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We investigate the implications of conducting hydrogen-assisted fatigue crack growth experiments in a hydrogen gas environment (in-situ hydrogen charging) or in air (following exposure to hydrogen gas). The study is conducted on welded 42CrMo4 steel, a primary candidate for the future hydrogen transport infrastructure, allowing us to additionally gain insight into the differences in behavior between the base steel and the coarse grain heat affected zone. The results reveal significant differences between the two testing approaches and the two weld regions. The differences are particularly remarkable for the comparison of testing methodologies, with fatigue crack growth rates being more than one order of magnitude higher over relevant loading regimes when the samples are tested in a hydrogen-containing environment, relative to the pre-charged samples. Aided by finite element modelling and microscopy analysis, these differences are discussed and rationalized. Independent of the testing approach, the heat affected zone showed a higher susceptibility to hydrogen embrittlement. Similar microstructural behavior is observed for both testing approaches, with the base metal exhibiting martensite lath decohesion while the heat affected zone experienced both martensite lath decohesion and intergranular fracture.

Aversive events sometimes turn into intrusive memories. However, prior evidence indicates that such memories can be controlled via a mechanism of retrieval suppression. Here, we test the hypothesis that suppression exerts a sustained influence on memories by deteriorating their neural representations. This deterioration, in turn, would hinder their subsequent reactivation and thus impoverish the vividness with which they can be recalled. In an fMRI study, participants repeatedly suppressed memories of aversive scenes. As predicted, this process rendered the memories less vivid. Using a pattern classifier, we observed that suppression diminished the neural reactivation of scene information both globally across the brain and locally in the parahippocampal cortices. Moreover, the decline in vividness was associated with reduced reinstatement of unique memory representations in right parahippocampal cortex. These results support the hypothesis that suppression weakens memories by causing a sustained reduction in the potential to reactivate their neural representations.

Unwanted imaginations of future fears can, to some extent, be avoided. This is achieved by control mechanisms similar to those engaged to suppress and forget unwanted memories. Suppression-induced forgetting relies on the executive control network, whose functioning is impaired after exposure to acute stress. This study investigates whether acute stress affects the ability to intentionally control future fears and, furthermore, whether individual differences in executive control predict a susceptibility to these effects. The study ran over two consecutive days. On day 1, the working memory capacity of one hundred participants was assessed. Thereafter, participants provided descriptions and details of fearful episodes that they imagined might happen in their future. On day 2, participants were exposed to either the stress or no-stress version of the Maastricht Acute Stress Test, after which participants performed the Imagine/No-Imagine task. Here, participants repeatedly imagined some future fears and suppressed imaginings of others. Results demonstrated that, in unstressed participants, suppression successfully induced forgetting of the episodes' details compared to a baseline condition. However, anxiety toward these events did not differ. Acute stress was found to selectively impair suppression-induced forgetting and, further, this effect was moderated by working memory capacity. Specifically, lower working memory predicted a susceptibility to these detrimental effects. These findings provide novel insights into conditions under which our capacity to actively control future fears is reduced, which may have considerable implications for understanding stress-related psychopathologies and symptomatologies characterized by unwanted apprehensive thoughts.

Adaptive cognition is fostered by knowledge about the structure and value of our environment. Here, we hypothesize that these two kinds of information are inherently intertwined as value-weighted schemas in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). Schemas (e.g., of a social network) emerge by extracting commonalities across experiences and can be understood as graphs comprising nodes (e.g., people) and edges (e.g., their relationships). We sampled information about unique real-life environments (i.e., about personally familiar people and places) and probed the neural representations of their schemas with fMRI. Using representational similarity analysis, we show that the mPFC encodes indeed both, the nodes and edges of the schemas. Critically, as hypothesized, the strength of the edges is not only determined by experience and centrality of a node but also by value. We thus account for the involvement of the mPFC in disparate functions and suggest that valuation emerges naturally from encoded memory representations.

