1,721,047 research outputs found
Looking at Interleukin-22 from a New Dermatological Perspective: From Epidermal Homeostasis to Its Role in Chronic Skin Diseases
Full text linkTwenty years after the cloning, characterization, and identification of interleukin (IL)-22 in 2000, the precise biological role of this cytokine in healthy and unhealthy skin is not completely known. The aim of this review is to provide an overview on the recent knowledge available in literature about the origin, sources, targets, molecular mechanism of action, and clinical issues regarding IL-22. Last but not least, recent experimental evidence obtained in a 3D model of organotypic culture of normal human skin highlights its homeostatic role and will be discussed in detail, as personal observations. As most of the data concerning IL-22 immunomodulating activity are obtained from mouse models, this work offers a new perspective on its clinical role. The hypothesis herein advanced is that IL-22 profoundly affects keratinocyte terminal differentiation, whereas, in order to induce a proliferation impairment, a more complex psoriatic-like microenvironment is needed
Psychological distress, well-being and personality traits in patients with different severity of psoriasis: a clinimetric assessment approach
No full textIntroduction: Psoriasis is a chronic dermatologic disease that negatively impacts not only the physical health of patients but also their mental health and social and work life. Indeed, it has been estimated that at least 30% of dermatologic patients present significant psychiatric comorbidities. A number of studies have found a correlation between the occurrence of psoriasis and psychiatric disorders such as depression and anxiety. However, major psychiatric disorders and life dissatisfaction have not been proved to differ across severity levels of the illness. The aim of this study is to illustrate, according to a clinimetric approach, the presence of differences between patients with mild versus moderate to severe psoriasis in psychological distress and well-being. Methods: A total of 70 patients suffering with psoriasis were recruited during follow up visits at Dermatology Clinic of Florence. Patients were evaluated using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID-I), the Diagnostic Criteria for Psychosomatic Research (DCPR) interview, along with the following self-report instruments: the Symptoms Questionnaire (SQ), the Psychological Well-being scales (PWB), and the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI). Illness severity was evaluated as mild or moderate to severe using the Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI). Results: According to PASI (> 10), 18.6% (n = 13) of patients reported moderate to severe psoriasis while 81.4% (n = 57) did not. No differences were reported between groups in rates of mood and anxiety disorders, but patients with greater severity presented greater rates of demoralization (61.5%; p < 0.05) and Type A behavior (53.8%; p < 0.05) than subjects with mild severity (17.5% and 21.1%, respectively). Patients with moderate/severe psoriasis also reported impaired levels of psychological well-being in terms of lower autonomy (p< 0.05), environmental mastery (p < 0.05), personal growth (p < 0.05) and purpose in life (p < 0.05), along with greater anxiety (p < 0.05), depressive (p < 0.05) and somatic symptoms (p < 0.05) than patients with milder severity of illness. Furthermore, according to TCI, severe patients reported greater harm avoidance (p< 0.05) and lower self-directness (p < 0.05) than individuals with milder psoriasis levels. Conclusions: Overall results highlighted the need in patients suffering with psoriasis of a more comprehensive psychological and psychosomatic assessment not limited to the customary diagnostic criteria
Morphological correlation between psoriasis vulgaris and guttate and a 3D in vitro psoriatic microenvironment
No full textPsoriasis is characterized by a great variety of clinical manifestations and they vary according to different phenotypes. Guttate or eruptive psoriasis (PG) (Saleh D et al 2018) shares genetic similarities with psoriasis vulgaris (PV) (Nestle FO 2009), the most represented clinical form. Cell types and molecules of both the innate and adaptive immunosystem are involved in the pathogenesis/progression of the disease, but several data concerning the early phase of the disease lack. A three dimensional model of organotypic cultures of normal human skin biopsies represents an useful approach for investigating the cellular mechanism(s) involved in the early epidermal response to proinflammatory psoriatic cytokines (Donetti et al, 2014; Donetti et al, 2017). The aim of this study was to compare cellular proliferation, the expression of Toll-like receptors (TLR) 7 and 9, and the innate immune response in lesional and perilesional skin of patients affected by PV or PG and in our model of organotypic culture after exposure to a cytokine mix (IL-17, IL-22, IL-23, and TNF-alpha) in a time-course study. Parallel ultrastructural analysis was performed. Keratinocyte proliferation in non lesional skin of both PG and PV was comparable, with PV lesional area as the most proliferative. In PG cell proliferation was exclusively localized in the basal layer. After mix incubation, a progressive decrease of cell proliferation was detected as an early response to proinflammatory stimulus. TLR9 was present in the granular layer of non lesional skin and mix samples and in the suprabasal layers of PV/PG lesional skin. TLR7 distribution was clearly different in each group, highlighting a specific response to the specific microenvironment.
In conclusion, these results prove that a psoriatic microenvironment is able to modify the expression of TLR7 and TLR9 in our model from human skin. These observations provide also new insights regarding the specific localisation of these two receptors and this could be an important detail for the many new small molecules targeted against TLRs for the therapy of chronic inflammatory disease, including psoriasis
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
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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