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Marisa Gonzaga da Cunha,1 Anna Luiza Fonseca Batista,1 Marzia Silva Macedo,1 Carlos D’Aparecida Santos Machado Filho,1 Fernando Luiz Affonso Fonseca2 1Dermatology Department, Faculdade de Medicina do ABC (FMABC), Santo André, São Paulo, Brazil; 2Biological Sciences Department, Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP), Diadema, São Paulo, Brazil Objective: The aim of this study was to establish the lipid profile of female patients with acne in the Acne-in-Adult-Women Ambulatory Care Clinic in order to observe the prevalence of dyslipidemia in those patients. Methods: This is a retrospective transversal study that evaluated the medical records of 416 patients who attended at the Acne-in-Adult-Women Ambulatory Care Clinic, at the Dermatology Department, Faculdade de Medicina do ABC, Santo André, São Paulo, Brazil, in the year 2012. Relevant data included age and clinical classification of acne. The lipid profile was analyzed according to the results of laboratory tests ordered during outpatient visits, which included total and fractionated cholesterol levels and triglycerides. Results: The epidemiological study sample was of 219 patients, with ages ranging from 21 to 61 years (mean of 32.23 years). The predominant clinical grade was papule-pustule acne (grade II) with 156 patients (71%). Regarding the lipid profile of the patients, there was a high increase in total cholesterol levels in 17.35% of the cases. High-density lipoprotein levels were low in 11.42% of the patients, with normal prevalence in 194 subjects. Low-density lipoprotein levels were normal in most patients (60.27%). Very-low-density lipoprotein values were normal in almost all patients (94.06%) and increased in only 13 patients (5.94%). Only 18 patients presented high levels of triglycerides (8.22%). Conclusion: The conclusion was that patients with grades II and III acne are more likely to have total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein altered. A correct and early diagnosis can be an important measure for the prevention of the metabolic syndrome in these patients. Keywords: acne, hyperandrogenism, dyslipidemia, cholesterol, triglycerides

Tropical biodiversity is undergoing unprecedented changes due to the hydrological cycle intensification, characterized by more intense droughts and wet seasons. This raises concerns about the resilience of animal and plant communities to such extremes and the existence of potential refugia-areas theorized to safeguard biological communities from adverse climate impacts. Over 20 years of monitoring in Central Amazonia, we investigated the short-term and long-term effects of hydrological cycle intensification on bird, fish, ant, and palm communities. We explored whether the 'insurance effect' of climate trends (droughts buffered by preceded wet seasons) or 'environmental refugia' (droughts or floods buffered by topographic features) could lessen the impact of climate events on community composition, richness, evenness, and species rank. Pronounced abundance changes were observed among animal species, whereas palm species showed relative temporal stability. Birds and fish were more affected by the immediate and long-term severity of droughts and wet periods, while ants responded primarily to short-term drought impacts. Conversely, palm communities exhibited delayed responses to climate extremes, primarily in long-term comparisons. As expected, the proposed 'insurance effect' mitigates the long-term impacts of extreme climate events on animal and plant community trends. However, less extreme hydrological conditions linked to topographic features did not provide effective 'environmental refugia' for animals or plants during adverse climate conditions. These outcomes underscore the complex and varied biological responses to ongoing climate change, challenging the prevailing assumptions about the efficacy of environmental refugia and highlighting the nuanced resilience of biodiversity in Central Amazonia., (© 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Purpose: Breast cancer (BC) in young women is uncommon and tends to present with more aggressive characteristics. To better understand and characterize this scenario in Brazil through real-world data, we performed a subanalysis of AMAZONA III study (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02663973)., Methods: The AMAZONA III study (GBECAM 0115) is a prospective registry that included 2,950 women newly diagnosed with invasive BC in Brazil from January 2016 until March 2018 at 22 sites. Valid data were obtained from 2,888 patients regarding age at diagnosis and complete baseline information. To compare epidemiologic and clinicopathological features at the time of diagnosis, patients with BC were divided into two groups according to age: ≤ 40 years and > 40 years. Quantitative variables were described as means, and categorical variables were described as frequencies and percentages and compared using the Pearson's χ 2 test., Results: Of 2,888 women diagnosed with BC, 486 (17%) were ≤ 40 years old. Young women had higher educational level, most were employed and a significant number were married ( P < . 001 for all associations). Younger patients were more symptomatic at BC diagnosis ( P < . 001), and they also presented more frequently with stage III, T3/T4, grade 3 tumors, HER-2-positive, luminal B, and triple-negative subtypes., Conclusion: Brazilian women younger than age 40 years have unfavorable clinicopathological features of BC at diagnosis, with more aggressive subtypes and advanced stage when compared with older women. These differences are not explained by socioeconomic or ethnic imbalances. The causes of a higher prevalence of BC among young women in Brazil deserve additional investigation.

