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Biomedical subjects

G Gini

Publications and source records attributed to G Gini.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

Incidence and clinical characteristics of posttransplant lymphoproliferative disorders: report from a single center.

In the period 1973-1998, among 2139 allograft recipients treated with standard immunosuppression, posttransplant lymphoproliferative disorders (PTLD) developed in 19 patients (0.9%): one plasmacytic hyperplasia, two polymorphic PTLD, one myeloma, and 15 lymphomas. PTLD developed 1 year after transplantation (tx) in 14 patients. Five patients were diagnosed at autopsy, 2 were lost to follow up, 3 died before therapy could be instituted, and 1 patient has just started chemotherapy. Of the 8 evaluable patients, 2 received acyclovir and are alive in complete remission (CR) and 6 received chemotherapy +/- surgery. Of these 6, 4 died of lymphoma and/or infection, 1 died of unrelated causes in CR, and 1 is alive in CR. PTLD is a severe complication of tx, usually running an aggressive course which may preclude prompt diagnosis and treatment. Nevertheless, therapy is feasible and must be tailored on the histologic subtype. Seventy-four percent of patients were diagnosed with late-onset PTLD stressing the need for long-term follow up.

Acyclovir↗

Computational predictive programs (expert systems) in toxicology.

The increasing number of pollutants in the environment raises the problem of the toxicological risk evaluation of these chemicals. Several so called expert systems (ES) have been claimed to be able to predict toxicity of certain chemical structures. Different approaches are currently used for these ES, based on explicit rules derived from the knowledge of human experts that compiled lists of toxic moieties for instance in the case of programs called HazardExpert and DEREK or relying on statistical approaches, as in the CASE and TOPKAT programs. Here we describe and compare these and other intelligent computer programs because of their utility in obtaining at least a first rough indication of the potential toxic activity of chemicals.

Animals↗

A serial model for computer assisted medical diagnosis.

In this paper we discuss a simple model for an interactive consultation system for medical applications. That system was developed to provide consultative advice on diagnosis of arthritis, but it could be easily applied to a different class of diseases. We examine in particular how the determination of the appropriate sequence of diagnostic tests that have to be performed on the patient can be optimised by the use of a decision table, in which the medical knowledge is shown. We begin with a review of features which were seen to be essential to a consultation system for medical applications and we suggest how these requirements imply program design criteria. This is followed by a formal explanation of the proposed model and its fundamental assumptions. The last part of the paper is then devoted to a report of our experience with the experimental computer system.

Arthritis↗

Predictive carcinogenicity: a model for aromatic compounds, with nitrogen-containing substituents, based on molecular descriptors using an artificial neural network.

A back-propagation neural network to predict the carcinogenicity of aromatic nitrogen compounds was developed. The inputs were molecular descriptors of different types: electrostatic, topological, quantum-chemical, physicochemical, etc. For the output the index TD50 as introduced by Gold and colleagues was used, giving a continuous numerical parameter expressing carcinogenicity. From the tens of descriptors calculated, principal component analysis enabled us to restrict the number of parameters to be used for the artificial neural network (ANN). We used 104 molecules for the study. An Rcv2 = 0.69 was obtained. After removal of 12 outliers, a new ANN gave an Rcv2 of 0.82.

Carcinogenicity Tests↗

[Randomized study of the antiemetic efficacy of alizapride versus alizapride + dexamethasone].

We made a study on patients suffering from neoplasias treated with cisplatinum to compare antiemetic efficacy of alizapride or associated to dexamethasone. We divided patients in two groups. We somministred alizapride alone to the first group and alizapride plus dexamethasone to the second one. We evaluated presence or absence of emesis, its intensity and eventual tossic effects due to the drugs through an autocompilative questionnaire given to the patients. Our results didn't show important statistical differences between the two groups, though association with dexamethasone gets better emesis control. Alizapride anyway, didn't present important collateral effects, particularly extrapyramidal ones.

Antiemetics↗