Behaviour of polysulfone ultrafiltration membrane for dyes removal

Although ultrafiltration membranes have been used for the separation of macromolecules and colloids from solutions, this process has a limited application in the removal of dyes present in coloured discharges of textile industry, as these typically have much lower molecular weight than the molecular cut-off of the membranes (MWCO). In the present work, we have evaluated the behaviour of a polysulfone ultrafiltration membrane in the removal of different dyes from aqueous solutions (Congo red, methyl green and amaranth). Different variables (tangential flow rate, concentration of dye and pH of the feed) were studied to determine their influence on the separation processes (permeate flux and rejection coefficient). The results show that Congo red is easily removed with a GR60PP membrane (MWCO = 25 kDa), whereas methyl green and amaranth show rejection coefficient values of approximately 25.78% and 13.85%, respectively, at neutral pH. Also, an interesting effect is observed for the rejection coefficient for methyl green at different pH values. In addition, several treatments were performed to the membrane so as to modify its surface, trying to improve the values obtained for permeate flux and rejection rate.

SNF472, a novel inhibitor of vascular calcification, could be administered during hemodialysis to attain potentially therapeutic phytate levels

BACKGROUND

Cardiovascular calcification (CVC) is a major concern in hemodialysis (HD) and the loss of endogenous modulators of calcification seems involved in the process. Phytate is an endogenous crystallization inhibitor and its low molecular mass and high water solubility make it potentially dialyzable. SNF472 (the hexasodium salt of phytate) is being developed for the treatment of calciphylaxis and CVC in HD patients. We aimed to verify if phytate is lost during dialysis, and evaluate SNF472's behaviour during dialysis.

METHODS

Dialyzability was assessed in vitro using online-hemodiafiltration and high-flux HD systems in blood and saline. SNF472 was infused for 20 min and quantified at different time points.

RESULTS

Phytate completely dialyzed in 1 h at low concentrations (10 mg/l) but not when added at 30 or 66.67 mg/l SNF472. In bypass conditions, calcium was slightly chelated during SNF472 infusion but when the system was switched to dialysis mode the calcium in the bath compensated this chelation.

CONCLUSION

Phytate dialyses with a low clearance. The administration of SNF472 as an exogenous source of phytate allows to attain supra-physiological levels required for its potential therapeutic properties. As SNF472 is infused during the whole dialysis session, the low clearance would not affect the drug's systemic exposure.

Microplastic and tar pollution on three Canary Islands beaches: An annual study

Marine debris accumulation was analyzed from three exposed beaches of the Canary Islands (Lambra, Famara and Las Canteras). Large microplastics (1-5mm), mesoplastics (5-25mm) and tar pollution were assessed twice a month for a year. There was great spatial and temporal variability in the Canary Island coastal pollution. Seasonal patterns differed at each location, marine debris concentration depended mainly of local-scale wind and wave conditions. The most polluted beach was Lambra, a remote beach infrequently visited. The types of debris found were mainly preproduction resin pellets, plastic fragments and tar, evidencing that pollution was not of local origin, but it cames from the open sea. The levels of pollution were similar to those of highly industrialized and contaminated regions. This study corroborates that the Canary Islands are an area of accumulation of microplastics and tar rafted from the North Atlantic Ocean by the southward flowing Canary Current.

National clinical practice guidelines for allergen immunotherapy: An international assessment applying AGREE-II

BACKGROUND

Since 1988, numerous allergen immunotherapy guidelines (AIT-GLs) have been developed by national and international organizations to guide physicians in AIT. Even so, AIT is still severely underused.

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate AIT-GLs with AGREE-II, developed in 2010 by McMaster University methodologists to comprehensively evaluate GL quality.

METHODS

Allergist, from different continents, knowledgeable in AIT and AGREE-II trained were selected into the project team. The project received methodologists' guidance. AIT-GLs in any language were sought from 1980 to 2016; AIT-GLs were AGREE II-evaluated by at least 2 team members, independently; discrepancies were resolved in a second round, by team discussion or methodologists' consulting.

