Search

Background: Establishing the level of surgical difficulty pre-operatively is an essential step in ensuring correct treatment planning. This study set out to determine whether the knowledge and experience acquired by dentists who had received different levels of training influenced, firstly, the perceived levels of difficulty of a variety of cases of mandibular third molar (MTM) extraction and, secondly, the perceived difficulty deriving from a series of factors (patient-related factors, anatomical and radiographic factors, operative factors)., Methods: This cross-sectional, descriptive, observational study took the form of a survey. Using a visual analog scale (VAS), participants evaluated both the perceived difficulty of 30 cases of MTM extraction described by means of digital panoramic radiographs and the perceived difficulty deriving from a series of factors conditioning MTM extraction. The results underwent statistical analysis with SPSS Statistics 28.0 software. Non-parametric tests (Mann Whitney test for independent samples and the Kruskal-Wallis test) were applied., Results: A total of 389 surveys were available for analysis. Dental practioners with no surgical training saw the intervention as presenting greater difficulty. Professionals with postgraduate training in oral surgery considered patient-related factors more important than operative factors, in contrast to dentists who had not received oral surgery training., Conclusions: Dental training has a signficant influence on the perceived difficulty of MTM extraction and also affects opinions about which factors have greater or lesser influence on surgical difficulty., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Background: Metabolic syndrome (MetS) has become a growing risk factor of some non-communicable diseases. Increase of greenhouse gas emissions affects the planet., Aims: To assess the association between MetS severity and amount of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emitted in an adult population., Design: Cross-sectional study (n = 6646; 55-76-year-old-men; 60-75-year-old-women with MetS)., Methods: Dietary habits were assessed using a pre-validated semi quantitative 143-item food frequency questionnaire. The amount of CO 2 emitted due to the production of food consumed by person and day was calculated using a European database, and the severity of the MetS was calculated with the MetS Severity Score., Results: Higher glycaemia levels were found in people with higher CO 2 emissions. The risk of having high severe MetS was related to high CO 2 emissions., Conclusions: Low CO 2 emissions diet would help to reduce MetS severity. Advantages for both health and the environment were found following a more sustainable diet., Trial Registration: ISRCTN, ISRCTN89898870 . Registered 05 September 2013., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Background: The development of single-cell technologies yields large datasets of information as diverse and multimodal as transcriptomes, immunophenotypes, and spatial position from tissue sections in the so-called 'spatial transcriptomics'. Currently however, user-friendly, powerful, and free algorithmic tools for straightforward analysis of spatial transcriptomic datasets are scarce., Results: Here, we introduce Single-Cell Spatial Explorer, an open-source software for multimodal exploration of spatial transcriptomics, examplified with 9 human and murine tissues datasets from 4 different technologies., Conclusions: Single-Cell Spatial Explorer is a very powerful, versatile, and interoperable tool for spatial transcriptomics analysis., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Purpose: To report ischemic and haemorrhagic abdominal complications in a series of COVID-19 patients. To correlate these complications with lung involvement, laboratory tests, comorbidities, and anticoagulant treatment., Methods: We retrospectively included 30 COVID-19 patients who undergone abdomen CECT for abdominal pain, between March 16 and May 19, 2020. Ischemic and haemorrhagic complications were compared with lung involvement (early, progressive, peak or absorption stage), blood coagulation values, anticoagulant therapy, comorbidities, and presence of pulmonary embolism (PE)., Results: Ischemic complications were documented in 10 patients (7 receiving anticoagulant therapy, 70%): 6/10 small bowel ischemia (1 concomitant obstruction, 1 perforation) and 4/10 ischemic colitis. Main mesenteric vessels were patent except for 1 superior mesenteric vein thrombosis. Two ischemia cases also presented splenic infarctions. Bleeding complications were found in 20 patients (all receiving anticoagulant treatments), half with active bleeding: hematomas in soft tissues (15) and retroperitoneum (2) and gastro-intestinal bleeding (3). Platelet and lymphocyte were within the normal range. D-Dimer was significantly higher in ischemic cases (p < 0.001). Most of the patients had severe lung disease (45% peak, 29% absorption), two patients PE., Conclusions: Ischemic and haemorrhagic abdominal complications may occur in COVID-19 patients, particularly associated to extended lung disease. CT plays a key role in the diagnosis of these potentially life- threatening conditions., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Objective: The admixture of domestic pig into wild boar populations is controlled until now, by cytogenetic analysis. Even if a first-generation hybrid animal is discernable because of its 37-chromosome karyotype, the cytogenetic method is not applicable in the case of advanced intercrosses. The aim of this study is therefore to evaluate the use of SNP (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism) markers as an alternative technology to characterize recent or past hybridization between the two sub-species. The final goal would be to develop a molecular diagnostic tool., Data Description: The Geneseek Genomic Profiler High-Density porcine beadchip (GGP70KHD, Illumina, USA), comprising 68,516 porcine SNPs, was used on a set of 362 wild boars with diverse chromosomal statuses collected from different areas and breeding environments in France. We generated approximately 62,192-64,046 genotypes per wild boar. The present dataset might be useful for the community (i) for developing molecular tools to evaluate the admixture of domestic pig into wild boar populations, and (ii) for genetic diversity studies including wild boar species or phylogeny analyses of Suidae populations. Raw data files and a processed matrix data file were deposited in the ArrayExpress at European Molecular Biology Laboratory-European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) data portal under accession number E-MTAB-10591., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Background: Ibrutinib, an irreversible Bruton Tyrosine Kinase (BTK) inhibitor, has revolutionized Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) treatment, but resistances to ibrutinib have emerged, whether related or not to BTK mutations. Patterns of CLL evolution under ibrutinib therapy are well characterized for the leukemic cells but not for their microenvironment., Methods: Here, we addressed this question at the single cell level of both transcriptome and immune-phenotype. The PBMCs from a CLL patient were monitored during ibrutinib treatment using Cellular Indexing of Transcriptomes and Epitopes by sequencing (CITE-Seq) technology., Results: This unveiled that the short clinical relapse of this patient driven by BTK mutation is associated with intraclonal heterogeneity in B leukemic cells and up-regulation of common signaling pathways induced by ibrutinib in both B leukemic cells and immune cells. This approach also pinpointed a subset of leukemic cells present before treatment and highly enriched during progression under ibrutinib. These latter exhibit an original gene signature including up-regulated BCR, MYC-activated, and other targetable pathways. Meanwhile, although ibrutinib differentially affected the exhaustion of T lymphocytes, this treatment enhanced the T cell cytotoxicity even during disease progression., Conclusions: These results could open new alternative of therapeutic strategies for ibrutinib-refractory CLL patients, based on immunotherapy or targeting B leukemic cells themselves.

