| 1. |
- Abozeid, Hassanein H., et al.
(författare)
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Infectious Bronchitis Virus in Egypt : Genetic Diversity and Vaccination Strategies
- 2020
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Ingår i: Veterinary Sciences. - : MDPI. - 2306-7381. ; 7:4
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) is a highly evolving avian pathogen that has increasingly imposed a negative impact on poultry industry worldwide. In the last 20 years, IBV has been continuously circulating among chicken flocks in Egypt causing huge economic losses to poultry production. Multiple IBV genotypes, namely, GI-1, GI-13, GI-16, and GI-23 have been reported in Egypt possessing different genetic and pathogenic features. Different vaccine programs are being used to control the spread of the disease in Egypt. However, the virus continues to spread and evolve where multiple IBV variants and several recombination evidence have been described. In this review, we highlight the current knowledge concerning IBV circulation, genesis, and vaccination strategies in Egypt. In addition, we analyze representative Egyptian IBV strains from an evolutionary perspective based on available data of their S1 gene. We also provide insight into the importance of surveillance programs and share our perspectives for better control of IBV circulating in Egypt.
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| 2. |
- Abrahams, Harriët J. G., et al.
(författare)
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Moderators of the effect of psychosocial interventions on fatigue in women with breast cancer and men with prostate cancer : Individual patient data meta-analyses
- 2020
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Ingår i: Psycho-Oncology. - : Wiley. - 1057-9249 .- 1099-1611. ; 29:11, s. 1772-1785
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- ObjectivePsychosocial interventions can reduce cancer‐related fatigue effectively. However, it is still unclear if intervention effects differ across subgroups of patients. These meta‐analyses aimed at evaluating moderator effects of (a) sociodemographic characteristics, (b) clinical characteristics, (c) baseline levels of fatigue and other symptoms, and (d) intervention‐related characteristics on the effect of psychosocial interventions on cancer‐related fatigue in patients with non‐metastatic breast and prostate cancer.MethodsData were retrieved from the Predicting OptimaL cAncer RehabIlitation and Supportive care (POLARIS) consortium. Potential moderators were studied with meta‐analyses of pooled individual patient data from 14 randomized controlled trials through linear mixed‐effects models with interaction tests. The analyses were conducted separately in patients with breast (n = 1091) and prostate cancer (n = 1008).ResultsStatistically significant, small overall effects of psychosocial interventions on fatigue were found (breast cancer: β = −0.19 [95% confidence interval (95%CI) = −0.30; −0.08]; prostate cancer: β = −0.11 [95%CI = −0.21; −0.00]). In both patient groups, intervention effects did not differ significantly by sociodemographic or clinical characteristics, nor by baseline levels of fatigue or pain. For intervention‐related moderators (only tested among women with breast cancer), statistically significant larger effects were found for cognitive behavioral therapy as intervention strategy (β = −0.27 [95%CI = −0.40; −0.15]), fatigue‐specific interventions (β = −0.48 [95%CI = −0.79; −0.18]), and interventions that only targeted patients with clinically relevant fatigue (β = −0.85 [95%CI = −1.40; −0.30]).ConclusionsOur findings did not provide evidence that any selected demographic or clinical characteristic, or baseline levels of fatigue or pain, moderated effects of psychosocial interventions on fatigue. A specific focus on decreasing fatigue seems beneficial for patients with breast cancer with clinically relevant fatigue.
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| 3. |
- Abulfathi, Ahmed A., et al.