Botvinik-Nezer, Rotem et al., Data analysis workflows in many scientific domains have become increasingly complex and flexible. Here we assess the effect of this flexibility on the results of functional magnetic resonance imaging by asking 70 independent teams to analyse the same dataset, testing the same 9 ex-ante hypotheses. The flexibility of analytical approaches is exemplified by the fact that no two teams chose identical workflows to analyse the data. This flexibility resulted in sizeable variation in the results of hypothesis tests, even for teams whose statistical maps were highly correlated at intermediate stages of the analysis pipeline. Variation in reported results was related to several aspects of analysis methodology. Notably, a meta-analytical approach that aggregated information across teams yielded a significant consensus in activated regions. Furthermore, prediction markets of researchers in the field revealed an overestimation of the likelihood of significant findings, even by researchers with direct knowledge of the dataset. Our findings show that analytical flexibility can have substantial effects on scientific conclusions, and identify factors that may be related to variability in the analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging. The results emphasize the importance of validating and sharing complex analysis workflows, and demonstrate the need for performing and reporting multiple analyses of the same data. Potential approaches that could be used to mitigate issues related to analytical variability are discussed., European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en) under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 665501. A. Eed was supported by a predoctoral fellowship La Caixa-Severo Ochoa from Obra Social La Caixa. S.B.E. was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement no. 785907 (HBP SGA2).

How can we promote sustainable behaviours and reduce unsustainable ones? A new study explores potential neural mechanisms underlying thoughts about farsighted future actions.

Both the hippocampus and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) appear to be critical for episodic future simulation. Damage to either structure affects one’s ability to remember the past and imagine the future, and both structures are commonly activated as part of a wider core network during future simulation. However, the precise role played by each of these structures and, indeed, the direction of information flow between them during episodic simulation, is still not well understood. In this study, we scanned participants using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they imagined future events in response to object cues. We then used dynamic causal modeling (DCM) to examine effective connectivity between the left anterior hippocampus and vmPFC during the initial mental construction of the events. Our results show that while there is strong bidirectional intrinsic connectivity between these regions (i.e., irrespective of task conditions), only the hippocampus to vmPFC connection increases during the construction of episodic future events, suggesting that the hippocampus initiates event simulation in response to retrieval cues, driving activation in the vmPFC where episodic details may be further integrated.

Neuroimaging data indicate that episodic memory (i.e., remembering specific past experiences) and episodic simulation (i.e., imagining specific future experiences) are associated with enhanced activity in a common set of neural regions, often referred to as the core network. This network comprises the hippocampus, parahippocampal cortex, lateral and medial parietal cortex, lateral temporal cortex, and medial prefrontal cortex. Evidence for a core network has been taken as support for the idea that episodic memory and episodic simulation are supported by common processes. Much remains to be learned about how specific core network regions contribute to specific aspects of episodic simulation. Prior neuroimaging studies of episodic memory indicate that certain regions within the core network are differentially sensitive to the amount of information recollected (e.g., the left lateral parietal cortex). In addition, certain core network regions dissociate as a function of their timecourse of engagement during episodic memory (e.g., transient activity in the posterior hippocampus and sustained activity in the left lateral parietal cortex). In the current study, we assessed whether similar dissociations could be observed during episodic simulation. We found that the left lateral parietal cortex modulates as a function of the amount of simulated details. Of particular interest, while the hippocampus was insensitive to the amount of simulated details, we observed a temporal dissociation within the hippocampus: transient activity occurred in relatively posterior portions of the hippocampus and sustained activity occurred in anterior portions. Because the posterior hippocampal and lateral parietal findings parallel those observed previously during episodic memory, the present results add to the evidence that episodic memory and episodic simulation are supported by common processes. Critically, the present study also provides evidence that regions within the core network support dissociable processes.

