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Biomedical subjects

S De Martino

Publications and source records attributed to S De Martino.

11 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2007

[Autism and mental retardation: a study of the early social communication].

OBJECTIVE: To determine developmental communication profiles in young autistic children with mental retardation. METHODS: A group of 19 autistic children (mean age=43 months) were matched with a group of 11 mentally retarded children (mean age=39 months) on mental age (17,6 months). All of these children were without speech (less than 5 words of vocabulary). Communication skills were assessed with the Guidetti-Tourrette scales (ECSP), French adaptation of the Seibert-Hogan scales. RESULTS: Autistic children displayed a much lower score than mentally retarded children in the 3 functions of early social communication (behavior regulation, social interaction and joint attention). The developmental communication profiles was the same in the 2 groups. DISCUSSION: The results showed evidence of distortion in autistic children development: they displayed important deficits in communication skills, in comparison with cognitive skills. Autistic children mainly displayed requesting gestures: they used adults to help them to reach a goal, instead of regarding them as social partners. However, young children who have mental age less than 18 months mainly use the same functions of communication, with or without autistic trouble. CONCLUSIONS: There is a same developmental sequence in communication skills in young children, with or without autistic trouble.

Autistic Disorder↗
PubMed2005

Complexity of time series associated to dynamical systems inferred from independent component analysis.

A not trivial problem for every experimental time series associated to a natural system is to individuate the significant variables to describe the dynamics, i.e., the effective degrees of freedom. The application of independent component analysis (ICA) has provided interesting results in this direction, e.g., in the seismological and atmospheric field. Since all natural phenomena can be represented by dynamical systems, our aim is to check the performance of ICA in this general context to avoid ambiguities when investigating an unknown experimental system. We show many examples, representing linear, nonlinear, and stochastic processes, in which ICA seems to be an efficacious preanalysis able to give information about the complexity of the dynamics.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2004

Kinetic derivation of the hydrodynamic equations for capillary fluids.

Based on the generalized kinetic equation for the one-particle distribution function with a small source, the transition from the kinetic to the hydrodynamic description of many-particle systems is performed. The basic feature of this interesting technique to obtain the hydrodynamic limit is that the latter has been partially incorporated into the kinetic equation itself. The hydrodynamic equations for capillary fluids are derived from the characteristic function for the local moments of the distribution function. Fick's law appears as a consequence of the transformation law for the hydrodynamic quantities under time inversion.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2003

Human anaplasmosis presenting as atypical pneumonitis in France.

Human anaplasmosis is a febrile illness caused by Anaplasma phagocytophilum, an intracellular bacterium transmitted by Ixodes ticks in the United States and Europe. Although cough is reported in 30% of the American cases, interstitial pneumonitis has been noted only once. Of the 9 confirmed cases reported in Europe, 3 presented with atypical pneumonitis. A. phagocytophilum should be added to the list of agents responsible for interstitial pneumonitis, especially in areas where human anaplasmosis is endemic.

Anaplasma phagocytophilum↗
PubMed2002

Stochastic resonance mechanism in aerosol index dynamics.

We consider satellite time series concerning the atmospheric aerosol content. We prove that these time series are well described by a stochastic dynamical model. The principal peak in the power spectrum of these signals can be explained by stochastic resonance, linking variable external factors, such as Sun-Earth radiation budget and local insolation, to fluctuations on smaller spatial and temporal scale due to internal weather and antrophic components.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2001

[Procalcitonin in pyelonephritis and acute community-acquired pneumonia in adults].

OBJECTIVES: Procalcitonin (PCT) is an acute-phase protein involved in the specific inflammatory reaction to severe bacterial or fungal infections. This protein does however lack sensitivity in focal infections. PATIENTS AND METHODS: In this study, we investigated PCT, C-reactive protein (CRP), erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), leukocytosis, and fibrinogen levels at admission among adult patients hospitalized for community-acquired pneumonia (n = 33) or pyelonephritis (n = 30) and in a control population (n = 27) of patients with viral infections and non-infectious inflammatory diseases. RESULTS: Median serum PCT in the control group (0.21 ng/ml) was significantly lower than in the pyelonephritis group (0.46 ng/ml, p < 0.0005) or the pneumonia group (0.88 ng/ml, p < 0.0005). In the control group, median CRP was 51.4 ng/l reaching 220 mg/l in the pyelonephritis and 198 mg/l in the pneumonia group (p < 0.0005 in both cases). The other markers of inflammation investigated (leukocytosis, ESR, fibrinogen) did not show such differences between the control group and the sepsis groups. The sensitivity of PCT (threshold 0.5 ng/ml) was 61% for the diagnosis of pneumonia and 44% for the diagnosis of pyelonephritis. Specificity was 92% in both cases. In comparison, the sensitivity of CRP (threshold 50 mg/l) was 94% and 91% for pyelonephritis and pneumonia respectively with a 33% specificity in both cases. CONCLUSION: PCT is a specific but poorly sensitive marker of community-acquired pneumonia and pyelonephritis among adults hospitalized in medical wards.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

Oral glutamine in the prevention of fluorouracil induced intestinal toxicity: a double blind, placebo controlled, randomised trial.