(författare)
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The pharmacokinetics of para-aminosalicylic acid and its relationship to efficacy and intolerance
- 2020
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Ingår i: British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. - : WILEY. - 0306-5251 .- 1365-2125. ; 86:11, s. 2123-2132
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Following its introduction as an antituberculosis agent close to 75 years ago, the use of para-aminosalicylic acid (PAS) has been limited by gastrointestinal intolerance and multiple formulations were produced in attempts to reduce its occurrence. More recently, an enteric-coated, granular, slow-release PAS formulation (PASER) was introduced and is now in wide-spread use for the treatment of drug-resistant tuberculosis. The current PASER dosing regimen is based on recommendations derived from older studies using a variety of different PAS formulations and relegate PAS to a role as an exclusively bacteriostatic agent. However, there is ample evidence that if sufficiently high serum concentrations are reached, PAS can be bactericidal and that intolerance following once daily dosing, that aids the achievement of such concentrations, is no worse than that following intermittent daily dosing. In particular, prevention of resistance to companion drugs appears to be dependent on the size of the single dose, and hence the peak concentrations, and not on maintaining serum levels consistently above minimum inhibitory concentration. We present a narrative review of the development of PAS formulations, dosing practices, and published data regarding pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics and the relationship of PAS dosage to intolerance and efficacy. Our conclusions suggests that we are at present not using PAS to its maximum ability to contribute to regimen efficacy and protect companion drugs.
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| 4. |
- Adhikari, Subash, et al.
(författare)
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A high-stringency blueprint of the human proteome
- 2020
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Ingår i: Nature Communications. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2041-1723. ; 11:1
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Human Proteome Organization (HUPO) launched the Human Proteome Project (HPP) in 2010, creating an international framework for global collaboration, data sharing, quality assurance and enhancing accurate annotation of the genome-encoded proteome. During the subsequent decade, the HPP established collaborations, developed guidelines and metrics, and undertook reanalysis of previously deposited community data, continuously increasing the coverage of the human proteome. On the occasion of the HPP’s tenth anniversary, we here report a 90.4% complete high-stringency human proteome blueprint. This knowledge is essential for discerning molecular processes in health and disease, as we demonstrate by highlighting potential roles the human proteome plays in our understanding, diagnosis and treatment of cancers, cardiovascular and infectious diseases.
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| 5. |
- Afewerki, Samson, et al.
(författare)
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Advances in dual functional antimicrobial and osteoinductive biomaterials for orthopaedic applications
- 2020
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Ingår i: Nanomedicine. - : Elsevier BV. - 1549-9634 .- 1549-9642. ; 24
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- A vast growing problem in orthopaedic medicine is the increase of clinical cases with antibiotic resistant pathogenic microbes, which is predicted to cause higher mortality than all cancers combined by 2050. Bone infectious diseases limit the healing ability of tissues and increase the risk of future injuries due to pathologic tissue remodelling. The traditional treatment for bone infections has several drawbacks and limitations, such as lengthy antibiotic treatment, extensive surgical interventions, and removal of orthopaedic implants and/or prosthesis, all of these resulting in long-term rehabilitation. This is a huge burden to the public health system resulting in increased healthcare costs. Current technologies e.g. co-delivery systems, where antibacterial and osteoinductive agents are delivered encounter challenges such as site-specific delivery, sustained and prolonged release, and biocompatibility. In this review, these aspects are highlighted to promote the invention of the next generation biomaterials to prevent and/or treat bone infections and promote tissue regeneration.
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| 6. |
- Afroz, Mohasana, et al.
(författare)
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Ethnobotany and Antimicrobial Peptides From Plants of the Solanaceae Family : An Update and Future Prospects
- 2020
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Pharmacology. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 1663-9812. ; 11
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Solanaceae is an important plant family that has been playing an essential role in traditional medicine and human nutrition. Members of the Solanaceae are rich in bioactive metabolites and have been used by different tribes around the world for ages. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) from plants have drawn great interest in recent years and raised new hope for developing new antimicrobial agents for meeting the challenges of antibiotic resistance. This review aims to summarize the reported AMPs from plants of the Solanaceae with possible molecular mechanisms of action as well as to correlate their traditional uses with reported antimicrobial actions of the peptides. A systematic literature study was conducted using different databases until August 2019 based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria. According to literature, a variety of AMPs including defensins, protease inhibitor, lectins, thionin-like peptides, vicilin-like peptides, and snaking were isolated from plants of the Solanaceae and were involved in their defense mechanism. These peptides exhibited significant antibacterial, antifungal and antiviral activity against organisms for both plant and human host. Brugmansia, Capsicum, Datura, Nicotiana, Salpichora, Solanum, Petunia, and Withania are the most commonly studied genera for AMPs. Among these genera, Capsicum and the Solanum ranked top according to the total number of studies (35%-38% studies) for different AMPs. The mechanisms of action of the reported AMPs from Solanaceae was not any new rather similar to other reported AMPs including alteration of membrane potential and permeability, membrane pore formation, and cell aggregation. Whereas, induction of cell membrane permiabilization, inhibition of germination and alteration of hyphal growth were reported as mechanisms of antifungal activity. Plants of the Solanaceae have been used traditionally as antimicrobial, insecticidal, and antiinfectious agents, and as poisons. The reported AMPs from the Solanaceae are the products of chemical shields to protect plants from microorganisms and pests which unfold an obvious link with their traditional medicinal use. In summary, it is evident that AMPs from this family possess considerable antimicrobial activity against a wide range of bacterial and fungal pathogens and can be regarded as a potential source for lead molecules to develop new antimicrobial agents.
