Determinazione della carica di CMV in campioni di sangue essiccato su carta da filtro (DBS)

Introduzione. Un\u2019elevata carica virale in urine o sangue di neonati con infezione congenita da Cytomegalovirus (CMV) potrebbe rappresentare un marcatore di prognosi sfavorevole. Diversi studi hanno evidenziato i numerosi vantaggi legati all\u2019impiego del sangue essiccato su Guthrie card (DBS). Pertanto sarebbe molto utile determinare la carica di CMV-DNA in questo tipo di campione, raccolto routinariamente alla nascita. L\u2019obiettivo di questo lavoro preliminare \ue8 stato verificare la correlazione tra le cariche rilevate nel sangue fresco (SF) e nei corrispondenti DBS. Metodi. Sono stati esaminati 69 campioni di SF e DBS, appartenenti a soggetti con infezione da CMV, risultati positivi per CMV-DNA in nested-PCR. Il DNA virale \ue8 stato estratto con colonne di affinit\ue0 (QIAGEN) e quantificato mediante Real-time PCR commerciale (Nanogen). Risultati. La PCR quantitativa ha dato esito positivo in 64 campioni di SF ed in soli 25 DBS. La carica nei DBS (mediana: 1,09x103 copie/ml) \ue8 risultata significativamente inferiore (p<0,05) a quella del SF corrispondente (1,67x104 copie/ml). Anche le mediane delle cariche virali del SF dal quale sono stati ottenuti i 39 DBS negativi ed i 25 positivi (1,10x103 vs 1,67x104 copie/ml) sono risultate significativamente diverse. Conclusioni. I risultati ottenuti non solo hanno evidenziato una riduzione della quantit\ue0 di CMV-DNA tra SF e corrispondente DBS pari a circa 1 log, presumibilmente dovuta alla minore quantit\ue0 di sangue esaminato, ma anche una minore sensibilit\ue0 del sistema. Essendo l\u2019alta carica virale indice di insorgenza di sequele nei neonati congenitamente infetti, riteniamo che il metodo proposto consenta comunque di individuare i soggetti da monitorare in quanto maggiormente a rischio di complicanze tardive. Il nostro gruppo sta gi\ue0 applicando tale metodica a DBS di neonati con infezione congenita dei quali \ue8 possibile reperire le informazioni relative alla sintomatologia alla nascita ed al follow-up

Strengthening the reporting of diet item details in feeding studies measuring the dietary metabolome: The DID-METAB core outcome set statement

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2022 World Hypertension League, Resolve To Save Lives and International Society of Hypertension dietary sodium (salt) global call to action

This fact sheet and global call to action is aimed at nutrition, hypertension, cardiovascular and other health care clinicians and scientists, and health advocates, as well as the organizations to which they belong. The ‘call’ is to align these audiences with the facts on: the burden of disease and key evidence supporting reductions in dietary sodium, the consistent recommendations for reducing dietary sodium from unbiased and comprehensive health and scientific reviews, the current levels of sodium intake, the cost savings expected from reducing high dietary sodium, the sources of controversial opinions, the current recommended approaches to reduce dietary sodium, and how to stay up to date with evidence on how to reduce dietary sodium and the evolving research on the adverse health effects of a high sodium intake. Health, nutrition, hypertension and cardiovascular organizations, and their members, need to become more engaged and advocate for reductions in dietary sodium, and for a greater priority to be given to high quality research on dietary sodium. The World Hypertension League, Resolve to Save Lives and International Society of Hypertension are committed to support reductions in dietary sodium as a high priority

Particle swarm optimization feedforward neural network for modeling runoff

The rainfall-runoff relationship is one of the most complex hydrological phenomena. In recent years, hydrologists have successfully applied backpropagation neural network as a tool to model various nonlinear hydrological processes because of its ability to generalize patterns in imprecise or noisy and ambiguous input and output data sets. However, the backpropagation neural network convergence rate is relatively slow and solutions can be trapped at local minima. Hence, in this study, a new evolutionary algorithm, namely, particle swarm optimization is proposed to train the feedforward neural network. This particle swarm optimization feedforward neural network is applied to model the daily rainfall-runoff relationship in Sungai Bedup Basin, Sarawak, Malaysia. The model performance is measured using the coefficient of correlation and the Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient. The input data to the model are current rainfall, antecedent rainfall and antecedent runoff, while the output is current runoff. Particle swarm optimization feedforward neural network simulated the current runoff accurately with R = 0.872 and E2 = 0.775 for the training data set and R = 0.900 and E2 = 0.807 for testing data set. Thus, it can be concluded that the particle swarm optimization feedforward neural network method can be successfully used to model the rainfall-runoff relationship in Bedup Basin and it could be to be applied to other basins. © IRSEN, CEERS, IAU

Modelling runoff quantity and quality in tropical urban catchments using storm water management model

Due to differences in rainfall regimes and management practices, tropical urban catchments are expected to behave differently from temperate catchments in terms of pollutant sources and their transport mechanism. Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) was applied to simulate runoff quantity (peakflow and runoff depth) and quality (total suspended solids and total phosphorous) in residential, commercial and industrial catchments. For each catchment, the model was calibrated using 8-10 storm events and validated using seven new events. The model performance was evaluated based on the relative error, normalized objective function, Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient and 1:1 plots between the simulated and observed values. The calibration and validation results showed good agreement between simulated and measured data. Application of Storm Water Management Model for predicting runoff quantity has been improved by taking into account catchment's antecedent moisture condition. The impervious depression storages obtained for dry and wet conditions were 0. 8 and 0. 2 mm, respectively. The locally derived build-up and wash-off parameters were used for modelling runoff quality