1,721,336 research outputs found
Unbalanced pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytokines ratio and endometriosis: A contributive pathogenic role?
No full textThe role of monocytic myeloid-derived suppressor cells in the pathogenesis of endometriosis
No full textVilaprisan. Progesterone receptor modulator, Treatment of uterine fibroids
No full textUterine fibroids (UF) are common gynecological affections in women of reproductive age. These tumors can be asymptomatic in the majority of cases; nonetheless, they can be responsible for a multitude of clinical presentations such as abnormal uterine bleeding, chronic pelvic pain, infertility and other obstetric complications, which may significantly impact the quality of life of patients affected. At the moment, hormonal pharmacological strategies are used in the clinical practice aiming to control women’s symptoms and improve hemoglobin level before surgery. Among these, selective progesterone receptor modulators (SPRMs) have been investigated. After the wide clinical use of ulipristal acetate, vilaprisan, a novel SPRM, is currently being deeply investigated in late phase II-III trials for the treatment of UF. The aim of this brief monograph is to review the literature on the pharmacodynamics, pharmacokinetics, clinical efficacy and safety of vilaprisan for treating UF
Charging assisted by thermalization
No full textA system in thermal equilibrium with a bath will generally be in an athermal state, if the system-bath coupling is strong. In some cases, it will be possible to extract work from that athermal state, after disconnecting the system from the bath. We use this observation to devise a battery charging and storing unit, simply consisting of a system, acting as the battery, and a bath. The charging cycle-connect, let thermalize, disconnect, extract work-requires very little external control and the charged state of the battery, being a part of global thermal equilibrium, can be maintained indefinitely and for free. The efficiency, defined as the ratio of the extractable work stored in the battery and the total work spent on connecting and disconnecting, is always ≤1, which is a manifestation of the second law of thermodynamics. Moreover, coupling, being a resource for the device, is also a source of dissipation: The entropy production per charging cycle is always significant, strongly limiting the efficiency in all coupling strength regimes. We show that our general results also hold for generic microcanonical baths. We illustrate our theory on the Caldeira-Leggett model with a harmonic oscillator (the battery) coupled to a harmonic bath, for which we derive general asymptotic formulas in both weak and ultrastrong coupling regimes, for arbitrary Ohmic spectral densities. We show that the efficiency can be increased by connecting several copies of the battery to the bath. Finally, as a side result, we derive a general formula for Gaussian ergotropy, that is, the maximal work extractable by Gaussian unitary operations from Gaussian states of multipartite continuous-variable systems
Transforming growth factor β (TGF-β): is there a different role with regard to distinct phenotypes of endometriosis?
No full text
Systemic and intraocular factors related to retinal thicknesses variations in patients with Parkinson's disease
No full textParkinson's disease (PD) is characterized by a neurodegenerative process, which has been previously reported to involve some retinal layers, in particular the peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) and macular ganglion cell complex (mGCC). When measuring pRNFL and mGCC by Optical Coherence Tomography in PD patients, it should not be neglected the role of possible both sistemic and intraocular factors, which have been proven to modify intraretinal thicknesses measurements. Nonetheless, also dopaminergic drugs administration could represent another important confounding factor, given their neuroprotective effect exerted on retina
Quantum batteries at the verge of a phase transition
Full text linkStarting from the observation that the reduced state of a system strongly coupled to a bath is, in general, an athermal state, we introduce and study a cyclic battery-charger quantum device that is in thermal equilibrium, or in a ground state, during the charge storing stage. The cycle has four stages: the equilibrium storage stage is interrupted by disconnecting the battery from the charger, then work is extracted from the battery, and then the battery is reconnected with the charger; finally, the system is brought back to equilibrium. At no point during the cycle are the battery-charger correlations artificially erased. We study the case where the battery and charger together comprise a spin-1/2 Ising chain, and show that the main characteristics - the extracted energy and the thermodynamic efficiency - can be enhanced by operating the cycle close to the quantum phase transition point. When the battery is just a single spin, we find that the output work and efficiency show a scaling behavior at criticality and derive the corresponding critical exponents. Due to always present correlations between the battery and the charger, operations that are equivalent from the perspective of the battery can entail different energetic costs for switching the battery-charger coupling. This happens only when the coupling term does not commute with the battery's bare Hamiltonian, and we use this purely quantum leverage to further optimize the performance of the device
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