7 research outputs found

    Association of corneal endothelial cell morphology with neurodegeneration in mild cognitive impairment and dementia

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    INTRODUCTION Corneal confocal microscopy (CCM) detects neurodegeneration in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia and identifies subjects with MCI who develop dementia. This study assessed whether abnormalities in corneal endothelial cell (CEC) morphology are related to corneal nerve morphology, brain volumetry, cerebral ischemia, and cognitive impairment in MCI and dementia. METHODS Participants with no cognitive impairment (NCI), MCI, and dementia underwent CCM to quantify corneal endothelial cell density (CECD) and area (CECA), corneal nerve fiber morphology, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain volumetry, and severity of brain ischemia. RESULTS Of the 114 participants, 14 had NCI, 77 had MCI, and 23 had dementia. CECD (1971.3 ± 594.6 vs 2316.1 ± 499.5 cells/mm2, p < 0.05) was significantly lower in the dementia compared to the NCI group. CECD and CECA were comparable between the MCI and NCI groups (p = 0.13–0.65). Corneal nerve fiber density (CNFD) (31.7 ± 5.6 vs 24.5 ± 9.2 and 17.3 ± 5.3 fibers/mm2, p < 0.01), corneal nerve branch density (CNBD) (111.8 ± 58.1 vs 50.4 ± 36.4 and 52.7 ± 21.3 branches/mm2, p < 0.0001), and corneal nerve fiber length (CNFL) (24.6 ± 6.6 vs 16.5 ± 6.8 and 16.2 ± 5.0 mm/mm2, p < 0.0001) were lower in the MCI and dementia groups compared to the NCI group. Lower CECD partially mediated the impact of age and diabetes on CNFL reduction (p < 0.05), whereas CECA lost its significance after adjustment (p = 0.20). CEC morphology does not affect the association between corneal nerve fiber loss and MCI/dementia. CECD and CECA had no significant association with cerebral ischemic lesions (p = 0.21–0.47), dementia (p = 0.11–0.35), or cognitive decline (p = 0.37–0.38). However, lower CECD and higher CECA were associated with decreased cortical gray matter volume (p < 0.05–0.01). DISCUSSION CEC loss occurs in patients with dementia, and both endothelial cell loss and hypertrophy are associated with cortical gray matter atrophy. CNF loss occurs in individuals with MCI and dementia. Corneal nerve and endothelial cell abnormalities could act as biomarkers for neurovascular pathology in dementia

    Metabolically healthy obesity: Misleading phrase or healthy phenotype?

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    Obesity is a heterogenous condition with multiple different phenotypes. Among these a particular subtype exists named as metabolically healthy obesity (MHO). MHO has multiple definitions and its prevalence varies according to study. The potential mechanisms underlying the pathophysiology of MHO include the different types of adipose tissue and their distribution, the role of hormones, inflammation, diet, the intestinal microbiota and genetic factors. In contrast to the negative metabolic profile associated with metabolically unhealthy obesity (MUO), MHO has relatively favorable metabolic characteristics. Nevertheless, MHO is still associated with many important chronic diseases including cardiovascular disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, chronic kidney disease as well as certain types of cancer and has the risk of progression into the unhealthy phenotype. Therefore, it should not be considered as a benign condition. The major therapeutic alternatives include dietary modifications, exercise, bariatric surgery and certain medications including glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) analogs, sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT-2) inhibitors and tirzepatide. In this review, we discuss the significance of MHO while comparing this phenotype with MUO