It is still debated whether suppressing the retrieval of unwanted memories causes forgetting and whether this constitutes a beneficial mechanism. To shed light on these 2 questions, we scrutinize the evidence for such suppression-induced forgetting (SIF) and examine whether it is deficient in psychological disorders characterized by intrusive thoughts. Specifically, we performed a focused meta-analysis of studies that have used the think/no-think procedure to test SIF in individuals either affected by psychological disorders or exhibiting high scores on related traits. Overall, across 96 effects from 25 studies, we found that avoiding retrieval leads to significant forgetting in healthy individuals, with a small to moderate effect size (0.28, 95% CI [0.14, 0.43]). Importantly, this effect was indeed larger than for more anxious (-0.21, 95% CI [-0.41, -0.02]) or depressed individuals (0.05, 95% CI [-0.19, 0.29])-though estimates for the healthy may be inflated by publication bias. In contrast, individuals with a stronger repressive coping style showed greater SIF (0.42, 95% CI [0.32, 0.52]). Furthermore, moderator analyses revealed that SIF varied with the exact suppression mechanism that participants were instructed to engage. For healthy individuals, the effect sizes were considerably larger when instructions induced specific mechanisms of direct retrieval suppression or thought substitution than when they were unspecific. These results suggest that intact suppression-induced forgetting is a hallmark of psychological well-being, and that inducing more specific suppression mechanisms fosters voluntary forgetting. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Microstructural, tensile, and fracture characterizations of cylindrically forged forms of aluminum alloys AA7085-O and AA7175-T7452 were performed. Mechanical and fracture properties were investigated along radial, circumferential, and longitudinal directions to determine directional dependency. American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) test methods (ASTM E8-04 and ASTM E1820) were employed for both the tensile and fracture characterizations, respectively. The tensile and fracture properties were related to microstructure in each direction. The strength, elongation at break, and ultimate tensile strength of AA7085-O were higher than those of AA7175-T7452. AA7175-T7452 alloy failed in a brittle manner during fracture studies. AA7085-O outperformed AA7175-T7452 on fracture energy in all of the orientations studied. Smaller grain sizes on the planes normal to circumferential and longitudinal directions showed improvement in both elongation at break and fracture energy values compared to those of radial direction. Scanning electron microscopy images demonstrated cleavage fracture in AA7175-T7452 and transgranular fracture in AA7085-O.

Social Media is a powerful and emerging method of communication that is becoming increasingly popular in genetic counseling and other health care communities. Despite its multiple benefits, the Social Media revolution has been met with some resistance in the healthcare setting. Herein, we will describe the potential benefits of Social Media for the genetic counseling profession specifically and explore ways in which any risks can be mitigated and barriers overcome to ensure responsible Social Media use by the profession.

Objective To evaluate the safety of omitting the conventional preoperative history and physical examination (H&P) for low-risk cataract surgery patients. Design Comparison of outcomes before and after the January 1, 2015 system wide implementation of a program that eliminated the conventional preoperative H&P for low-risk patients as identified by a 12-item risk stratification questionnaire. Participants Two separate groups of Winnipeg residents who had cataract surgery at the city's sole ophthalmological referral centre between July 1 and December 31, 2014 (preimplementation reference group) or between October 1, 2015 and March 31, 2016 (postimplementation intervention group). Methods A detailed chart review was completed for cataract surgery patients who experienced a postoperative medical event (a composite of death or hospital admission or emergency department visit, identified within administrative databases) within 30 days of surgery. Nonfatal events were captured for all 7 hospitals and urgent care centres in the city, including the ophthalmological referral centre. Results Postoperative medical events occurred in 114 of 2981 (3.82%) intervention group surgeries and 125 of 3037 (4.12%) reference group surgeries (Relative risk 0.92, 95% confidence interval 0.72 to 1.19, p = 0.6 Fisher exact test). Subgroup analyses of major medical events and medical events by affected organ system yielded no significant differences between the 2 groups. In the opinion of the physician chart reviewers, none of the events among low-risk patients in the intervention group were related to the omission of a conventional preoperative H&P. Conclusions The risk of adverse medical events within 30 days of cataract surgery was not higher after the omission of the conventional preoperative H&P in patients screened to be low risk by a validated preoperative questionnaire.

Whole exome sequencing (WES) is utilized in diagnostic odyssey cases to identify the underlying genetic cause associated with complex phenotypes. Recent publications suggest that WES reveals the genetic cause in ~25% of these cases and is most successful when applied to children with neurological disease. The residual 75% of cases remain genetically elusive until more information becomes available in the literature or functional studies are pursued. WES performed on three families with presumed ciliopathy diagnoses, including orofaciodigital (OFD) syndrome, fetal encephalocele, or Joubert-related disorder, identified compound heterozygous variants in C2CD3. Biallelic variants in C2CD3 have previously been associated with ciliopathies, including OFD syndrome type 14 (OFD14; MIM: 615948). As three of the six identified variants were predicted to affect splicing, exon-skipping analysis using either RNA sequencing or PCR-based methods were completed to determine the pathogenicity of these variants, and showed that each of the splicing variants led to a frameshifted protein product. Using these studies in combination with the 2015 ACMG guidelines, each of the six identified variants were classified as either pathogenic or likely pathogenic, and are therefore likely responsible for our patients' phenotypes. Each of the families had a distinct clinical phenotype and severity of disease, extending from lethal to viable. These findings highlight that there is a broad phenotypic spectrum associated with C2CD3-mediated disease and not all patients present with the typical features of OFD14.

