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A jellified alginate based capsule serves as biocompatible and biodegradable electrolyte system to gate an organic field-effect transistor fabricated on a flexible substrate. Such a system allows operating thiophene based polymer transistors below 0.5 V through an electrical double layer formed across an ion-permeable polymeric electrolyte. Moreover, biological macro-molecules such as glucose-oxidase and streptavidin can enter into the gating capsules that serve also as delivery system. An enzymatic bio-reaction is shown to take place in the capsule and preliminary results on the measurement of the electronic responses promise for low-cost, low-power, flexible electronic bio-sensing applications using capsule-gated organic field-effect transistors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This paper analyses normal tissue sparing capability of radiation treatment techniques in Hodgkin's lymphoma with large treatment volume.Methods: 10 patients with supradiaphragmatic Hodgkin's lymphoma and planning target volume (PTV) larger than 900 cm3 were evaluated. Two plans were simulated for each patient using 6 MV X-rays: a conventional multi-leaf (MLC) parallel-opposed (AP-PA) plan, and the same plan with additional MLC shaped segments (forward planned intensity modulated radiation therapy, FPIMRT). In order to compare plans, dose-volume histograms (DVHs) of PTV, lungs, heart, spinal cord, breast, and thyroid were analyzed. The Inhomogeneity Coefficient (IC), the PTV receiving 95% of the prescription dose (V95), the normal tissue complication probability (NTCP) and dose-volume parameters for the OARs were determined.Results: the PTV coverage was improved (mean V95AP-PA=95.9 and ICAP-PA=0.4 vs. V95FPIMRT=96.8 and ICFPIMRT=0.31, por=30 Gy resulted significantly reduced when using the FPIMRT technique.Conclusions: The FPIMRT technique can represent a very useful and, at the same time, simple method for improving PTV conformity while saving critical organs when large fields are needed as in Hodgkin's lymphoma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Abrocitinib is a JAK-1 inhibitor approved for the treatment of moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis (AD). We conducted a 16-week multicenter retrospective study to assess the short-term effectiveness and safety of abrocitinib in patients with moderate-to-severe AD., Our retrospective study included 85 adult patients from 14 Italian Dermatology Units affected by moderate-to-severe AD treated with abrocitinib 100/200 mg., Methods: Effectiveness of abrocitinib at weeks 4 and 16 was assessed by using the Eczema Area and Severity Index (EASI), the Investigator Global Assessment (IGA), the peak pruritus and sleep- Numerical Rating Scale (PP-NRS and S-NRS, respectively)., Results: At week 16, improvement of at least 90% in EASI (EASI90) and IGA 0/1 was observed in 49.4% and 61.2% of patients, respectively. A reduction of at least 4 points in PP-NRS and S-NRS compared with baseline was achieved by 70.6% of patients for both endpoints. No significant safety reports were observed during the study period. Naïve patients had better rates of EASI 90 compared to patients who previously failed dupilumab. Conclusion: Our data confirm the effectiveness of abrocitinib in a real-world setting with better clinical responses at weeks 4 and 16, compared with Phase-III clinical trials. Longer analyses are required to further establish the safety profile of abrocitinib.

The aim of this pilot study was to assess the compliance of breast cancer (BC) patients with fitness tracker (FT) monitoring program during radiotherapy (RT) and to characterize radiation-induced fatigue (RIF) status through objective evaluation using FT-collected parameters. Thirty-six BC patients were invited to wear FT during their RT course for continuous monitoring of heart rate (HR) and step counts (STP). RIF assessment was performed weekly, according to CTCAE v5.0 and dichotomized into G0 vs. any-grade. A novel concept based on patient Repeated Activity Window (RAW) was introduced to evaluate HR and STP variations during RT. Several Machine Learning (ML) methods were trained to characterize RIF on the basis of HR and STP collected data. RIF of any grade was reported by 17 out of 36 patients (47%) included in the study. None of patient clinical variables were significantly correlated with RIF. All patients accepted the FT monitoring program, and for 32 patients FT collection efficiency was greater than 60%. For each patient, a distinct distribution of RAWs was identifiable over RT and across the entire patient cohort, with a total of 7950 RAWs processed. Six features related to RAWs, HR and STP were identified as associated with RIF. The best-performing classifier was the Bagged Trees model, showing a cross-validated ROC-AUC of 89% (95% CI 88-90%). This study confirms the feasibility of continuous biomedical monitoring of BC patients by FT. We successfully identify objective indicators of RIF through HR and STP variation measures within each patient's RAW, thus providing a novel and practical approach to assess and manage RIF. This can significantly aid medical staff in evaluating RIF trajectories, potentially leading to better individualized care strategies and improved patient outcomes., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