    Graphene quantum dots: From efficient preparation to safe renal excretion

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    7 figures.-- Supplementary material available on line (6 figures).-- This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.Carbon nanomaterials offer excellent prospects as therapeutic agents, and among them, graphene quantum dots (GQDs) have gained considerable interest thanks to their aqueous solubility and intrinsic fluorescence, which enable their possible use in theranostic approaches, if their biocompatibility and favorable pharmacokinetic are confirmed. We prepared ultra-small GQDs using an alternative, reproducible, top-down synthesis starting from graphene oxide with a nearly 100% conversion. The materials were tested to assess their safety, demonstrating good biocompatibility and ability in passing the ultrafiltration barrier using an in vitro model. This leads to renal excretion without affecting the kidneys. Moreover, we studied the GQDs in vivo biodistribution confirming their efficient renal clearance, and we demonstrated that the internalization mechanism into podocytes is caveolae-mediated. Therefore, considering the reported characteristics, it appears possible to vehiculate compounds to kidneys by means of GQDs, overcoming problems related to lysosomal degradation.J. M. G.-D. acknowledges Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities for his Juan de la Cierva Incorporación research contract (No. IJCI-2016-27789). This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 734834 (INFUSION) and No. 734381 (CARBO-IMmap), and from MIUR. ICN2 is supported by the Severo Ochoa program from Spanish MINECO (No. SEV-2017-0706).Funding note : Open Access funding provided by Università degli Studi di Trieste within the CRUICARE Agreement.Peer reviewe

    A snapshot of pediatric inpatients and outpatients with COVID-19: a point prevalence study from Turkey

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    This multi-center point prevalence study evaluated children who were diagnosed as having coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). On February 2nd, 2022, inpatients and outpatients infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) were included in the study from 12 cities and 24 centers in Turkey. Of 8605 patients on February 2nd, 2022, in participating centers, 706 (8.2%) had COVID-19. The median age of the 706 patients was 92.50 months, 53.4% were female, and 76.7% were inpatients. The three most common symptoms of the patients with COVID-19 were fever (56.6%), cough (41.3%), and fatigue (27.5%). The three most common underlying chronic diseases (UCDs) were asthma (3.4%), neurologic disorders (3.3%), and obesity (2.6%). The SARS-CoV-2-related pneumoniae rate was 10.7%. The COVID-19 vaccination rate was 12.5% in all patients. Among patients aged over 12 years with access to the vaccine given by the Republic of Turkey Ministry of Health, the vaccination rate was 38.7%. Patients with UCDs presented with dyspnea and pneumoniae more frequently than those without UCDs (p < 0.001 for both). The rates of fever, diarrhea, and pneumoniae were higher in patients without COVID-19 vaccinations (p = 0.001, p = 0.012, and p = 0.027). Conclusion: To lessen the effects of the disease, all eligible children should receive the COVID-19 vaccine. The illness may specifically endanger children with UCDs. What is Known: • Children with COVID-19 mainly present with fever and cough, as in adults. • COVID-19 may specifically threaten children with underlying chronic diseases. What is New: • Children with obesity have a higher vaccination rate against COVID-19 than children without obesity. • Among unvaccinated children, fever and pneumoniae might be seen at a higher ratio than among vaccinated children. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature

    Erratum to: 36th International Symposium on Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine

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    Autoantibodies against type I IFNs in patients with life-threatening COVID-19

