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A 39 year old man presented to the emergency department with dyspnoea on exertion, chest pain and fatigue. Few years before, the patient was stabbed in the left chest thus developing Pneumothorax and mild pericardial effusion successfully treated with chest tube drainage and medical therapy. Physical examination revelead giugular vein distension and lower extremity edema. The echocardiographic evaluation showed typical signs of constrictive pericarditis which was confirmed by cardiac catheterization. Furthermore, because of clinical worsening and the absence of ongoing inflammation on PET-TC, the patient was referred to surgery. Pericardiectomy was successfully performed with rapid symptoms relief and clinical benefits. Histologic examination of pericardium showed the presence of thick fibrotic tissue with clusters of squamous epithelial cells with no cellular atypias or malignancy. Therefore, we hypothesize that following the chest stabbing wound, squamous and epitheloid cells have invaded the pericardial space producing a fibrotic reaction responsable of the development of the constriction. Furthermore multimodality imaging has been essential for diagnosis and management. more...

Background Sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors (SGLT2i) are associated to a reduced risk of major adverse cardiovascular events in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients. Subclinical left ventricular (LV) systolic disfunction has been observed in DM patients, even if ejection fraction is preserved. The impact of SGLT2i on cardiac structure and function is still unclear. Our aim was to evaluate the effects of SGLT2i on LV remodelling and global longitudinal strain (GLS) in patients with well compensated TIIDM. Methods Between November 2021 to April 2022, we prospectively evaluated 35 consecutives subjects with TIIDM in need of SGLT2i according to their referring physician. Main inclusion criteria were preserved ejection fraction (EF>50%), no history of heart failure and coronary artery disease, and the lack of moderate to severe valvular heart disease and chronic kidney disease (EGFR Results 17 patients have been evaluated for statistical analysis (6% F, mean age 65± 9 years). GLS (p=0,007) and EF (p=0.01) reached statistically significance after 6 months therapy. Moreover on ECG analysis, we found significant reduction in P-wave dispersion (p =0.019). However no statistically significant changes in diastolic function parameters and Myocardial Work indices have been found. Conclusions Our study showed that SGLT2i treatment in people with T2DM may display a positive effect on LV remodelling and improve GLS, even in patients with low-risk DM. Keywords: Diabetes mellitus; SGLT2 inhibitors; Speckle tracking echocardiography; Left ventricular systolic function; Cardiac remodelling. more...

DNA microarrays have been widely employed to understand cancer development. This technology is able to measure expression levels of a large numbers of genes or to genotype multiple regions of a genome in a massively parallel experiment. In addition, the detection of methylation patterns and gene copy number variations are also performed. Clinicians began to apply these findings in personalized medicine for the selection of cancer therapy according to the individual's cancer genomic profile. Because cancer is a complex disease it is of great value to integrate microarray data with genomic and clinical data. Here, we presented an overview of DNA microarray technology and discuss about benefits and challenging of microarray data integration. more...

Older and unfit patients with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), which are uneligible for standard induction therapy, have limited treatment options. The therapeutic approach in these cases is based on the use of hypomethylating agents, either decitabine or azacitidine, or Low-Dose Cytarabine (LDAC). However, despite the extensive use of these agents, there is no consensus regarding the extent of their efficacy, and clinical benefit deriving from their use is very modest. We present a case of FLT3- and TP53-mutated AML in an unfit patient with congenital agammaglobulinemia, responsive to single agent decitabine, with a response duration of over 20 months. more...

Nowadays one of the most significant environmental problems is related to wastewater treatment because the release of pollutants into the environment has posed a risk to natural ecosystems and human health. Therefore, it is necessary to treat wastewater in appropriately way. Three main steps are applied in wastewater treatments that are commonly called preliminary, secondary and tertiary treatment. The preliminary and secondary treatment steps are based on physical and chemical processes. However, in most cases these types of processes are not enough alone. Among tertiary process treatment, compared to the common processes used for wastewater disinfection, new methods without the formation of disinfection by-products have been recently investigated by researchers. In this sense, among advanced oxidation process (AOPs), heterogeneous photocatalysis is a powerful alternative technique to treat polluted water because it is able to mineralize many organic compounds through the generation of hydroxyl radicals thanks to the presence of a semiconductor activated by a light source. For engineering applications, the immobilization of catalyst powders onto a suitable solid inert support is required. In this work, ZnO immobilized on macroscopic polystyrene pellets has been prepared, characterized and studied in the photocatalytic treatment of four wastewaters samples coming from secondary and tertiary processes of wastewater treatment plant by leather industries. The efficiency of the system has been determined by measuring chemical oxygen demand (COD) and total organic carbon (TOC). Photocatalytic results showed in all cases a significant COD and TOC reduction, after 7 h of UV light irradiation. more...

The understanding of the biological differences which underlie the inter-individual variability in drug response improved the efficacy of cancer therapy in the era of precision medicine. In fact molecularly targeted drugs and immunotherapy represent a revolution in cancer treatment. The identification of genetic predictive and/or prognostic biomarkers linked to drug pharmacokinetics (PK) and pharmacodynamics (PD) is allowed by the development of high-throughput omics tools for detecting and understanding biological differences among individuals, in order to improve drug efficacy and minimize risk of toxicity. Personalized medicine in cancer treatment reduces costs of the healthcare system. Unfortunately, pharmacogenomics biomarkers discovery is influenced by complexity, need of high-quality evidence, and a validation process for regulatory purposes. This chapter is focused on the critic analysis of presently available pharmacogenomics tools for discovering or testing genetic polymorphic variants in drug metabolizing enzyme to be introduced in clinical practice for the prospective stratification of cancer patients. more...

Content: As it is known in the tanning sector, in recent times, the so-called wet-white and/or metal-free concepts have had a certain increase. For example, in the automotive sector, the wet-white tanning system, carried out with glutaraldehyde and tannins, has been widely diffused. In fact, car manufacturers offer, for interior furnishings, leather not only for high-end cars but increasingly also in the lower segments. The components on which the leather upholstery is applied are mainly steering wheel, seats, dashboard and panels. Therefore, the use of leather also in this context must be able to meet both the aesthetic/performance criteria and the environmental ones; environmental criteria should also consider the air quality of the interior of a motor vehicle. In practice, the interior furniture consisting of finished leather must be able to release a few volatile substances and, at the same time, provide a typical smell of leather. Considering, therefore, the diffusion of alternative chrome tanning systems for the different uses, in this work, wet-white (glutaraldehyde and tannins) will be investigated, both from the point of view of the performance characteristics and from the ecotoxicological ones. and leathers deriving from the latest generation of metal-free tanning. For the characterization of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) the GC-MS will be used coupled with the 'Purge and Trap' technique with the aim of obtaining information on the new substances used in the wetwhite / metal free production process and then avoiding undesired effects during use (eg bad smell, SVHC substances, etc.) Take-Away: metal-free automotive VOC more...

This work shows a new approach, based on the Budyko framework, for mapping the mean annual surface runoff and deriving the probability distribution of the annual runoff in arid and semi-arid watersheds. We analytically provide the annual runoff distribution as the derived distribution of annual rainfall and potential evapotranspiration. The simulated long-term annual runoff and its distribution have been compared with historical records at several gauged stations, obtaining satisfactory matching. more...