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Background: The prevalence of coronary artery disease (CAD) considerably varies by ethnicity. High-risk populations include patients from Eastern Europe (EEP), the Middle East and North Africa (MENAP) and South Asia (SAP)., Methods: This retrospective study aims to highlight cardiovascular risk factors and specific coronary findings in high-risk immigrant groups. We examined the medical records and coronary angiographies of 220 patients from the above-mentioned high-risk ethnic groups referred for Acute Coronary Syndrome (ACS) and compared them with 90 Italian patients (IP) from 2016 to 2021. In the context of high-risk immigrant populations, this retrospective study aims to shed light on cardiovascular risk factors and particular coronary findings. We analyzed the medical records of 220 patients from the high-risk ethnic groups described above referred for ACS and compared them with 90 IPs between 2016 and 2021. In addition, we assessed coronary angiographies with a focus on the culprit lesion, mainly evaluating multi-vessel and left main disease., Results: The mean age at the first event was 65.4 ± 10.2 years for IP, 49.8 ± 8.5 years for SAP (Relative Reduction (ReR) 30.7%), 51.9 ± 10.2 years for EEP (ReR 26%) and 56.7 ± 11.4 years for MENAP (ReR 15.3%); p < 0.0001. The IP group had a significantly higher prevalence of hypertension. EEP and MENAP had a lower prevalence of diabetes. EEP and MENAP had a higher prevalence of STEMI events; SAP showed a significant prevalence of left main artery disease ( p = 0.026) and left anterior descending artery disease ( p = 0.033) compared with other groups. In SAP, we detected a higher prevalence of three-vessel coronary artery disease in the age group 40-50., Conclusions: Our data suggest the existence of a potential coronary phenotype in several ethnicities, especially SAP, and understate the frequency of CV risk factors in other high-risk groups, supporting the role of a genetic influence in these communities.

Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis remain debilitating disorders, characterized by progressive bowel damage and possible lethal complications. The growing number of applications for artificial intelligence in gastrointestinal endoscopy has already shown great potential, especially in the field of neoplastic and pre-neoplastic lesion detection and characterization, and is currently under evaluation in the field of inflammatory bowel disease management. The application of artificial intelligence in inflammatory bowel diseases can range from genomic dataset analysis and risk prediction model construction to the disease grading severity and assessment of the response to treatment using machine learning. We aimed to assess the current and future role of artificial intelligence in assessing the key outcomes in inflammatory bowel disease patients: endoscopic activity, mucosal healing, response to treatment, and neoplasia surveillance.

Low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) plays a crucial role in the development of atherosclerosis. Statin therapy is the standard treatment for lowering LDL-C in primary and secondary prevention. However, some patients do not reach optimal LDL-C target levels or do not tolerate statins, especially when taking high doses long-term. Combining statins with different therapeutic approaches and testing other new drugs is the future key to reducing the burden of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Recently, several new cholesterol-lowering drugs have been developed and approved; others are promising results, enriching the pharmacological armamentarium beyond statins. Triglycerides also play an important role in the development of CVD; new therapeutic approaches are also very promising for their treatment. Familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) can lead to CVD early in life. These patients respond poorly to conventional therapies. Recently, however, new and promising pharmacological strategies have become available. This narrative review provides an overview of the new drugs for the treatment of dyslipidemia, their current status, ongoing clinical or preclinical trials, and their prospects. We also discuss the new alternative therapies for the treatment of dyslipidemia and their relevance to practice.

In this paper we provide a complete local well-posedness theory for the free boundary relativistic Euler equations with a physical vacuum boundary on a Minkowski background. Specifically, we establish the following results: (i) local well-posedness in the Hadamard sense, i.e., local existence, uniqueness, and continuous dependence on the data; (ii) low regularity solutions: our uniqueness result holds at the level of Lipschitz velocity and density, while our rough solutions, obtained as unique limits of smooth solutions, have regularity only a half derivative above scaling; (iii) stability: our uniqueness in fact follows from a more general result, namely, we show that a certain nonlinear functional that tracks the distance between two solutions (in part by measuring the distance between their respective boundaries) is propagated by the flow; (iv) we establish sharp, essentially scale invariant energy estimates for solutions; (v) a sharp continuation criterion, at the level of scaling, showing that solutions can be continued as long as the velocity is in L t 1 L i p and a suitable weighted version of the density is at the same regularity level. Our entire approach is in Eulerian coordinates and relies on the functional framework developed in the companion work of the second and third authors on corresponding non relativistic problem. All our results are valid for a general equation of state p ( ϱ ) = ϱ γ , γ > 1 ., (© The Author(s) 2022.)