The hippocampus has been consistently associated with episodic simulation (i.e., the mental construction of a possible future episode). In a recent study, we identified an anterior-posterior temporal dissociation within the hippocampus during simulation. Specifically, transient simulation-related activity occurred in relatively posterior portions of the hippocampus and sustained activity occurred in anterior portions. In line with previous theoretical proposals of hippocampal function during simulation, the posterior hippocampal activity was interpreted as reflecting a transient retrieval process for the episodic details necessary to construct an episode. In contrast, the sustained anterior hippocampal activity was interpreted as reflecting the continual recruitment of encoding and/or relational processing associated with a simulation. In the present study, we provide a direct test of these interpretations by conducting a subsequent memory analysis of our previously published data to assess whether successful encoding during episodic simulation is associated with the anterior hippocampus. Analyses revealed a subsequent memory effect (i.e., later remembered > later forgotten simulations) in the anterior hippocampus. The subsequent memory effect was transient and not sustained. Taken together, the current findings provide further support for a component process model of hippocampal function during simulation. That is, unique regions of the hippocampus support dissociable processes during simulation, which include the transient retrieval of episodic information, the sustained binding of such information into a coherent episode, and the transient encoding of that episode for later retrieval. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

It has been suggested that the simulation of hypothetical episodes and the recollection of past episodes are supported by fundamentally the same set of brain regions. The present article specifies this core network via Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE). Specifically, a first meta-analysis revealed joint engagement of core network regions during episodic memory and episodic simulation. These include parts of the medial surface, the hippocampus and parahippocampal cortex within the medial temporal lobes, and the lateral temporal and inferior posterior parietal cortices on the lateral surface. Both capacities also jointly recruited additional regions such as parts of the bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. All of these core regions overlapped with the default network. Moreover, it has further been suggested that episodic simulation may require a stronger engagement of some of the core network’s nodes as wells as the recruitment of additional brain regions supporting control functions. A second ALE meta-analysis indeed identified such regions that were consistently more strongly engaged during episodic simulation than episodic memory. These comprised the core-network clusters located in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and posterior inferior parietal lobe and other structures distributed broadly across the default and fronto-parietal control networks. Together, the analyses determine the set of brain regions that allow us to experience past and hypothetical episodes, thus providing an important foundation for studying the regions’ specialized contributions and interactions.

Background and objectives Rumination is a major contributor to the maintenance of affective disorders and has been linked to memory control deficits. However, ruminators often report intentionally engaging in repetitive thought due to its perceived benefits. Deliberate re-processing may lead to the appearance of a memory control deficit that is better explained as a difference in cognitive style. Methods Ninety-six undergraduate students volunteered to take part in a direct-suppression variant of the Think/No-Think paradigm after which they completed self-report measures of rumination and the degree to which they deliberately re-processed the to-be-suppressed items. Results We demonstrate a relation between rumination and impaired suppression-induced forgetting. This relation is robust even when controlling for deliberate re-processing of the to-be-suppressed items, a behavior itself related to both rumination and suppression. Therefore, whereas conscious fixation on to-be-suppressed items reduced memory suppression, it did not fully account for the relation between rumination and memory suppression. Limitations The current experiment employed a retrospective measure of deliberate re-processing in the context of an unscreened university sample; future research might therefore generalize our findings using an online measure of deliberate re-processing or within a clinical population. Conclusions We provide evidence that deliberate re-processing accounts for some – but not all – of the relation between rumination and suppression-induced forgetting. The present findings, observed in a paradigm known to engage top-down inhibitory modulation of mnemonic processing, provide the most theoretically focused evidence to date for the existence of a memory control deficit in rumination., Highlights • Rumination has been linked to memory control deficits for emotional stimuli. • Past work has not controlled deliberate reprocessing of to-be-suppressed memories. • We demonstrate a link between rumination and impaired control for neutral memories. • This relation remains when controlling for deliberate reprocessing. • We provide strong evidence for a general memory control deficit in rumination.