RESULTS

We found 31 AIT-GLs (15 post-2010), ranging from local consensus reports to international position papers (EAACI, AAAAI-ACAAI, WAO). Pre-2010 GLs scored 1.6-4.6 (23%-67%) and post-2010 GLs scored 2.1-6 (30%-86%), on a 7-point Likert scale. The highest scores went to: German-Austrian-Swiss (6.0), Mexican (5.1), and the AAAAI/ACAAI AIT-GL (4.7). These were also the only 3 GLs that received "yes" of both evaluators to the item: "I would recommend this GL for use." The domains of "Stakeholder involvement" and "Rigor of Development" only scored 3/7, and "Applicability" scored the lowest. Strikingly, newer GLs only scored clearly better in "Editorial independence" and "Global evaluation."

CONCLUSIONS

In AIT-GLs, there is still a lot of room for improvement, especially in domains crucial for the dissemination. For some GLs, the "Scientific rigor" domain flawed. When resources are limited, transculturizing a high-quality GL might be preferable over developing a GL from zero. Our study and AGREE-II could help to select the best candidate.

CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS

We here evaluate allergen immunotherapy guideline (AIT-GL) quality. Only high-quality AIT-GLs should be consulted for AIT management decisions. In low-resource settings, transculturization of these is preferred over developing low-quality guidelines.

Dual Task Gait Performance in Frail Individuals with and without Mild Cognitive Impairment

BACKGROUND

Several studies have stated that frailty is associated with cognitive impairment. Based on various studies, cognition impairment has been considered as a component of frailty. Other authors have shown that physical frailty is associated with low cognitive performance. Dual task gait tests are used as a strong predictor of falls in either dementia or frailty. Consequently, it is important to investigate dual task walking tests in elderly populations including control robust oldest old, frail oldest old with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and frail oldest old without MCI.

METHODS

Dual task walking tests were carried out to examine the association between frailty and cognitive impairment in a population with advanced age. Forty-one elderly men and women participated in this study. The subjects from control, frail with MCI and frail without MCI groups, completed the 5-meter walk test at their own gait velocity. Arithmetic and verbal dual task walking performance was also assessed. Kinematic data were acquired from a unique tri-axial inertial sensor.

RESULTS

The spatiotemporal and frequency parameters related to gait disorders did not show any significant differences between frail with and without MCI groups.

CONCLUSIONS

The evaluation of these parameters extracted from the acceleration signals led us to conclude that these results expand the knowledge regarding the common conditions in frailty and MCI and may highlight the idea that the impairment in walking performance does not depend of frailty and cognitive status.

Detection of SO2 derivatives using a new chalco-coumarin derivative in cationic micellar media: application to real samples

A new probe ChC16 was synthesized and studied as a turn-on fluorescent probe, based on a Michael addition mechanism for sensing SO₂ derivatives, which is favored in the presence of cationic micellar media such as cetylpyridinium bromide (CPB).

Basal ganglia and ventricle volume in first-episode psychosis. A family and clinical study

Patients with first-episode psychosis (FEP) exhibit considerable heterogeneity in subcortical brain volumes. We sought to compare ventricle and basal ganglia volumes in FEP patients (n = 50) with those in unaffected relatives (n = 21) and healthy controls (n = 24). Participants were assessed with a semistructured interview and underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Patients had significantly larger left lateral, right lateral and third ventricle volumes than their siblings and larger third ventricle volumes than controls. Additionally, they showed a trend toward significance by having larger right caudate nuclei than controls. Moreover, FEP patients showed lower caudate and putamen laterality indexes (leftward shifts) than healthy controls but not regarding their siblings. Besides, negative dimension was directly associated with lateral and third ventricle volumes and positive dimension with thalamus and ventral diencephalon nuclei. Our findings added evidence to the associations between early enlargement of brain ventricles and negative symptoms, and between early enlargement of thalamic and ventral-diencephalon nuclei and positive symptoms. Moreover, the cumulative exposition to antipsychotics in FEP patients might be related to enlargement of certain subcortical structures, such as the right nucleus accumbens and third ventricle.

Ultra-high risk psychosis. A case report

Introduction

There is much debate on whether patients who are at high risk of developing a psychotic disorder in the near future (such as patients suffering of attenuated psychotic symptoms, brief limited intermittent psychotic symptoms or personality trait vulnerability) should be treated with antipsychotic drugs to prevent possible psychotic breaks from happening.

