1,721,006 research outputs found
Costs of patients suffering from multiple sclerosis in piedmont region: Evidence from administrative databases
No full textMultiple Sclerosis (MS) is a chronic and disabling disease characterized by demyelination of the central nervous system, which can lead to physical and cognitive impairment. The literature on MS cost-of-illness shows that (i) cost per patient is rather high; (ii) informal care and loss of productivity are the major cost components; (iii) health care costs have been showing a steady increase, mostly due to high costs of immunomodulator drugs launched into the market in the last fifteen years. The objective of this research is to estimate health resources consumption and costs of patients suffering from MS in Piedmont Region relying on administrative databases, that include information on drugs, outpatient and inpatient services consumed and covered by the Regional Government to patients affected by MS. Databases show (i) in 2008 a number of 109.9 patients per 100,000 population, (ii) a cost per patient of h6,103, with a 67% drugs incidence, (iii) a huge and significant decrease in costs from the younger to the elderly population, (iv) a small but statistically significant impact of co-morbidities on unit costs, and (v) a very costly proximity to death. Despite its limitations - e.g. database incompleteness, which did not allow us covering all health care services - this study shows that resource use and cost analysis may rely on administrative databases, thus avoiding (or integrating) prospective studies, which may be long and costly. © 2012 Springer International Publishing AG
A LYMPHOCYTE-T ALVEOLITIS IN BRONCHOALVEOLAR LAVAGE (BAL) OF PATIENTS WITH FARMERS LUNG (FL) DISEASE
No full textRelapsing bronchiolitis obliterans organising pneumonia and chronic sarcoidosisin an atopic asthmatic patient.
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Somatostatin, a presynaptic modulator of glutamatergic signal in the central nervous system
No full textSomatostatin is widely diffused in the central nervous system, where it participates to control the efficiency of synaptic transmission. This peptide mainly colocalizes with GABA, in inhibitory, GABA-containing interneurons from which it is actively released in a Ca2+ dependent manner upon application of depolarizing stimuli. Once released in the synaptic cleft, somatostatin acts locally, or it diffuses in the extracellular space through “volume diffusion”, a mechanism(s) of distribution which mainly operates in the cerebrospinal fluid and that assures the progression of neuronal signalling from signal-secreting sender structures towards receptor-expressing targeted neurons located extrasynaptically, in a non-synaptic, inter-neuronal form of communication. Somatostatin controls the efficiency of central glutamate transmission by either modulating presynaptically the glutamate exocytosis or by metamodulating the activity of glutamate receptors colocalized and functionally coupled with somatostatin receptors in selected subpopulations of nerve terminals. Deciphering the role of somatostatin in the mechanisms of “volume diffusion” and in the “receptor-receptor interaction” unveils new perspectives in the central role of this fine tuner of synaptic strength, paving the road to new therapeutic approaches for the cure of central disorders
Sphingosine-1-phosphate receptors and glutamate release in mice cortical nerve endings and glial particles
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Presynaptic release-regulating metabotropic glutamate receptors: An update
No full textMetabotropic glutamate (mGlu) receptors represent the largest family of glutamate receptors in mammals and act as fine tuners of the chemical transmission in central nervous system (CNS). In the last decade, results concerning the expression and the subcellular localization of mGlu receptors further clarified their role in physio-pathological conditions. Concomitantly, their pharmacological characterization largely improved thanks to the identification of new compounds (chemical ligands and antibodies recognizing epitopic sequences of the receptor proteins) that allowed to decipher the protein compositions of the naive receptors. mGlu receptors are expressed at the presynaptic site of chemical synapses. Here, they modulate intraterminal enzymatic pathways controlling the migration and the fusion of vesicles to synaptic membranes as well as the phosphorylation of colocalized receptors. Both the control of transmitter exocytosis and the phosphorylation of colocalized receptors elicited by mGlu receptors are relevant events that dictate the plasticity of nerve terminals, and account for the main role of presynaptic mGlu receptors as modulators of neuronal signalling. The role of the presynaptic mGlu receptors in the CNS has been the matter of several studies and this review aims at briefly summarizing the recent observations obtained with isolated nerve endings (we refer to as synaptosomes). We focus on the pharmacological characterization of these receptors and on their receptor-receptor interaction / oligo-dimerization in nerve endings that could be relevant to the development of new therapeutic approaches for the cure of central pathologies
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