Search

Sportomics is the application of metabolomics in sports to investigate the metabolic effects of physical exercise on individuals, whether they are professional athletes or not. Metabolomics is one of the "omics" sciences that provide a picture of the metabolic state of a person in physiological or pathological conditions. This is achieved through the analysis of metabolites present in a biological fluid, such as saliva, blood, feces, and urine. The authors revised the recent literature concerning this topic and discussed the useful information that sportomics can provide and the limits of the current experimental settings. Furthermore, in the future, sportomics analyses could be used to prevent and manage injuries as it would be known in advance if an athlete is more prone to experience muscular damage or fatigue. Following more trials, it would also be possible to set the best diet and training programs to get the best performances out of the athletes. Moreover, based on their metabolic profiles, both adults and children could choose tailored physical training in order to preserve and improve their health.

The paper deals with simulation of congested urban areas through dynamic traffic assignment models and presents a new quasidynamic traffic assignment model that improves realism and effectiveness of both usual static traffic assignment models and other quasi-dynamic models recently introduced in the literature. The new model has been applied to a real large-scale road network (the town of Rome) and has been validated through a comparison with a very large set of floating car data. Results of validation reveal that the quasi-dynamic traffic assignment model provided a rather satisfactory goodness of fit, which is comparable with that reported in literature as a result of application of a much more sophisticated simulation and calibration procedure, applied to a road network having similar characteristics of size and congestion degree.

The object of study was the evaluation of both the in-vitro and in-vivo activity of roxithromycin against Chlamydia trachomatis. In-vitro activity against C. trachomatis was achieved by means of minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) determinations and was recorded as 0.05 mg/l. In vivo activity was tested in 15 of 60 women, attending the Planning Clinic, who were positive for C. trachomatis. Microbiological diagnosis of chlamydial infection was achieved by using a monoclonal direct smear test (Biomerieux-C trachomatis direct IF). All the patients and their partners were treated with 150 mg of roxithromycin twice a day for 15 days. All the patients were requested to avoid unprotected sexual intercourse up to the end of the therapy. The criterion for clinical efficacy was defined as disappearance of clinical signs and the criterion for microbiological efficacy was evidence of eradication of C. trachomatis at the follow-up (mean time: 30 days). A clinical cure and chlamydial eradication was recorded for all the patients at the end of the treatment and at follow-up. Clinical safety was also satisfactory.