An innovative multicompartmental anatomic brain phantom (StepBrain) is described to simulate the in vivo tracer uptake of gray matter, white matter, and striatum, overcoming the limitations of currently available phantoms. Methods: StepBrain was created by exploiting the potential of fused deposition modeling 3-dimensional printing to replicate the real anatomy of the brain compartments, as modeled through ad hoc processing of healthy-volunteer MR images. Results: A realistic simulation of 18 F-FDG PET brain studies, using target activity to obtain the real concentration ratios, was obtained, and the results of postprocessing with partial-volume effect correction tools developed for human PET studies confirmed the accuracy of these methods in recovering the target activity concentrations. Conclusion: StepBrain compartments (gray matter, white matter, and striatum) can be simultaneously filled, achieving different concentration ratios and allowing the simulation of different (e.g., amyloid, tau, or 6-fluoro-l-dopa) tracer distributions, with a potentially valuable role for multicenter PET harmonization studies., (© 2024 by the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging.)

Purpose: To describe the clinical and morphologic changes in the ocular surface microstructure of patients affected with moderate-to-severe Atopic Dermatitis (AD) before and during Dupilumab treatment., Methods: This is a monocentric observational study on thirty-three patients affected with AD before and during Dupilumab treatment. All patients underwent a slit-lamp examination: complete clinical assessment, Break Up Time test (BUT), Schirmer test, and corneal staining grading (Oxford scale) were performed. Meibomian Glands Dysfunction (MGD) evaluation (Meibography), Non-invasive Keratograph Break Up Time test (NIKBUT), Tear Meniscus Height (TMH), and ocular Redness Score (RS) have been investigated using an OCULUS Keratograph. In vivo images of the conjunctiva, cornea, and meibomian glands have been acquired by confocal microscopy., Results: Sixty-six eyes were included in our study: twenty-two eyes of 11 naive patients with indication for treatment but not in therapy yet (Group 1) and forty-four eyes of 22 patients treated with Dupilumab for at least 4 months (subcutaneous administration of 300 mg every 2 weeks) (Group 2). Either patients treated with Dupilumab or naive patients with moderate-to-severe forms of AD had a tear film instability (TBUT and NIKBUT reduced), whereas the quantity of the tear film was overall normal (Schirmer test and TMH), without statistically significant differences between the two groups. When Meibography was performed with the Keratograph, the difference between Group 1 and Group 2 was statistically significant in terms of Meiboscore ( p = 0.0043 and p = 0.0242, respectively), as well as the difference in terms of mean RS. These results paired well with the confocal microscopy results in which we found a decrease in the goblet cell population in the conjunctival epithelium in the treated group (5.2 cells/mm), along with inflammatory cells that were more concentrated around the adenoid lumina of the meibomian glands., Conclusions: In recent years, the use of Dupilumab has been increasing, but mild-to-severe conjunctivitis is a common side effect. Our major results demonstrate a loss of meibomian glands at the Keratograph examination: we can assume a reduced meibum secretion and an evaporative dry eye with MGD. We suggest that the inflammation of the ocular surface may involve not only the cornea and the conjunctiva, but also the meibomian glands, and Dupilumab may play a role. However, the frequency of clear conjunctivitis is not as common as reported in the literature.