Background: Personalized medicine has become a priority in breast cancer patient management. In addition to the routinely used clinicopathological characteristics, clinicians will have to face an increasing amount of data derived from tumor molecular profiling. The aims of this study were to develop a new gene selection method based on a fuzzy logic selection and classification algorithm, and to validate the gene signatures obtained on breast cancer patient cohorts., Methods: We analyzed data from four published gene expression datasets for breast carcinomas. We identified the best discriminating genes by comparing molecular expression profiles between histologic grade 1 and 3 tumors for each of the training datasets. The most pertinent probes were selected and used to define fuzzy molecular grade 1-like (good prognosis) and fuzzy molecular grade 3-like (poor prognosis) profiles. To evaluate the prognostic performance of the fuzzy grade signatures in breast cancer tumors, a Kaplan-Meier analysis was conducted to compare the relapse-free survival deduced from histologic grade and fuzzy molecular grade classification., Results: We applied the fuzzy logic selection on breast cancer databases and obtained four new gene signatures. Analysis in the training public sets showed good performance of these gene signatures for grade (sensitivity from 90% to 95%, specificity 67% to 93%). To validate these gene signatures, we designed probes on custom microarrays and tested them on 150 invasive breast carcinomas. Good performance was obtained with an error rate of less than 10%. For one gene signature, among 74 histologic grade 3 and 18 grade 1 tumors, 88 cases (96%) were correctly assigned. Interestingly histologic grade 2 tumors (n = 58) were split in these two molecular grade categories., Conclusion: We confirmed the use of fuzzy logic selection as a new tool to identify gene signatures with good reliability and increased classification power. This method based on artificial intelligence algorithms was successfully applied to breast cancers molecular grade classification allowing histologic grade 2 classification into grade 1 and grade 2 like to improve patients prognosis. It opens the way to further development for identification of new biomarker combinations in other applications such as prediction of treatment response.

Background: Human T-cell leukemia virus (HTLV) -1 and -2 are deltaretroviruses that infect a wide range of cells. Glut1, the major vertebrate glucose transporter, has been shown to be the HTLV Env receptor. While it is well established that the extracellular surface component (SU) of the HTLV envelope glycoprotein (Env) harbors all of the determinants of interaction with the receptor, identification of SU subdomains that are necessary and sufficient for interaction with the receptor, as well as critical amino acids therein, remain to be precisely defined. Although highly divergent in the rest of their genomes, HTLV and murine leukemia virus (MLV) Env appear to be related and based on homologous motifs between the HTLV and MLV SU, we derived chimeric HTLV/MLV Env and soluble HTLV-1 and -2 truncated amino terminal SU subdomains., Results: Using these SU constructs, we found that the 183 and 178 amino terminal residues of the HTLV-1 and -2 Env, respectively, were sufficient to efficiently bind target cells of different species. Binding resulted from bona fide interaction with the HTLV receptor as isolated SU subdomains specifically interfered with HTLV Env-mediated binding, cell fusion, and cell-free as well as cell-to-cell infection. Therefore, the HTLV receptor-binding domain (RBD) lies in the amino terminus of the SU, immediately upstream of a central immunodominant proline rich region (Env residues 180 to 205), that we show to be dispensible for receptor-binding and interference. Moreover, we identified a highly conserved tyrosine residue at position 114 of HTLV-1 Env, Tyr114, as critical for receptor-binding and subsequent interference to cell-to-cell fusion and infection. Finally, we observed that residues in the vicinity of Tyr114 have lesser impact on receptor binding and had various efficiency in interference to post-binding events., Conclusions: The first 160 residues of the HTLV-1 and -2 mature cleaved SU fold as autonomous domains that contain all the determinants required for binding the HTLV receptor.