be aware that lesions with a dental origin can be confused with dermatological lesions. We describe three cases of cutaneous lesions of dental origin that were initially misdiagnosed as being dermatological in origin. Multiple unsuccessful treatments were attempted but the lesions failed to hea...

Perianal hidradenitis suppurativa is a chronic inflammatory disease associated with significantly high morbidity, which severely affects the quality of life of those patients suffering from it. We describe a 46-year-old patient with extensive, severe gluteal and perianal PHS of 28 years duration. Repeated wide excisions, fistulotomies, treatments with hyperbaric oxygen, and finally a diverting ...

A 49 year old woman with typical obstructive sleep apnoea hypopnoea syndrome underwent an unsuccessful trial with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) followed by uvulopalatopharyngoplasty with septorhinoplasty, treatment with protriptyline, and a second CPAP trial that was abandoned. Transtracheal air was then given and normalised sleep and breathing at a flow rate of 5 l/min. A sustaine...

Percutaneous ablation procedures are minimally invasive treatments for unresectable early stage hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). These techniques are usually safe, but rare and even fatal complications have been described. We present a fatal result after percutaneous ethanol injection (PEI) for the treatment of a recurrent HCC in a non-cirrhotic liver, with subsequent development of diffuse chol...

Although ALI/ARDS mortality rates have improved over the last several decades, they remain high, particularly in the geriatric patient population. Although considerable progress has been made in understanding the pathogenesis of the disease, a large number of promising treatments have proven unsuccessful. One exception has been in the area of ventilator management, where a strategy of protectiv...

Femoroacetabular impingement (FAI), sometimes termed acetabular rim syndrome, results from chronic mechanical abutment between the femoral head-neck junction and the acetabulolabral complex. Orthopedists have begun to recognize FAI as a cause of pain, instability and progressive hip dysfunction. Because FAI is implicated in the development of osteoarthritis in young individuals, orthopedists ha...