9,750 research outputs found
L’EMBOLIZZAZIONE BRONCHIALE NEI PAZIENTI CON EMOTTISI IN FIBROSI CISTICA HA UN IMPATTO NEGATIVO SUL DECORSO CLINICO? ANALISI COMPARATIVA IN DUE POPOLAZIONI.
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Analisi retrospettiva delle embolizzazioni bronchiali in Fibrosi cistica e follow up a lungo termine
No full textNEW GENETIC AND PHARMACOLOGICAL TREATMENTS FOR CYSTIC FIBROSIS
No full textCystic Fibrosis (CF) is a still life-treathening disease, although therapies have augmented the life span of CF individuals. Isolation of the CF gene, named CFTR (CF Transmembrane Conductance Regulator), led to the discovery that it encodes for a protein kinase A-regulated chloride channel, expressed by epithelial cells mainly in mucosal tissues.
Mutated or absent CFTR brings about altered muco-ciliary clearance, by a yet disputed mechanism (likely involving overfunction of the epithelial sodium channel [ENaC]), and ultimately to colonization and infection of the airways by a few opportunistic bacteria species, including Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P.a.). An exuberant and persistent acute inflammatory reaction is commonly observed in the lung from CF patients, representing a key pathogenetic event of lung damage and
respiratory insufficiency. Lung disease is the chief cause of morbidity and mortality in CF patients and current therapies are aimed at controlling the respiratory symptoms by antibiotic and anti-inflammatory treatments. Major improvements in the strategy to fight pulmonary P.a. infection are based on treatment of first colonization with P.a., of chronic infection and of multidrug resistant bacteria. Controlling inflammation is a challenging, however crucial, task in CF therapy. Since classical steroidal and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are endowed with serious side-effects, alternative antiinflammatory strategies are being developed, including drugs which modulate cytokine expression, nitric oxide production and the oxidation unbalance in the CF airways. Soon after gene identification, gene transfer vectors to replace the defective gene were developed and underwent a number of human trials which have not yet produced a viable clinical gene therapy strategy. Novel gene therapy vectors and strategies for delivering them more efficiently and safely to the
lung are being studied. In the last few years various in vitro studies have demonstrated the possibility of pharmacological intervention to correct the primary defect in CF. This may be obtained by directly addressing the CFTR protein (by means of so-called correctors and potentiators) or by modulating the activity of other types of ion transport in epithelial cells (such as with Moli1901 or denufosol). Novel interventions aimed to improve the mucociliary clearance, including
hypertonic saline, mannitol and ENaC inhibitors, will be finally discussed
[Anti-Pseudomonas aeruginosa antibodies and lung disease in cystic fibrosis]
No full textThe aim of our study was to diagnose and to control three aspects of the evolution of lung disease in CF: the absence of infection, the intermittent colonization and chronic infection by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Therefore a study of anti-pseudomonas antibodies (Ab) (anti-protease, anti-elastin and antihexo-toxin A) for diagnosis and follow-up of CF patients was considered. Moreover, we related the presence of Ab to the sputum culture, to FEV1, to patient age and to genotype. Tbe Ab were dosed in 121 patients by quantitative ELISA method. Values < 1: 500 were considered negative, values> 1: 500 and < 1:1250 borderline, and > 1:1250 positive. 16.5% of patients did not have Ab, 17% had borderline values and 69.5% had positive values. All the patients with negative Ab had negative sputum culture; 47% of patients with borderline values had at least one positive culture while 53% were negative. 87% of patients with positive values had chronic colonization, 13% intermittent colonization. The increase in the Ab rate is statistically related to a more severe lung disease (p < 0.013). The presence of a severe mutation (?F 508) is related to positive values of Ab. Evaluation of anti-Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an important tool for diagnosis and follow-up of CF lung diseas
Metadata Representations for Queryable ML Model Zoos
No full textMachine learning (ML) practitioners and organizations are building model zoos of pre-trained models, containing metadata describing properties of the ML models and datasets that are useful for reporting, auditing, reproducibility, and interpretability purposes. The metatada is currently not standardised; its expressivity is limited; and there is no interoperable way to store and query it. Consequently, model search, reuse, comparison, and composition are hindered. In this paper, we advocate for standardized ML model metadata representation and management, proposing a toolkit supported to help practitioners manage and query that metadata.Web Information SystemsHuman-Centred Artificial Intelligenc
A Manifesto of Nodalism
No full textThis paper proposes the notion of Nodalism as a means describing contemporary culture and of understanding my own creative practice in electronic music composition. It draws on theories and ideas from Kirby, Bauman, Bourriaud, Deleuze, Guatarri, and Gochenour, to demonstrate how networks of ideas or connectionist neural models of cognitive behaviour can be used to contextualize, understand and become a creative tool for the creation of contemporary electronic music
Optimizing ML Inference Queries Under Constraints
No full textThe proliferation of pre-trained ML models in public Web-based model zoos facilitates the engineering of ML pipelines to address complex inference queries over datasets and streams of unstructured content. Constructing optimal plan for a query is hard, especially when constraints (e.g. accuracy or execution time) must be taken into consideration, and the complexity of the inference query increases. To address this issue, we propose a method for optimizing ML inference queries that selects the most suitable ML models to use, as well as the order in which those models are executed. We formally define the constraint-based ML inference query optimization problem, formulate it as a Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) problem, and develop an optimizer that maximizes accuracy given constraints. This optimizer is capable of navigating a large search space to identify optimal query plans on various model zoos.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Web Information SystemsHuman-Centred Artificial Intelligenc
Qualità della vita, regolazione affettiva e capacità resilienza in pazienti adulti affetti da fibrosi cistica
No full textObiettivo. Noi riteniamo che in pazienti affetti da Fibrosi Cistica (FC) lo studio della qualità della vita (QdV), costrutto strettamente associato al recente miglioramento dei protocolli di cura e all’aumento dell’età media di sopravvivenza, dovrebbe prendere in considerazione anche il ruolo della regolazione affettiva. Con il presente lavoro si intende studiare 1) la relazione tra la qualità della vita, la regolazione affettiva e la capacità di resilienza, ed esplorare 2) la relazione tra i suddetti psicologici e le condizioni mediche dei pazienti affetti da FC.
Metodi. Quaranta pazienti maggiorenni afferenti al Centro Regionale FC di Palermo hanno compilato 3 questionari: Cystic Fibrosis Quality Of Life (CFQoL), Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) e Resilience Scale (RS). Per ciascun paziente sono stati raccolti anche i dati medici e le informazioni socio-demografiche.
Risultati. È emersa una correlazione significativa tra la capacità di resilienza e la QdV, in particolare con alcune sottoscale del CFQoL riguardanti il funzionamento sociale ed emotivo, le relazioni interpersonali e le preoccupazioni per la carriera. Altre correlazioni significative sono emerse tra la capacità di resilienza e la regolazione affettiva, e tra la percezione della QdV e le condizioni mediche dei pazienti.
Conclusioni. La valutazione dell’assetto psicologico permette l’identificazione di funzionamenti psicologici a rischio per la salute psico-fisica dei pazienti affetti da FC, ciò potrebbe contribuire all’implementazione di modelli di cura olistici per i pazienti con FC
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