Aim

To review articles from the existing medical literature about treatment of patients in ultra-high risk of developing psychosis.

Methods

We describe the case of a 19-year-old male who was hospitalized after a suicide attempt in April 2015. He had been diagnosed of different psychiatric disorders such as mixed anxiety-depressive disorder, adjustment disorder and probable borderline personality disorder. During his stay at the hospital, we observed that he had schizoid personality traits. In the initial anamnesis, he denied ever having psychotic symptoms, but a few days later he admitted that the previous year he suffered throw a period of brief self-limiting psychotic symptoms.

Results

Prophylactic treatment was started with oral aripiprazole 15 mg/day, which was well tolerated by the patient. He has been free of psychotic symptoms for the last 17 months (from April 2015 to September 2016). No relevant side effects were detected.

Conclusions

Oral aripiprazole 15 mg/day can be a good therapeutic option in patients at ultra-high risk of developing a psychotic episode.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

A low-rank matrix factorization approach for joint harmonic and baseline noise suppression in biopotential signals

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

In this paper we propose a novel single-channel harmonic and baseline noise removal approach based on the low-rank matrix factorization theory. It aims to enhance spectrogram sparsity in order to significantly reduce the dimensionality of the underlying sources in the input data. Such a low-rank non-negative representation approach admits efficient noise removal.

METHODS

The sparsity is improved by a modification of the time-frequency basis through the following signal processing steps: (1) spectrograms segmentation, (2) non-negative rank estimation, and (3) source grouping. The source waveforms are retrieved by means of non-negative matrix factorization and the overlap-add method. The proposed method was tested on real electrocardiogram and electromyogram signals for different analysis scenarios, against two state-of-the-art reference methods.

RESULTS

Performance evaluation was carried out by means of the output signal-to-interference ratio. In the electrocardiogram analysis scenarios, for the input signal-to-interference ratio as low as -15dB, the proposed method outperforms the reference methods by 8dB and 17dB respectively. Regarding electromyogram denoising, the performance improvement is about 3dB.

CONCLUSIONS

The proposed method was shown to be very efficient in harmonic and baseline simultaneous removing from electrocardiogram and electromyogram signals. Its structure allows for a straightforward extension to other biopotential signals e.g. electroencephalograms and multichannel processing.

Hepatic comorbidity in psychiatry. A case report

Introduction

Comorbidity between mental and physical illnesses is very common and their possible interactions must always be taken into account. Hepatic disorders in particular, can affect the blood levels of antipsychotic drugs altering their effects on patients. Therefore, it is very important to assess in each case which treatment might be the most beneficial for the patient to avoid iatrogenic complications.

Aim

To review articles in Pub-Med and UpToDate about the possible iatrogenic complications that can arise using antipsychotic drugs in patients with hepatic disorders.

Methods

We describe the case of a 52-year-old male with Schizophrenia who was diagnosed of HCV infection ten years ago, for which he rejected any kind of treatment due to delirious ideation. In the past he was treated with oral Paliperidone with good tolerance, which he discontinued because of pour insight and stopped attending Psychiatric consultation. In April 2016 the patient was hospitalised suspecting a hepatocellular carcinoma.

Results

During hospitalization he began treatment with long-acting injectable formulation of Paliperidone Palmitate that improved his insight. The patient agreed to perform the necessary tests to verify the suspected diagnosis, which was sadly confirmed. He achieved psychopathological stability, but unfortunately the patient died 6 months later because of his hepatocellular carcinoma.

Conclusions

Paliperidone is a good therapeutic option in patients with hepatic disorders because it is not metabolised by the liver. It also has a depot formulation that improves adherence in patients with low insight, reducing the danger of future psychotic decompensation and improving the long-term prognosis.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

Vortioxetine Efficiency in Controlling Obsessive Symptoms in Patients with Depression. A Case Report

Introduction

Obsessive symptomatology can sometimes be worsened when a patient with this personality trait suffers through a period of increased stress.

Aim

To review articles in PubMed related to how vorticoxetine affects obsessive symptoms in patients with depression.