Introduction: Vulvar intraepithelial neoplasia (VIN) is a vulvar skin lesion considered a precursor of vulvar squamous cell carcinoma. No characteristics have been discovered to date that allows us to differentiate between grades of VIN, such as correlating the thickness of involvement of the epithelium (VIN1, VIN2, and VIN3) to the dermoscopic pattern., Objectives: The aim of this study was to correlate the clinical and dermoscopic features of VIN cases with histopathological findings, with the purpose of identifying dermoscopic characteristics that allow us to differentiate between different grades of VIN., Methods: A retrospective study of the clinical and dermoscopic characteristics of VINs was recruited. Clinical and dermoscopic characteristics, as well as histopathology data, were gathered from patients at two Dermatology Units in Italy during the period spanning from January 2020 to December 2021., Results: The study population consisted of 20 patients with a histologically confirmed diagnosis of VIN. The mean age of patients at the time of diagnosis was 55 years. At the dermoscopic level, VIN1 was characterized by a homogeneous erythematous area that completely involved the entire lesion, with a vascular pattern consisting of regular glomerular vessels. VIN3, was characterized by the presence of compact milky white areas that involved almost the entire lesion. VIN2 was characterized by the presence of non-compact white areas that allowed homogeneous erythematous areas to be seen transparently, without other distinguishing aspects., Conclusions: Although a definitive diagnosis and grading of VIN remains confirmed only histopathologically, our study shows how dermoscopy may aid the differential diagnosis between the different grades of VIN; the presence of a compact milky white area that involves nearly the entire lesion should be interpreted as an alarming feature, while homogeneous erythematous areas or a glomerular vascular pattern are more typical of the first stage of this neoplasia.

Medical devices (MDs) have been designed for monitoring the parameters of patients in many sectors. Nonetheless, despite being high-performing and reliable, they often turn out to be expensive and intrusive. In addition, MDs are almost exclusively used in controlled, hospital-based environments. Paving a path of technological innovation in the clinical field, a very active line of research is currently dealing with the possibility to rely on non-medical-graded low-cost devices, to develop unattended telemedicine (TM) solutions aimed at non-invasively gathering data, signals, and images. In this article, a TM solution is proposed for monitoring the heart rate (HR) of patients during sleep. A remote patient monitoring system (RPMS) featuring a smart belt equipped with pressure sensors for ballistocardiogram (BCG) signals sampling was deployed. A field trial was then conducted over a 2-month period on 24 volunteers, who also agreed to wear a finger pulse oximeter capable of producing a photoplethysmography (PPG) signal as the gold standard, to examine the feasibility of the solution via the estimation of HR values from the collected BCG signals. For this purpose, two of the highest-performing approaches for HR estimation from BCG signals, one algorithmic and the other based on a convolutional neural network (CNN), were retrieved from the literature and updated for a TM-related use case. Finally, HR estimation performances were assessed in terms of patient-wise mean absolute error (MAE). Results retrieved from the literature (controlled environment) outperformed those achieved in the experimentation (TM environment) by 29% (MAE = 4.24 vs. 5.46, algorithmic approach) and 52% (MAE = 2.32 vs. 3.54, CNN-based approach), respectively. Nonetheless, a low packet loss ratio, restrained elaboration time of the collected biomedical big data, low-cost deployment, and positive feedback from the users, demonstrate the robustness, reliability, and applicability of the proposed TM solution. In light of this, further steps will be planned to fulfill new targets, such as evaluation of respiratory rate (RR), and pattern assessment of the movement of the participants overnight., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (© 2023 Tramontano, Tamburis, Cioce, Venticinque and Magliulo.)