This work presents a classification performance comparison between different frameworks for functional connectivity evaluation and complex network feature extraction aiming to distinguish motor imagery classes in electroencephalography (EEG)-based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). The analysis was performed in two online datasets: (1) a classical benchmark-the BCI competition IV dataset 2a-allowing a comparison with a representative set of strategies previously employed in this BCI paradigm and (2) a statistically representative dataset for signal processing technique comparisons over 52 subjects. Besides exploring three classical similarity measures-Pearson correlation, Spearman correlation, and mean phase coherence-this work also proposes a recurrence-based alternative for estimating EEG brain functional connectivity, which takes into account the recurrence density between pairwise electrodes over a time window. These strategies were followed by graph feature evaluation considering clustering coefficient, degree, betweenness centrality, and eigenvector centrality. The features were selected by Fisher's discriminating ratio and classification was performed by a least squares classifier in agreement with classical and online BCI processing strategies. The results revealed that the recurrence-based approach for functional connectivity evaluation was significantly better than the other frameworks, which is probably associated with the use of higher order statistics underlying the electrode joint probability estimation and a higher capability of capturing nonlinear inter-relations. There were no significant differences in performance among the evaluated graph features, but the eigenvector centrality was the best feature regarding processing time. Finally, the best ranked graph-based attributes were found in classical EEG motor cortex positions for the subjects with best performances, relating functional organization and motor activity. Graphical Abstract Evaluating functional connectivity based on Space-Time Recurrence Counting for motor imagery classification in brain-computer interfaces. Recurrences are evaluated between electrodes over a time window, and, after a density threshold, the electrodes adjacency matrix is stablish, leading to a graph. Graph-based topological measures are used for motor imagery classification.

Objective: To evaluate whether a country's Human Development Index (HDI) can help explain the differences in the country's breast cancer and gynecological cancer incidence and mortality rates in the Pan-American region., Study Design: Ecological analysis., Methods: Pan-American region countries with publicly available data both in GLOBOCAN 2012 and the United Nations Development Report 2012 were included (n = 28). Incidence and mortality rates age-standardized per 100,000 were natural log-transformed for breast cancer, ovarian cancer, corpus uteri cancer, and cervical cancer. The mortality-to-incidence ratio (MIR) was calculated for each site. Pearson's correlation test and a simple linear regression were performed., Results: The HDI showed a positive correlation with breast cancer and ovarian cancer incidence and mortality rates, respectively, and a negative correlation with cervical cancer incidence and mortality rates. The HDI and corpus uteri cancer showed no association. MIR and the HDI showed a negative correlation for all tumor types except ovarian cancer. An increment in 1 HDI unit leads to changes in cancer rates: in breast cancer incidence β = 4.03 (95% confidence interval [CI] 2.61; 5.45) P < 0.001, breast cancer mortality β = 1.76 (95% CI 0.32; 3.21) P = 0.019, and breast cancer-MIR β = -0.705 (95% CI 0.704; 0.706) P < 0.001; in cervical cancer incidence β = -3.28 (95% CI -4.78; -1.78) P < 0.001, cervical cancer mortality β = -4.63 (95% CI -6.10; -3.17) P < 0.001, and cervical cancer-MIR β = -1.35 (95% CI -1.83; -0.87) P < 0.001; in ovarian cancer incidence β = 3.26 (95% CI 1.78; 4.75) P < 0.001, ovarian cancer mortality β = 1.82 (95% CI 0.44; 3.20) P = 0.012, and ovarian cancer-MIR β = 5.10 (95% CI 3.22; 6.97) P < 0.001; in corpus uteri cancer incidence β = 2.37 (95% CI -0.33; 5.06) P = 0.83, corpus uteri cancer mortality β = 0.68 (95% CI -2.68; 2.82) P = 0.96, and corpus uteri cancer-MIR β = -2.30 (95% CI -3.19; -1.40) P < 0.001., Conclusions: A country's HDI should be considered to understand disparities in breast cancer and gynecological cancer in the Pan-American region., (Copyright © 2017 The Royal Society for Public Health. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)