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    Interindividual clinical vari-ability is vast in humans infected withsevere acute respiratory syndrome corona-virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), ranging from silent in-fection to rapid death. Three risk factors forlife-threatening coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19) pneumonia have been identified—being male, being elderly, or having othermedical conditions—but these risk factorscannot explain why critical disease remainsrelatively rare in any given epidemiologicalgroup. Given the rising toll of the COVID-19pandemic in terms of morbidity and mortality,understanding the causes and mechanisms oflife-threatening COVID-19 is crucial.The Laboratory of Human Genetics of Infectious Diseases is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, The Rockefeller University, the St. Giles Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (R01AI088364), the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program (UL1 TR001866), a Fast Grant from Emergent Ventures, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, the Yale Center for Mendelian Genomics and the GSP Coordinating Center funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) (UM1HG006504 and U24HG008956), the French National Research Agency (ANR) under the Investments for the Future program (ANR-10-IAHU-01), the Integrative Biology of Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory of Excellence (ANR-10-LABX-62-IBEID), the French Foundation for Medical Research (FRM) (EQU201903007798), the FRM and ANR GENCOVID project (ANRS-COV05), the Square Foundation, Grandir – Fonds de solidarité pour l’enfance, the SCOR Corporate Foundation for Science, the Institut Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), and the University of Paris. Samples from San Raffaele Hospital were obtained through the Covid-BioB project and by healthcare personnel of San Raffaele Hospital, San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy (SR-TIGET) clinical laboratory and clinical research unit, funded by the Program Project COVID-19 OSR-UniSR and Fondazione Telethon. The French COVID Cohort Study Group was sponsored by INSERM and supported by the REACTing consortium and by a grant from the French Ministry of Health (PHRC 20-0424). The Cov-Contact Cohort was supported by the REACTing consortium, the French Ministry of Health, and the European Commission (RECOVER WP 6). The Milieu Intérieur Consortium was supported by the French Government’s Investissement d’Avenir program, Laboratoire d’Excellence Milieu Intérieur grant (ANR-10-LABX-69-01) (primary investigators: L.Q.-M. and D.Du.). The Simoa experiment was supported by the PHRC-20-0375 COVID-19 grant “DIGITAL COVID” (primary investigator: G.G.). S.G.T. is supported by a Leadership 3 Investigator Grant awarded by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia and a COVID19 Rapid Response Grant awarded by UNSW Sydney. C.R.-G. and colleagues were supported by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (COV20_01333 and COV20_01334, Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation RTC-2017-6471-1; AEI/FEDER, UE) and Cabildo Insular de Tenerife (CGIEU0000219140 and “Apuestas científicas del ITER para colaborar en la lucha contra la COVID-19”). S.T.-A. and A.B. were supported by ANR-20-COVI-0064 (primary investigator: A.Be.). This work is supported by the French Ministry of Health “Programme Hospitalier de Recherche Clinique Inter regional 2013,” by the Contrat de Plan Etat-Lorraine and FEDER Lorraine, and by a public grant overseen by the French National Research Agency (ANR) as part of the second Investissements d’Avenir program FIGHT-HF (reference no. ANR-15-RHU-0004) and by the French PIA project “Lorraine Université d’Excellence” (reference no. ANR-15-IDEX-04-LUE) (45); and biobanking is performed by the Biological Resource Center Lorrain BB-0033-00035. This study was supported by the Fonds IMMUNOV, for Innovation in Immunopathology; by a grant from the Agence National de la Recherche (ANR-flash Covid19 “AIROCovid” to F.R.-L.); and by the FAST Foundation (French Friends of Sheba Tel Hashomer Hospital). Work in the Laboratory of Virology and Infectious Disease was supported by NIH grants P01AI138398-S1, 2U19AI111825, and R01AI091707-10S1; a George Mason University Fast Grant; and the G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Charitable Foundation. The Amsterdam UMC Covid-19 Biobank was supported by grants from the Amsterdam Corona Research Fund, the Dr. C.J. Vaillant Fund, and the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development [ZonMw; NWO-Vici-Grant (grant no. 918·19·627 to D.v.d.B.)]. This work was also supported by the Division of Intramural Research of the National Institute of Dental Craniofacial Research and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, and by Regione Lombardia, Italy (project “Risposta immune in pazienti con COVID-19 e comorbidita”). The opinions and assertions expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Uniformed Services University or the Department of Defense. J.H. holds an Institut Imagine M.D.-Ph.D. fellowship from the Fondation Bettencourt Schueller. J.R. is supported by the INSERM Ph.D. program (“poste d’accueil Inserm”). P.Ba. was supported by the French Foundation for Medical Research (FRM, EA20170638020) and the M.D.-Ph.D. program of the Imagine Institute (with the support of the Fondation Bettencourt-Schueller). We thank the Association “Turner et vous” for their help and support. Sample processing at IrsiCaixa was possible thanks to the crowdfunding initiative YoMeCorono. D.C.V. is supported by the Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec clinician-scientist scholar program. K.K. was supported by the Estonian Research Council grant PUT1367. We thank the GEN-COVID Multicenter Study (https://sites.google.com/dbm.unisi.it/gen-covid). We thank the NIAID Office of Cyber Infrastructure and Computational Biology, Bioinformatics and Computational Biosciences Branch (contract no. HHSN316201300006W/HHSN27200002 to MSC, Inc.), the Operations Engineering Branch for developing the HGRepo system to enable streamlined access to the data, and the NCI Advanced Biomedical Computational Science (ABCS) for data transformation support. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority was supported under contract no. HHSO10201600031C (to J.H.). Financial support was provided by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) K08AI135091; the Burroughs Wellcome Fund CAMS; the Clinical Immunology Society; and the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology
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