Purpose: To improve the diagnostic accuracy and optimal management of pediatric melanomas., Methods: We conducted a retrospective descriptive, multicenter study of the epidemiological, clinical, and dermoscopic characteristics of histopathologically proven melanomas diagnosed in patients less than 18 years old. Data on sociodemographic variables, clinical and dermoscopic characteristics, histopathology, local extension, therapy and follow-up, lymph node staging, and outcome were collected from the databases of three Italian dermatology units. We performed a clinical evaluation of the morphological characteristics of each assessed melanoma, using both classic ABCDE criteria and the modified ABCDE algorithm for pediatric melanoma to evaluate which of the two algorithms best suited our series., Results: The study population consisted of 39 patients with a histologically confirmed diagnosis of pediatric melanoma. Comparing classic ABCDE criteria with the modified ABCDE algorithm for pediatric melanomas, the modified pediatric ABCDE algorithm was less sensitive than the conventional criteria. Dermoscopically, the most frequent finding was the presence of irregular streaks/pseudopods (74.4%). When evaluating the total number of different suspicious dermoscopy criteria per lesion, 64.1% of the lesion assessments recognized two dermoscopic characteristics, 20.5% identified three, and 15.4% documented four or more assessments., Conclusions: Contrary to what has always been described in the literature, from a clinical point of view, about 95% of our cases presented in a pigmented and non-amelanotic form, and these data must be underlined in the various prevention campaigns where pediatric melanoma is currently associated with a more frequently amelanotic form. All the pediatric melanomas analyzed presented at least two dermoscopic criteria of melanoma, suggesting that this could be a key for the dermoscopic diagnosis of suspected pediatric melanoma, making it possible to reach an early diagnosis even in this age group.

We have read with great interest the paper by Kesić, V. et al. entitled "Early Diagnostics of Vulvar Intraepithelial Neoplasia" [...].

Cholesteatoma is a non-neoplastic, keratinized squamous epithelial lesion that affects the temporal bone. The middle ear is the most frequent, while the isolated cholesteatoma of the mastoid is rare. The aim of this study was to describe a rare case of isolated mastoid cholesteatoma with no involvement of aditus ad antrum and middle ear including a literature review of the topic. This case report describes the case of a 58 years old female with a cholesteatoma isolated in the mastoid region, evidenced by imaging (computer tomography and magnetic resonance). A mastoidectomy was performed: mastoid process was completely involved, but antrum was not reached. Moreover, it reached the soft tissue of stylomastoid foramen as well as the posterior belly of the digastric muscle. In the literature few articles described cases of cholesteatoma isolated in the mastoid region. Research was conducted using PubMed and reference list and there were considered only reports about cholesteatoma exclusively located in the mastoid process without involvement of antrum or middle ear. Fourteen articles were included in this review, with a total number of 23 cases of cholesteatoma isolated in the mastoid region. All papers analyzed reported the cases of isolated mastoid cholesteatoma that presented a congenital origin. Its diagnosis is difficult, therefore, imaging evaluation is mandatory and surgery is the treatment of choice. Mastoid cholesteatomas without involvement of aditus ad antrum and middle ear are rare and only 23 cases are reported in literature. Our case is in line with all clinical and diagnostic features of this rare disease, but it is the only one that evidenced an exposure of the soft tissue of stylomastoid foramen as well as the posterior belly of the digastric muscle. The treatment of choice was the surgical one, avoiding damaging of important anatomo-functional structure., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting Interests:The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article., (© The Author(s) 2021.)

We present a case of a middle-age male who presented in emergency room with nonspecific abdominal pain. A contrast-enhanced computer tomography (ceCT) scan showed a reduced perfusion of both adrenal glands. The clinical examinations and the laboratory tests were negative for an adrenal pathological process. To reassess the adrenal ischemia, a second ceCT scan was performed 5 days later showing an acute bilateral adrenal hemorrhage. These findings demonstrated that the previous adrenal hypoperfusion represented the prodromal manifestation of a hemorrhagic intraglandular process. This case suggests that adrenal hypoperfusion detected on tomographic imaging dictates a prompt clinical management finalized to strictly monitor the potential evolution towards a more aggressive pathological condition and confirms the pivotal role of imaging in the diagnosis of such uncommon disorder., (© 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of University of Washington.)