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| 7. |
- Ahmadivand, Arash, et al.
(författare)
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Terahertz plasmonics : The rise of toroidal metadevices towards immunobiosensings
- 2020
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Ingår i: Materials Today. - : ELSEVIER SCI LTD. - 1369-7021 .- 1873-4103. ; 32, s. 108-130
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- This work reviews fundamentals and the recent state-of-art achievements in the field of plasmonic biosensing based terahertz (THz) spectroscopy. Being nonpoisonous and nondestructive to the human tissues, THz signals offer promising, cost-effective, and real-time biodevices for practical pharmaco-logical applications such as enzyme reaction analysis. Rapid developments in the field of THz plasmonics biosensors and immunosensors have brought many methodologies to employ the resonant subwavelength structures operating based on the fundamental physics of multipoles and asymmetric lineshape resonances. In the ongoing hunt for new and advanced THz plasmonic biosensors, the toroidal metasensors have emerged as excellent alternates and are introduced to be a very promising technology for THz immunosensing applications. Here, we provide examples of recently proposed THz plasmonic metasensors for the detection of thin films, chemical and biological substances. This review allows to compare the performance of various biosensing tools based on THz plasmonic approach and to understand the strategic role of toroidal metasensors in highly accurate and sensitive biosensors instrumentation. The possibility of using THz plasmonic biosensors based on toroidal technology in modern medical and clinical practices has been briefly discussed.
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| 8. |
- Ahmadivand, Arash, et al.
(författare)
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Toroidal Metaphotonics and Metadevices
- 2020
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Ingår i: Laser & Photonics reviews. - : WILEY-V C H VERLAG GMBH. - 1863-8880 .- 1863-8899. ; 14:11
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Toroidal moments in artificial media have received growing attention and considered as a promising framework for initiating novel approaches to manage intrinsic radiative losses in nanophotonic and plasmonic systems. In the past decade, there has been substantial attention on the characteristics and excitation methods of toroidal multipoles-in particular, toroidal dipole-in 3D bulk and planar metaplatforms. The remarkable advantages of toroidal resonances have thrust the toroidal metasurface technology from relative anonymity into the limelight, in which researchers have recently centered on developing applied optical and optoelectronic subwavelength devices based on toroidal metaphotonics and metaplasmonics. In this focused contribution, the key principles of 3D and flatland toroidal metastructures are described, and the revolutionary tools that have been implemented based on this topology are briefly highlighted. Infrared photodetectors, immunobiosensors, ultraviolet beam sources, waveguides, and functional modulators are some of the fundamental and latest examples of toroidal metadevices that have been introduced and studied experimentally so far. The possibility of the realization of strong plexciton dynamics and pronounced vacuum Rabi oscillations in toroidal plasmonic metasurfaces are also presented in this review. Ultimate efficient extreme-subwavelength scale devices, such as low-threshold lasers and ultrafast switches, are thus in prospect.
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| 9. |
- Albert, Christian, et al.