In the central nervous system, oligodendrocytes synthesize vast amounts of myelin, a multilamellar membrane wrapped around axons that dramatically enhances nerve transmission. A complex apparatus appears to coordinate trafficking of proteins and lipids during myelin synthesis, but the molecular interactions involved are not well understood. We demonstrate that oligodendrocytes express several key molecules necessary for the targeting of transport vesicles to areas of rapid membrane growth, including the exocyst components Sec8 and Sec6 and the multidomain scaffolding proteins CASK and Mint1. Sec8 overexpression significantly promotes oligodendrocyte morphological differentiation and myelin-like membrane formation in vitro; conversely, siRNA-mediated interference with Sec8 expression inhibits this process, and anti-Sec8 antibody induces a reduction in oligodendrocyte areas. In addition, Sec8 colocalizes, coimmunoprecipitates and cofractionates with the major myelin protein OSP/Claudin11 and with CASK in oligodendrocytes. These results suggest that Sec8 plays a central role in oligodendrocyte membrane formation by regulating the recruitment of vesicles that transport myelin proteins such as OSP/Claudin11 to sites of membrane growth.

The aim of this study was to elucidate the relationship between the structural specificities of acupoints and meridians as well as their clinical effects. We processed 356 specimens, 287 of which from 48 adult and 2 newborn cadavers and the remaining 69 from living patients; samples were taken at three different levels: (1) beneath acupoints; (2) between meridians; (3) at a distance from meridians. We performed seven different staining to show the distribution of collagen fibers, reticular fibers, mucopolysaccharides (MPS), connective tissue, nerve threads, and blood vessels in specimens obtained from different areas. We found that some structural and biochemical discrepancies associated with acupoints and meridians including: (1) mucopolysaccharides (MPS), in particular acid MPS; (2) collagen fibers; (3) nerve endings. We discussed these findings from an anatomo-clinical point of view.

We performed a histological study upon the acupuncture points and their effectiveness of clinical treatment; the background was the clinic evidence that a multitude of points are used in treating a disease, but only some of which may have an efficacy, since the others did not. After a comparative histological and anatomic study, it comes out that those points, which are more effective from a structural point of view, identify a neural fibrillar concentration, a well developed capillary network and an increased mucopolysaccharides (MPS) concentration, in particular, acid mucopolysaccharides. The present paper presents histological data, which demonstrate the difference in the structure of the acupuncture points, postulating their specific influence on clinical treatment.

Objectives: In this paper we investigated the effect of indomethacin, acetazolamide and their combination in vitro and in vivo on carbonic anhydrase (CA) isozymes., Method: In vitro experiments followed the effect of the two substances at concentrations between 10(-8)-10(-4) M on purified human red cell CA I and II as well as on human gastric mucosa CA IV using dose-response relationships. Kinetic studies were also performed. The effects of single and combined administration of indomethacin and acetazolamide on red cell CA and on gastric acid secretion were studied in vivo., Results: Indomethacin, in vitro and in vivo. induces an increase in erythorcyte CA I and CA II activity. Acetazolamide, a specific inhibitor of CA, reduces the activity of CA I and CA II from red cells. Indomethacin completely antagonizes CA activity, i.e. abolishes the inhibitory effect of acetazolamide on CA. In humans, an increase or decrease in erythrocyte CA II activity is correlated with an increase or decrease in gastric acid secretion., Conclusions: Our results show that indomethacin, a known cyclooxygenase (COX) inhibitor, is also an activator of CA. Our data also prove that indomethacin is not only an activator of CA but also antagonizes the effect of acetazolamide, a specific inhibitor of this enzyme. In view of the role of CA in acid-base balance as well as the fact that an increase or decrease in its activity is accompanied by an increase or decrease in intra- and extracellular pH, our results suggest that: firstly, CA activation induced by indomethacin might cause changes in COX activity; secondly, PGs are synthetized as a consequence of the changes in COX activity, a hypothesis that requires further study.