Methods

We review the case of a 45-year-old male with obsessive personality traits diagnosed of recurrent depression. He was going through a period of stress at work that had worsened his obsessive symptoms (primarily obsessive thoughts). In a previous depressive episode, he was treated with an antidepressant that triggered sexual dysfunction as a side effect. Trying to prevent another antidepressant-induce sexual dysfunction, we decided to use voricoxetine because of its low tendency to interact with the sexual function.

Results

We started treatment with vorticoxetine reaching a dose of 10 mg/day. Three weeks later the patient reported a decrease in his levels of anxiety, a slight upturn of his mood and a relieve of his obsessive symptoms.

Conclusions

Vorticoxetine can be considered a good therapeutic option in the treatment of obsessive symptoms in a depressive episode with patients with a history of antidepressant-induce sexual dysfunction.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

Modelling and experimental checking of the influence of substrate concentration on the first order kinetic constant in photo-processes

Most photoprocesses follow a pseudo first order kinetic law and, commonly, the kinetic parameter depends on the initial concentration of the substrate. In this work, a kinetic model, which explains this dependence on the substrate concentration and on the other operational variables, has been developed. In the model, mass transfer of substrate from the bulk solution to the wall of the photoreactor was assumed as the step determining the rate of the process. To check the model, methylene blue (MB) has been used as model substrate and photodegradation experiments have been carried out in an exciplex KrCl flow-through photoreactor, It was observed that the methylene blue conversion improved with a decrease in its initial concentration, in good agreement with the model. Also, by fitting the experimental data to the model, high correlation coefficients and a high degree of agreement between experimental and calculated conversion was obtained, which validates the model.

Effect of Ozone Treatment and Storage Temperature on Physicochemical Properties of Mushrooms (Agaris bisporus)

The aim of this paper was to determine the effect of ozone, storage time and temperature on postharvest quality of mushroom ( Agaris bisporus var. Gurelan 55). Mushrooms, treated with ozone (100 mg/h) during 0, 15 or 25 minutes, were packed in polystyrene packs, overwrapped with PVC plastic film, and stored at 5, 15 or 25 °C for seven days. Internal and external lightness ( L*) texture properties, maturity index and weight loss were analyzed during storage. Ozone treatment on mushrooms prior to packaging caused an increase in external browning rate and a reduction of the internal browning rate. The ozone treatment exhibited no significant differences in terms of texture, maturity index and weight loss of mushrooms. Increased storage time and temperatures meant an increase in browning, senescence and weight loss, as well as a decrease in firmness, following, in all cases, a zero-order reaction kinetics. Temperature dependence of the reaction rates coule be described by Arrhenius equation. Among all the quality parameters assessed in this research, weight loss was the most affected by temperature increase ( Ea = 17.60 kcal/mol). The lowest storage temperature (5 °C) favored the best quality.

Estudio descriptivo del color de manto y señas del Perro Ovejero Magallánico, Chile

El Ovejero Magallánico constituye una raza canina no reconocida oficialmente, localizada en el extremo sur de Chile en la Región de Magallanes y Antártica Chilena. El objetivo de este estudio fue realizar una primera descripción de la coloración del manto y señas del perro Ovejero Magallánico en una muestra de 74 caninos adultos. Los resultados de este estudio descriptivo preliminar indicaron el predominio del pigmento eumelanina en muestras de pelo de perros Ovejeros Magallánicos de la zona Austral de Chile. Se determinó la presencia de 16 fenotipos de colores de manto, predominando las coloraciones oscuras como gris pizarra, gris pizarra tricolor, azul mirlo y negro. Además, se observaron 3 colores de manto (marrón/arena, negro/marrón y arena azulado tricolor) no descritos para razas Collies. Se determinaron 12 fenotipos de señas en el manto del perro Ovejero Magallánico, observándose 2 patrones de señas (antifaz y orejas) que no se presentan en otras razas Collies. El perro Ovejero Magallánico, presentó algunas similitudes en coloración de manto y señas al ser comparadas con las razas Bearded Collie, Bobtail y Border Collie. Sin embargo, las tonalidades dentro y entre los colores observadas en el manto del Ovejero Magallánico evidencian un aspecto matizado, diferenciándolo de las razas Collie tradicionales.