(författare)
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Neutrophil Gelatinase-Associated Lipocalin Measured on Clinical Laboratory Platforms for the Prediction of Acute Kidney Injury and the Associated Need for Dialysis Therapy : A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
- 2020
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Ingår i: American Journal of Kidney Diseases. - : Elsevier BV. - 0272-6386 .- 1523-6838. ; 76:6, s. 826-
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Rationale & Objective: The usefulness of measures of neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL) in urine or plasma obtained on clinical laboratory platforms for predicting acute kidney injury (AKI) and AKI requiring dialysis (AKI-D) has not been fully evaluated. We sought to quantitatively summarize published data to evaluate the value of urinary and plasma NGAL for kidney risk prediction.Study Design: Literature-based meta-analysis and individual-study-data meta-analysis of diagnostic studies following PRISMA-IPD guidelines.Setting & Study Populations: Studies of adults investigating AKI, severe AKI, and AKI-D in the setting of cardiac surgery, intensive care, or emergency department care using either urinary or plasma NGAL measured on clinical laboratory platforms.Selection Criteria for Studies: PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, Scopus, and congress abstracts ever published through February 2020 reporting diagnostic test studies of NGAL measured on clinical laboratory platforms to predict AKI.Data Extraction: Individual-study-data meta analysis was accomplished by giving authors data specifications tailored to their studies and requesting standardized patient-level data analysis.Analytical Approach: Individual-study-data meta analysis used a bivariate time-to-event model for interval-censored data from which discriminative ability (AUC) was characterized. NGAL cutoff concentrations at 95% sensitivity, 95% specificity, and optimal sensitivity and specificity were also estimated. Models incorporated as confounders the clinical setting and use versus nonuse of urine output as a criterion for AKI. A literature-based meta-analysis was also performed for all published studies including those for which the authors were unable to provide individual-study data analyses.Results: We included 52 observational studies involving 13,040 patients. We analyzed 30 data sets for the individual-study-data meta-analysis. For AKI, severe AKI, and AKI-D, numbers of events were 837, 304, and 103 for analyses of urinary NGAL, respectively; these values were 705, 271, and 178 for analyses of plasma NGAL. Discriminative performance was similar in both meta-analyses. Individual-study-data meta-analysis AUCs for urinary NGAL were 0.75 (95% CI, 0.73-0.76) and 0.80 (95% CI, 0.79-0.81) for severe AKI and AKI-D, respectively; for plasma NGAL, the corresponding AUCs were 0.80 (95% CI, 0.790.81) and 0.86 (95% CI, 0.84-0.8 6). Cutoff concentrations at 95% specificity for urinary NGAL were >580 ng/mL with 27% sensitivity for severe AKI and >589 ng/mL with 24% sensitivity for AKI-D. Corresponding cutoffs for plasma NGAL were >364 ng/mL with 44% sensitivity and >546 ng/mL with 26% sensitivity, respectively.Limitations: Practice variability in initiation of dialysis. Imperfect harmonization of data across studies. Conclusions: Urinary and plasma NGAL concentrations may identify patients at high risk for AKI in clinical research and practice. The cutoff concentrations reported in this study require prospective evaluation.
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| 10. |
- Alekseev, A. Y., et al.
(författare)
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Structural stability and electronic properties of 2D alkaline-earth metal silicides, germanides, and stannides
- 2020
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Ingår i: Japanese Journal of Applied Physics. - : IOP PUBLISHING LTD. - 0021-4922 .- 1347-4065. ; 59
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- We present the results of an extended theoretical study of the structure, phonon, electronic and optical properties of 2D alkaline-earth metal silicides, germanides and stannides (2D Me2X, where Me=Mg, Ca, Sr, Ba and X=Si, Ge, Sn). The performed analysis has shown the occurrence of the pseudo passivation effect and ionic chemical bonding in these 2D Me2X. In addition, the preformed investigation of their phonon spectra has shown the absence of imaginary frequencies indicating the stability of these 2D structures. The band structure calculations performed using the hybrid functional have revealed that all 2D Me2X are semiconductors with the gap varying from 0.12 to 1.01 eV. Among them Mg- and Ca-based 2D materials are direct band-gap semiconductors with the first direct transition having appreciable oscillator strength. We also propose to consider ternary 2D silicides, germanides and stannides with different Me atoms as a feasible way to modify properties of parent 2D Me2X.
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