Medicina
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Hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) is characterized by thrombotic microangiopathy, hemolytic anemia, thrombocytopenia and acute renal failure. It can cause from permanent sequelae to death, mainly in children. In this work, using text mining (TM), we analyzed the explicit and implicit text of 16 192 original scientific articles on HUS indexed in the Europe PMC database. ⋯ For the analysis we used -among other computational tools- specially developed workflows (WF) in the KNIME platform. The TM on the words of the abstracts of the publications made it possible to: detect undescribed associations between events related to HUS; extract underlying information; make thematic clustering using unsupervised algorithms; make forecasting about the course of research associated with the topic. Both the approach and the WFs developed to perform Data Science on HUS can be applied to other biomedical topics and other scientific databases, making it possible to analyze relevant aspects in the field of human health to improve research, prevention and treatment of multiples diseases.
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Passive immunotherapy is a therapeutic alternative for patients with COVID-19. ⋯ Although the rate of hospitalization and death were lower than expected, the use of hyperimmune equine serum in the outpatient setting impresses as not providing clinical benefit.
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Although the references warn about the adverse effects of adding O2 without ventilatory assistance in patients with neuromuscular diseases (NMD), patients are still to be admitted to intensive care units with severe hypercapnia and CO2 narcosis. It seems that the problem is rediscovered as the years and generations go by. Unfortunately, many patients and their network of formal and informal caregivers are unaware of this risk, leading to significant worsening of symptoms, acute events, hospital admissions, and, in some cases, cause death. ⋯ Bi-level non-invasive ventilation (BiPAP) through a buccal, nasal interface or mouthpiece is the primary measure to reverse hypoventilation and achieve a decrease in PaCO2. The indications for oxygen therapy in people with NMD have been agreed upon and are reserved for specific situations. To improve the care of those with NMD and avoid iatrogenic interventions, education of the health team and support in the patient's environment is required.
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Positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET-CT) is part of the new diagnostic and therapeutic algorithms for Hodgkin lymphoma. PET-CT is a valuable tool for the assessment of treatment response and prognosis, both by means of interim PET-CT with 2-[18F]fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose ([18F]FDG) as well as end of treatment (EOT) PET-CT. Given the low specificity of [18F]FDG for the diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL), there is an emerging need for a more specific radiopharmaceutical agent. ⋯ Time-activity curves were traced, normalized activity uptake of the organs of interest were calculated, and mean absorbed dose was also calculated using the established Medical Internal Radiation Dosimetry (MIRD) scheme. The mean dose obtained in the animal model per unit of activity administered was 8.7 uGy/MBq. This result was extrapolated to an adult human model resulting in 32 uGy/MBq, thereby suggesting that [18F]FLT is a secure diagnostic tool to be used on the tracing of patients with DLBCL.
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Pancreatic adenocarcinoma is a heterogeneous disease. Undeniably, the appearance and accumulation of genetic mutations promote the development of pancreatic adenocarcinoma. However, counterintuitively, genetic analyzes, no matter how precise and in-depth they may be, do not allow stratification of patients to predict their clinical evolution or to select the most effective treatment in each case. ⋯ The data obtained from large cohorts of patients indicate that studying the transcription of a selected set of genes could predict the clinical outcome and can help to decide about the most appropriate treatment. We are moving very rapidly towards a personalized medicine for this disease, which in itself has a poor prognosis, even worse if the therapeutic decision is not the most adapted to each patient. We are convinced that in the near future the treatment of cancers will be preceded by an extensive transcriptomic characterization in order to select the most suitable "a la carte" treatments.