Background: Right insular cortex is involved in taste discrimination, but its functional organization is still poorly known. In general, sensory cortices represent the spatial prevalence of relevant features for each sensory modality (visual, auditory, somatosensory) in an ordered way across the cortical space. Following this analogy, we hypothesized that primary taste cortex is organized in similar ordered way in response to six tastes with known receptorial mechanisms (sweet, bitter, sour, salt, umami, CO2)., Design: Ten normal subjects were enrolled in a pilot study. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a high resolution cortical registration method, and specialized procedures of feature prevalence localization, to map fMRI responses within the right insular cortex, to water solutions of quinine hydrochloride (bitter), Acesulfamate K (sweet), sodium chloride (salt), mono potassium glutamate + inosine 5' mono phosphate (Umami), citric acid (sour) and carbonated water (CO2). During an fMRI scan delivery of the solutions was applied in pseudo-random order interleaved with cleaning water., Results: Two subjects were discarded due to excessive head movements. In the remaining subjects, statistically significant activations were detected in the fMRI responses to all tastes in the right insular cortex (p<0.05, family-wise corrected for multiple comparisons). Cortical representation of taste prevalence highlighted two spatially segregated clusters, processing two and three tastes coupled together (sweet-bitter and salt-umami-sour), with CO2 in between., Conclusions: Cortical representation of taste prevalence within the right primary taste cortex appears to follow the ecological purpose of enhancing the discrimination between safe nutrients and harmful substances.

The study of proteins confined on a surface has attracted a great deal of attention due to its relevance in the development of bio-systems for laboratory and clinical settings. In this respect, organic bio-electronic platforms can be used as tools to achieve a deeper understanding of the processes involving protein interfaces. In this work, biotin-binding proteins have been integrated in two different organic thin-film transistor (TFT) configurations to separately address the changes occurring in the protein-ligand complex morphology and dipole moment. This has been achieved by decoupling the output current change upon binding, taken as the transducing signal, into its component figures of merit. In particular, the threshold voltage is related to the protein dipole moment, while the field-effect mobility is associated with conformational changes occurring in the proteins of the layer when ligand binding occurs. Molecular Dynamics simulations on the whole avidin tetramer in presence and absence of ligands were carried out, to evaluate how the tight interactions with the ligand affect the protein dipole moment and the conformation of the loops surrounding the binding pocket. These simulations allow assembling a rather complete picture of the studied interaction processes and support the interpretation of the experimental results.

In this contribution, we propose a label-free immunosensor, based on a novel type of electrolyte-gated field-effect transistor (EGOFET), for ultrasensitive detection of the C-reactive protein (CRP). The recognition layer of the biosensor is fabricated by physical adsorption of the anti-CRP monoclonal antibody onto a poly-3-hexyl thiophene (P3HT) organic semiconductor surface. A supplementary nonionic hydrophilic polymer is used as a blocking agent preventing nonspecific interactions and allowing a better orientation of the antibodies immobilized onto the P3HT surface. The whole biomolecule immobilization procedure does not require any pretreatment of the organic semiconductor surface, and the whole functionalization process is completed in less than 30 min. Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) measurements were performed to assess the amount of biomolecules physisorbed onto the P3HT and to evaluate the CRP binding proprieties of the deposited anti-CRP layer. A partial surface coverage of about 23 % of adsorbed antibody molecules was found to most efficiently sense the CRP. The electrical performance of the EGOFET immunosensor was comparable to that of a bare P3HT EGOFET device, and the obtained CRP calibration curve was linear over six orders of magnitude (from 4 pM to 2 μM). The relative standard deviation of the individual calibration points, measured on immunosensors fabricated on different chips, ranged between 1 and 14 %, and a detection limit of 2 pM (220 ng/L) was established. The novel electronic immunosensor is compatible with low-cost fabrication procedures and was successfully employed for the detection of the CRP biomarker in the clinically relevant matrix serum. Graphical abstract Schematic of the EGOFET immunosensor for CRP detection. The anti-CRP monoclonal antibody layer is physisorbed on the P3HT organic semiconductor and the CRP is directly measured by a label-free electronic EGOFET transducer.

Peripheral events in olfaction involve odorant binding proteins (OBPs) whose role in the recognition of different volatile chemicals is yet unclear. Here we report on the sensitive and quantitative measurement of the weak interactions associated with neutral enantiomers differentially binding to OBPs immobilized through a self-assembled monolayer to the gate of an organic bio-electronic transistor. The transduction is remarkably sensitive as the transistor output current is governed by the small capacitance of the protein layer undergoing minute changes as the ligand-protein complex is formed. Accurate determination of the free-energy balances and of the capacitance changes associated with the binding process allows derivation of the free-energy components as well as of the occurrence of conformational events associated with OBP ligand binding. Capacitance-modulated transistors open a new pathway for the study of ultra-weak molecular interactions in surface-bound protein-ligand complexes through an approach that combines bio-chemical and electronic thermodynamic parameters.