Episodic future thinking refers to the capacity to imagine or simulate experiences that might occur in one’s personal future. Cognitive, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging research concerning episodic future thinking has accelerated during recent years. This article discusses research that has delineated cognitive and neural mechanisms that support episodic future thinking as well as the functions that episodic future thinking serves. Studies focused on mechanisms have identified a core brain network that underlies episodic future thinking and have begun to tease apart the relative contributions of particular regions in this network, and the specific cognitive processes that they support. Studies concerned with functions have identified several domains in which episodic future thinking produces performance benefits, including decision making, emotion regulation, prospective memory, and spatial navigation.

Remembering the past and imagining the future both involve the retrieval of details stored in episodic memory and rely on the same core network of brain regions. Given these parallels, one might expect similar component processes to be involved in remembering and imagining. While a strong case can be made for the role of inhibition in memory retrieval, few studies have examined whether inhibition is also necessary for future imagining and results to-date have been mixed. In the current study, we test whether related concepts are inhibited during future imagining using a modified priming approach. Participants first generated a list of familiar places and for each place, the people they most strongly associate with it. A week later, participants imagined future events involving recombinations of people and places, immediately followed by a speeded response task in which participants made familiarity decisions about people's names. Across two experiments, our results suggest that related concepts are not inhibited during future imagining, but rather are automatically primed. These results fit with recent work showing that autobiographically significant concepts (e.g., friends' names) are more episodic than semantic in nature, automatically activating related details in memory and potentially fuelling the flexible simulation of future events.

Imagining future events conveys adaptive benefits, yet recurrent simulations of feared situations may help to maintain anxiety. In two studies, we tested the hypothesis that people can attenuate future fears by suppressing anticipatory simulations of dreaded events. Participants repeatedly imagined upsetting episodes that they feared might happen to them and suppressed imaginings of other such events. Suppressing imagination engaged the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which modulated activation in the hippocampus and in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Consistent with the role of the vmPFC in providing access to details that are typical for an event, stronger inhibition of this region was associated with greater forgetting of such details. Suppression further hindered participants' ability to later freely envision suppressed episodes. Critically, it also reduced feelings of apprehensiveness about the feared scenario, and individuals who were particularly successful at down-regulating fears were also less trait-anxious. Attenuating apprehensiveness by suppressing simulations of feared events may thus be an effective coping strategy, suggesting that a deficiency in this mechanism could contribute to the development of anxiety.

Summary Reminders of the past can trigger the recollection of events that one would rather forget. Here, using fMRI, we demonstrate two distinct neural mechanisms that foster the intentional forgetting of such unwanted memories. Both mechanisms impair long-term retention by limiting momentary awareness of the memories, yet they operate in opposite ways. One mechanism, direct suppression, disengages episodic retrieval through the systemic inhibition of hippocampal processing that originates from right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC). The opposite mechanism, thought substitution, instead engages retrieval processes to occupy the limited focus of awareness with a substitute memory. It is mediated by interactions between left caudal and midventrolateral PFC that support the selective retrieval of substitutes in the context of prepotent, unwanted memories. These findings suggest that we are not at the mercy of passive forgetting; rather, our memories can be shaped by two opposite mechanisms of mnemonic control., Highlights ► Voluntarily forgetting is mediated by two opposite mechanisms ► These mechanisms recruit distinct PFC systems to either engage or disengage retrieval ► DLPFC effectively inhibits retrieval processes supported by the hippocampus ► A cPFC-mid-VLPFC circuit biases retrieval to supplant unwanted memories, Suppressing awareness of an unwanted memory can cause forgetting. Benoit and Anderson show how this motivated forgetting can be achieved by opposite prefrontal mechanisms that either suppress hippocampal retrieval processes or engage retrieval to occupy awareness with a substitute memory.

Resume La position ou le placement des organes et des vaisseaux est habituellement classe en trois types : situs solitus, situs inversus et situs ambigus. Situs solitus est la disposition habituelle des organes et des vaisseaux dans le corps. Seuls 0,6 a 0,8 % des patients atteints de situs solitus et levocardie ont des malformations cardiaques congenitales. Situs inversus fait reference a une disposition anatomique qui est l’image-miroir de situs solitus. L’incidence des cardiopathies congenitales est portee a 3 a 5 % chez les patients avec situs inversus. Situs ambiguus, ou heterotaxie, est defini par une malposition viscerale et une dysmorphie, qui est differente de l’arrangement ordonne, vu dans situs solitus ou situs inversus. Les patients avec heterotaxie ont une malformation cardiaque congenitale d’incidence elevee, allant de 50 a pres de 100 %. Nous presentons quatre cas diagnostiques dans notre service sur une periode de 18 mois. A partir de ces quatre cas et d’une revue dans la litterature, nous explorons les definitions et les caracteristiques des syndromes d’heterotaxie et nous etudions le role de l’echographie 3D.