BACKGROUND: 5-Fluorouracil (FU) in association with folinic acid (FA) is the most frequently used chemotherapeutic agent in colorectal cancer but it often causes diarrhoea. Animal and human studies suggest that glutamine stimulates intestinal mucosal growth. AIM: To determine if oral glutamine prevents changes in intestinal absorption (IA) and permeability (IP) induced by FU/FA. METHODS: Seventy chemotherapy naive patients with colorectal cancer were randomly assigned to oral glutamine (18 g/day) or placebo before the first cycle of FU (450 mg/m(2)) and FA (100 mg/m(2)) administered intravenously for five days. Treatment was continued for 15 days, starting five days before the beginning of chemotherapy. IA (D-xylose urinary excretion) and IP (cellobiose-mannitol test) were assessed at baseline and four and five days after the end of the first cycle of chemotherapy, respectively. Patients kept a daily record of diarrhoea, scored using the classification system of the National Cancer Institute (Bethesda, Maryland, USA). Duration of diarrhoea was recorded and the area under the curve (AUC) was calculated for each patient. RESULTS: Baseline patient characteristics and basal values of IP and IA tests were similar in the two arms. After one cycle of chemotherapy, the reduction in IA (D-xylose absorption) was more marked in the placebo arm (7.1% v 3. 8%; p=0.02); reduction of IP to mannitol was higher in the placebo arm (9.2% v 4.5%; p=0.02); and urinary recovery of cellobiose was not different between the study arms (p=0.60). Accordingly, the cellobiose-mannitol ratio increased more in the placebo arm (0.037 v 0.012; p=0.04). Average AUC of diarrhoea (1.9 v 4.5; p=0.09) and average number of loperamide tablets taken (0.4 v 2.6; p=0.002) were reduced in the glutamine arm. CONCLUSIONS: Glutamine reduces changes in IA and IP induced by FU and may have a protective effect on FU induced diarrhoea.

Administration, Oral↗
PubMed2000

Stochastic collective dynamics of charged-particle beams in the stability regime.

We introduce a description of the collective transverse dynamics of charged (proton) beams in the stability regime by suitable classical stochastic fluctuations. In this scheme, the collective beam dynamics is described by time-reversal invariant diffusion processes deduced by stochastic variational principles (Nelson processes). By general arguments, we show that the diffusion coefficient, expressed in units of length, is given by lambda(c)sqrt[N], where N is the number of particles in the beam and lambda(c) the Compton wavelength of a single constituent. This diffusion coefficient represents an effective unit of beam emittance. The hydrodynamic equations of the stochastic dynamics can be easily recast in the form of a Schrödinger equation, with the unit of emittance replacing the Planck action constant. This fact provides a natural connection to the so-called "quantum-like approaches" to beam dynamics. The transition probabilities associated to Nelson processes can be exploited to model evolutions suitable to control the transverse beam dynamics. In particular we show how to control, in the quadrupole approximation to the beam-field interaction, both the focusing and the transverse oscillations of the beam, either together or independently.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2000

A case of sclerosing cholangitis managed by a percutaneous approach.

In 1992, a 61-year-old man who complained of recurrent episodes of fever and jaundice was diagnosed as having sclerosing cholangitis. In the three years that followed, the clinical picture progressively worsened; and, in 1995, the patient was hospitalized again for biliary obstruction. A liver transplantation was excluded because of concomitant severe coronary heart disease. A percutaneous transhepatic cholangiogram showed several critical strictures of the intrahepatic biliary tree and a temporary internal-external biliary drainage was placed to relieve the obstruction. After 40 days, a two-step percutaneous biliary balloon dilation was performed followed by topical steroid treatment through the catheter. After 45 days, the catheter was removed and steroid treatment tapered orally. In the three years that followed, the patient was well. He experienced only about 1-2 episodes of ascending cholangitis per year requiring antimicrobial therapy. Laboratory analysis showed a gradual improvement in hepatic chemistry, serum bilirubin, and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR). In our patient, the association of percutaneous balloon dilation and topical steroid treatment improved both the clinical and radiological picture, without significant side-effects. This approach should be considered a valuable and cost-effective option in primary sclerosing cholangitis, mainly for patients not eligible for liver transplantation.

Anti-Inflammatory Agents↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The "temporal processing deficit" hypothesis in dyslexia: new experimental evidence.

The notion that developmental dyslexia may result from a general, nonspecific, defect in perceiving rapidly changing auditory signals is a current subject of debate (so-called "temporal processing deficit" hypothesis). Thirteen phonological dyslexics (age 10-13 years) and 10 controls matched for chronological and reading age were compared on a temporal order judgment (TOJ) task using the succession of two consonants (/p/-/s/) within a cluster. In order to test the relevance of the temporal deficit hypothesis, the task also included two additional conditions where either the two stimuli were artificially slowed or the interstimulus interval was expanded. As expected, the TOJ performance was significantly poorer in dyslexics than in controls. Moreover, in the "slowed speech" condition dyslexics' performance improved to reach the normal controls' level, whereas no significant improvement occurred when increasing the interstimulus interval. Finally dyslexics' performances, especially on the slowed condition, were found correlated with several tests of phonological processing (phoneme deletion, rhyme judgment, and nonword spelling tasks). These results lend support to the general temporal deficit theory of dyslexia.

Adolescent↗