Bottom- and top-contact organic thin film transistors (OTFTs) were fabricated, using poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl) (P3HT) and poly[2,5-bis(3-tetradecylthiophen-2-yl)thieno[3,2-b]thiophene] (PBTTT-C16) as p-type channel semiconductors. Four different types of OTFTs were fabricated and investigated as gas sensors against three volatile organic compounds, with different associated dipole moments. The OTFT-based sensor responses were evaluated with static and transient current measurements. A comparison between the different architectures and the relative organic semiconductor was made.

The detailed action mechanism of volatile general anesthetics is still unknown despite their effect has been clinically exploited for more than a century. Long ago it was also assessed that the potency of an anesthetic molecule well correlates with its lipophilicity and phospholipids were eventually identified as mediators. As yet, the direct effect of volatile anesthetics at physiological relevant concentrations on membranes is still under scrutiny. Organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) integrating a phospholipid (PL) functional bio inter-layer (FBI) are here proposed for the electronic detection of archetypal volatile anesthetic molecules such as diethyl ether and halothane. This technology allows to directly interface a PL layer to an electronic transistor channel, and directly probe subtle changes occurring in the bio-layer. Repeatable responses of PL FBI-OFET to anesthetics are produced in a concentration range that reaches few percent, namely the clinically relevant regime. The PL FBI-OFET is also shown to deliver a comparably weaker response to a non-anesthetic volatile molecule such as acetone., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Biosystems integration into an organic field-effect transistor (OFET) structure is achieved by spin coating phospholipid or protein layers between the gate dielectric and the organic semiconductor. An architecture directly interfacing supported biological layers to the OFET channel is proposed and, strikingly, both the electronic properties and the biointerlayer functionality are fully retained. The platform bench tests involved OFETs integrating phospholipids and bacteriorhodopsin exposed to 1-5% anesthetic doses that reveal drug-induced changes in the lipid membrane. This result challenges the current anesthetic action model relying on the so far provided evidence that doses much higher than clinically relevant ones (2.4%) do not alter lipid bilayers' structure significantly. Furthermore, a streptavidin embedding OFET shows label-free biotin electronic detection at 10 parts-per-trillion concentration level, reaching state-of-the-art fluorescent assay performances. These examples show how the proposed bioelectronic platform, besides resulting in extremely performing biosensors, can open insights into biologically relevant phenomena involving membrane weak interfacial modifications.

Most of the success of electronic devices fabricated to actively interact with a biological environment relies on the proper choice of materials and efficient engineering of surfaces and interfaces. Organic materials have proved to be among the best candidates for this aim owing to many properties, such as the synthesis tunability, processing, softness and self-assembling ability, which allow them to form surfaces that are compatible with biological tissues. This review reports some research results obtained in the development of devices which exploit organic materials' properties in order to detect biologically significant molecules as well as to trigger/capture signals from the biological environment. Among the many investigated sensing devices, organic field-effect transistors (OFETs), organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) and microcantilevers (MCLs) have been chosen. The main factors motivating this choice are their label-free detection approach, which is particularly important when addressing complex biological processes, as well as the possibility to integrate them in an electronic circuit. Particular attention is paid to the design and realization of biocompatible surfaces which can be employed in the recognition of pertinent molecules as well as to the research of new materials, both natural and inspired by nature, as a first approach to environmentally friendly electronics.

Aim: To evaluate whether FDG-positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT) may be an accurate technique in the assessment of the T stage in patients with colorectal cancer., Methods: Thirty four consecutive patients (20 men and 14 women; mean age: 63 years) with a histologically proven diagnosis of colorectal adenocarcinoma and scheduled for surgery in our hospital were enrolled in this study. All patients underwent FDG-PET/CT preoperatively. The primary tumor site and extent were evaluated on PET/CT images. Colorectal wall invasion was analysed according to a modified T classification that considers only three stages (≤ T2, T3, T4). Assessment of accuracy was carried out using 95% confidence intervals for T., Results: Thirty five/37 (94.6%) adenocarcinomas were identified and correctly located on PET/CT images. PET/CT correctly staged the T of 33/35 lesions identified showing an accuracy of 94.3% (95% CI: 87%-100%). All T1, T3 and T4 lesions were correctly staged, while two T2 neoplasms were overstated as T3., Conclusion: Our data suggest that FDG-PET/CT may be an accurate modality for identifying primary tumor and defining its local extent in patients with colorectal cancer.

