1,721,123 research outputs found
Thalassemia and infertility
No full textBeta-thalassemia (BTM) major is the most common haemoglobin disorder in the world, with high prevalence in people of Mediterranean, Arab or Asian origin. It has been estimated that about 1.5% of the global population (80-90 million people) are carriers of BTM. In patients with BTM, long-term transfusion therapy for the correction of anaemia leads to toxic iron overload, resulting in significant morbidity including liver damage, cardiac complications and endocrine dysfunction. The commonest abnormality is hypogonadotropic hypogonadism, which presents with primary amenorrhoea, delayed puberty or secondary amenorrhoea with consequent infertility. Nevertheless, current improvements in the management of thalassemia disorders offer patients the possibility of having a regularly functioning reproductive system and increased chances of achieving a pregnancy. The aim of the present review is to analyse all aspects of fertility management in BTM women, by examining the main causes of infertility, in order to give practical tools to ensure a complete diagnostic work-up and discuss intervention options to guarantee maximum reproductive health
From biology to biochemical and biophysical diagnostic tools of ovarian tumors
No full textOvarian tumors represent a diffuse clinical problem in gynecology. In industrialized countries, an ovarian tumor will develop in about 1 women in 70. Most of the tumors are benign and do not require further treatment. Therefore, a frequent problem is how to distinguish the benign from the malignant forms. The pathologist recognizes 3 groups of tumors originating from the epithelial, germ, and stromal cells. It is surprising that 90% of ovarian benign and malignant tumors throughout the world originate from epithelial cells. In fact, the epithelial cells of coelomic origin that are on the ovarian surface represent the smallest percentage of ovarian cells and are devoid of any normal function. Even though the germ and stromal cells are characterized by biologic and endocrine activities, only in a minority of cases do these give rise to ovarian benign or malignant tumors. This observation may help to explain the limited value of circulating hormonal markers in the diagnosis of ovarian tumors as well as the scarce incidence of endocrine symptoms. The effort of this article is to describe how ovarian endocrine, autocrine, and paracrine regulation may have an impact on tumorogenesis. The interaction between sex steroid hormones, gonadotropins, growth factors, and cytokines is fundamental in ovarian growth, development, differentiation, and senescence. These balanced mechanisms get lost in ovarian tumors and, in particular, in malignant transformations
Updating the role of radiotherapy in the management of epithelial ovarian cancer
No full textThe usefulness of radiotherapy in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) has been questioned in recent decades, on the grounds of the outstanding performances of modern drugs in terms of immediate therapeutic results. However, complete remission of the tumour after surgery and chemotherapy does not always turn into a definitive cure, and more than 50% of the patients have a poor ultimate prognosis. Radiotherapy can still play a role in this disease, whose complexity requires a multidisciplinary approach. Principles, techniques and results of radiation therapy are outlined here, with reference to authoritative experiences. The most significant issues of the last decade are reviewed, dealing with results of radiotherapy compared with those of chemotherapy in early stages (adjuvant setting), and with multidisciplinary approaches including both drug and radiation management in high-risk or advanced presentations. There is sound and wide evidence for the efficacy of radiation therapy in EOC. Radiotherapy is a reasonable alternative to chemotherapy in the adjuvant setting (complete removal of tumour at first surgery, moderate risk for recurrence on the basis of Stage II or III presentations or histologic grade 2 or 3), and can improve the results of chemotherapy after an "optimal" response to drugs, that is, absent or minimal tumour residuals detected by clinical or surgical-pathological re-staging. In this last case, whether or not the results of the prosecution of chemotherapy are better than those of consolidation radiotherapy has not been satisfactorily demonstrated. Aspects concerning toxicity are analysed, as well as possible improvements of the results of radiotherapy
Measurement of bisphenol A and bisphenol B levels in human blood sera from healthy and endometriotic women.
No full textA sensitive HPLC method with fluorescence detection was developed for the determination of bisphenol A (BPA) and bisphenol B (BPB) in human blood serum. The detection limits of the method were 0.18 and 0.20 ng/mL for BPA and BPB, respectively. A single-step liquid-liquid extraction was used for the pre-treatment of serum samples. The recoveries of BPA and BPB spiked to sera were 85.6 and 87.7%, respectively. The analyses of sera from both healthy and endometriotic women emphasized the absence of bisphenols in all the control cases (11 women), whereas BPA was found in 30 sera (51.7%) and BPB was found in 16 sera (27.6%) in the group of 58 patients with endometriosis; in nine of such sera BPA and BPB were present simultaneously. Only relatively to the sera quantitated, BPA concentrations ranged from 0.79 to 7.12 ng/mL (mean concentration 2.91 +/- 1.74 ng/mL), whereas BPB concentrations ranged from 0.88 to 11.94 ng/mL (mean concentration 5.15 +/- 4.16 ng/mL). Therefore, the presence of at least one of the two bisphenols was verified in a percentage as high as 63.8% in the sera from endometriotic women, suggesting the existence of a relationship between endometriosis and BPA and/or BPB exposure. Indeed, it is well known that bisphenols can work as xenoestrogens, owing to their structural similarity to natural and synthetic estrogens (e.g. estradiol and dietilstilbestrol). However, further studies are necessary to confirm this hypothesis and to assess the actual dose at which exposures to bisphenols are able to increase the sensitivity of the endometriotic cells to estradiol
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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