Universidade de Pernambuco

About: Universidade de Pernambuco is a education organization based out in Recife, Brazil. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Artificial neural network. The organization has 6147 authors who have published 6948 publications receiving 73648 citations.

Changes in calsequestrin, TNF‐α, TGF‐β and MyoD levels during the progression of skeletal muscle dystrophy in mdx mice: a comparative analysis of the quadriceps, diaphragm and intrinsic laryngeal muscles

Abstract: In Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), the search for new biomarkers to follow the evolution of the disease is of fundamental importance in the light of the evolving gene and pharmacological therapies. In addition to the lack of dystrophin, secondary events including changes in calcium levels, inflammation and fibrosis greatly contribute to DMD progression and the molecules involved in these events may represent potential biomarkers. In this study, we performed a comparative evaluation of the progression of dystrophy within muscles that are differently affected by dystrophy (diaphragm; DIA and quadriceps; QDR) or spared (intrinsic laryngeal muscles) using the mdx mice model of DMD. We assessed muscle levels of calsequestrin (calcium-related protein), tumour necrosis factor (TNF-α; pro-inflammatory cytokine), tumour growth factor (TGF-β; pro-fibrotic factor) and MyoD (muscle proliferation) vs. histopathology at early (1 and 4 months of age) and late (9 months of age) stages of dystrophy. Fibrosis was the primary feature in the DIA of mdx mice (9 months: 32% fibrosis), which was greater than in the QDR (9 months: 0.6% fibrosis). Muscle regeneration was the primary feature in the QDR (9 months: 90% of centrally nucleated fibres areas vs. 33% in the DIA). The QDR expressed higher levels of calsequestrin than the DIA. Laryngeal muscles showed normal levels of TNF-α, TGF-β and MyoD. A positive correlation between histopathology and cytokine levels was observed only in the diaphragm, suggesting that TNF-α and TGF-β serve as markers of dystrophy primarily for the diaphragm.

Boosting the Deep Multidimensional Long-Short-Term Memory Network for Handwritten Recognition Systems

Abstract: One of the main challenges in the handwriting recognition area lies in identifying complete lines of handwritten text. In this paper, we propose a handwriting recognition system based on a deep multidimensional long-short-term memory (MDLSTM) network within a hybrid hidden Markov model framework. The MDLSTM architecture was elaborated to enhance the recognition performance and decrease the recognition time. Accordingly, we present modifications regarding the layers order and the number of pooling layers compared to a standard MDLSTM model. Since the results reported in the literature for deeper MDLSTM architectures relies on optimizing the network width with a fixed depth, we investigate the trade-off between both these properties to obtain an optimal topology. The system was evaluated with English handwritten text lines from the IAM database and the experiments demonstrated that the proposed MDLSTM architecture was able to maintain a robust recognition performance (around 3.6% CER and 10.5% WER) and present significant speedups, approximately 48% and 32% faster than the state-of-the-art MDLSTM optical model, regarding the learning and classification times, respectively. The full system including a decoder with linguistic knowledge presents competitive results with the state-of-the-art.

Bone markers and osteoporosis therapy

Abstract: Several factors are involved in determining bone quality including bone density, bone turnover, the extent of trabecular bone connectivity, cortical porosity and geometry. Metabolically active and in a continuous process of remodeling, approximately 20% of bone tissue is renewed annually. Bone turn over markers (BTM) are frequently used in clinical trials and to provide valid information about the effectiveness of osteoporosis treatment, reflecting the state of bone metabolism and its response to treatment, although they are not useful alone to estimate bone loss. In this review the behavior of BTM from different clinical trials or different osteoporotic drugs will be addressed.

Evaluation of quality of life of climacteric women assisted at a school hospital of Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil

Abstract: OBJETIVO: avaliar a qualidade de vida de mulheres no climaterio, atendidas em um hospital-escola na cidade do Recife, Pernambuco, empregando o Medical Outcome Study 36-item Short Form Health Survey (MOS SF-36 Health Survey), o Women's Health Questionnaire (WHQ) e o indice de Blatt-Kupperman modificado. METODOS: em estudo descritivo, transversal, foram avaliadas 233 mulheres atendidas entre fevereiro e junho de 2006. Em amostragem de conveniencia, foram incluidas mulheres com idade entre 40 e 65 anos e concordância em participar da pesquisa, excluindo-se a com historia previa de ooforectomia bilateral, terapia hormonal no semestre antecedente a pesquisa e doencas descompensadas. Calculou-se o tamanho amostral, admitindo prevalencia de sintomas climatericos em 4% e precisao igual a 2,5%. Foram analisadas: saude geral, componente fisico e componente mental, obtidos com o MOS SF-36 Health Survey; qualidade de saude pelo WHQ; e sintomatologia climaterica pelo indice de Blatt-Kupperman modificado. Os dados foram analisados com o programa Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), versao 13.0. RESULTADOS: a qualidade de vida foi classificada como ruim. Pelo MOS SF-36 Health Survey, identificou-se maior prejuizo no componente mental (18,5 versus 27,7% do fisico), maiores perdas nas funcoes sociais (80,2%) e limitacoes por problemas emocionais (78,61%). Pelo WHQ, houve maior acometimento de disturbios do sono (69,7%), sintomas somaticos (69,1%) e vasomotores (68,8%), sendo considerados regulares a funcao sexual e os sintomas menstruais. Os sintomas de deficiencia estrogenica foram acentuados para 53% das mulheres. O aumento dos sintomas de hipoestrogenismo se acompanhou de piora da saude geral e da saude menopausal. CONCLUSOES: pareceu plausivel supor que a menopausa se configurou realmente como um evento biopsicossocial, mais do que orgânico, derivado predominantemente da deficiencia estrogenica.