The official methods specified in the national bovine and ovine/caprine brucellosis eradication plan are the Rose Bengal and complement fixation tests. In the current phase of the eradication plan, it is often difficult to interpret the results obtained with the official tests. Consequently, additional tests that offer greater sensitivity and specificity are thus required. For this reason, two methods, the indirect chemiluminescence enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (i-ELISA CL) and the competitive chemiluminescence ELISA (c-ELISA CL) that use a chemiluminescent substrate to determine anti-Brucella antibodies in bovine and ovine serum were validated. The methods are based on the detection of anti-Brucella antibodies in serum by catalysis of a chemiluminescent enzyme substrate (luminol/H2O2/enhancer system) by peroxidase conjugated to secondary anti IgG antibodies in i-ELISA CL and to monoclonal anti-lipopolysaccharide (LPS) antibodies in c-ELISA CL. From the results obtained, a cut-off of 60% for bovine serum and 37.5% for ovine serum, expressed as positivity rate (PR), were established using these cut-off values, for the i-ELISA CL, 100% sensitivity and specificity was obtained for bovine serum and 100% sensitivity and 99.8% specificity for ovine serum. Cut-off values of 30% for bovine serum and 40% for ovine serum, expressed as inhibition rate, were selected for c-ELISA CL, which ensured 100% sensitivity and specificity in both cases.

Aim: To develop a new formulation with hydroxy propyl methyl cellulose and Shellac coating for extended and selective delivery of butyrate in the ileo-caecal region and colon., Methods: One-gram sodium butyrate coated tablets containing 13C-butyrate were orally administered to 12 healthy subjects and 12 Crohn's disease patients and the rate of 13C-butyrate absorption was evaluated by 13CO2 breath test analysis for eight hours. Tauroursodeoxycholic acid (500 mg) was co-administered as a biomarker of oro-ileal transit time to determine also the site of release and absorption of butyrate by the time of its serum maximum concentration., Results: The coated formulation delayed the 13C-butyrate release by 2-3 h with respect to the uncoated tablets. Sodium butyrate was delivered in the intestine of all subjects and a more variable transit time was found in Crohn's disease patients than in healthy subjects. The variability of the peak 13CO2 in the kinetic release of butyrate was explained by the inter-subject variability in transit time. However, the coating chosen ensured an efficient release of the active compound even in patients with a short transit time., Conclusion: Simultaneous evaluation of breath 13CO2 and tauroursodeoxycholic acid concentration-time curves has shown that the new oral formulation consistently releases sodium butyrate in the ileo-cecal region and colon both in healthy subjects and Crohn's disease patients with variable intestinal transit time. This formulation may be of therapeutic value in inflammatory bowel disease patients due to the appropriate release of the active compound.

Seven monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) specific for Escherichia coli O157:H7, one of the major causes of haemorrhagic colitis in humans, were produced by immunising Balb/c mice with the strain E. coli O157:H7. These monoclonal antibodies do not cross-react with other bacteria such as Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium, E. coli O14, E. coli JM109, S. enterica serovar Enteritidis, S. panama, S. saintpaul, S. derby, S. muenchen, S. bredeney, S. hadar, Yersinia enterocolitica, Proteus vulgaris, Shigella flexneri, Listeria ivanovii, L. monocytogenes 13M, L. innocua, Enterobacter cloacae, E. agglomerans, E. amnigenus, Citrobacter freundii, Escherichia fergussoni or Klebsiella pneumoniae. Of the seven MAbs obtained, MAb 8B8C3 was selected to prepare a high-sensitivity sandwich ELISA method specific for O157:H7.