Aluminum alloy A356-T6 was subjected to fully reversed cyclic loading under tension, torsion and combined loading. Results indicate that endurance limits are governed by maximum principal stress. Fractography demonstrates long shear mode III propagation with multiple initiation sites under torsion. Under other loadings, fracture surfaces show unique initiation sites coincidental to defects and mode I crack propagation. Using the replica technique, it has been shown that the initiation life is negligible for fatigue lives close to 1E6 cycles for combined loading. The natural crack growth rate has also been shown to be comparable to long cracks in similar materials.

Prospective memory (PM) denotes the function to realize intentions after a delay while being immersed in distracting ongoing (OG) activity. Here, we scrutinize the often-reported involvement of rostral prefrontal cortex (rPFC; approximating Brodmann area 10) in such situations: This region might mediate attention between external stimuli and the internally maintained intention, that is, between stimulus-oriented (SO) and stimulus-independent (SI) processing. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) we orthogonally crossed 1) PM versus OG activity only, with 2) SO versus SI attention. In support of the hypothesis, common regions of medial rPFC exhibited greater blood oxygen level–dependent (BOLD) signal for the contrasts of both OG task only versus PM and SO versus SI attending. However, activation related to the former contrast extended more superiorly, suggesting a functional gradient along a dorsal–ventral axis within this region. Moreover, region-of-interest analyses revealed that PM versus OG task only was associated with greater BOLD signal in left lateral rPFC, reflecting the requirement to maintain delayed intentions. Distinct aspects of this region were also transiently engaged at transitions between SO and SI conditions. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that some of the rostral prefrontal signal changes associated with PM performance reflect relative differences in SO versus SI processing.

Dans le cadre d’une etude soutenue par l’Institut national du cancer (INCa), nous avons evalue le vecu du dispositif d’annonce chez 29 patients atteints de Cancer dans deux hopitaux du Pole Sud d’Ile-de-France. Si la necessite et l’utilite du dispositif d’annonce, renforcant l’implication des soignants dans l’annonce, sont evidentes, plusieurs ameliorations pourraient etre apportees, comme minimiser le nombre de membres de soignants presents, encourager la presence d’un proche, proposer systematiquement un soutien psychologique, developper la formation des medecins pour ne pas perdre de vue la dimension humaine de la rencontre medecin-patient.

A test device has been developed at P′ Institute in order to investigate the mechanical behaviour of structural materials under high pressure of gaseous hydrogen. In this paper, preliminary results on fatigue crack propagation in a martensitic stainless steel are presented. A tremendous fatigue crack growth enhancement is observed at high pressure (9 MPa). This enhancement is dependent of pressure. It is noticed that the maximum enhancement is associated with a brittle fracture mode. However no intergranular decohesion is noticed in this regime.

Summary Introduction Manufacturing of parenteral nutrition in a cleanroom requires a strict survey of environmental microbiological contamination. In the cleanroom of our hospital's pharmacy, the staff wears integral protective suits made of polyester with an open hood, the main function of which is to protect the products and the environment from any human contamination. Objective The objective of this study was to determine the level of microbiological contamination of the suits during the production process at several spots on the clothing and at different times; and then to evaluate the impact of the use of an additional protection, namely, sterile single-use polyethylene arm-cover sleeves. Method First, 160 samplings, taken with agar contact plates, were carried out on the coveralls of staff working in an A-Class (ISO 5) cleanroom at T = 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 hours of presence in the room. Then, after the introduction of additional protective sleeves, 120 samplings (60 above and 60 under the protective arm sleeves, worn over the coveralls) were carried out. Results The study showed that microbiological contamination increases with time, sometimes after 1 hour of stay in the cleanroom room. Forearms are the crucial site of contamination, and the use of arm covers is hence recommended.