University of Palermo

About: University of Palermo is a education organization based out in Palermo, Italy. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Medicine. The organization has 15621 authors who have published 40250 publications receiving 964384 citations. The organization is also known as: Università degli Studi di Palermo & Universita degli Studi di Palermo.

Contralateral neglect induced by right posterior parietal rTMS in healthy subjects.

Abstract: We applied repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in order to induce interference on visuo-spatial perception in 11 healthy subjects Subjects performed a visuo-spatial task requiring judgements about the symmetry of prebisected lines Visual stimuli consisted of symmetrically or asymmetrically transected lines, tachystoscopically presented for 50 ms on a computer-monitor Performance was examined in basal condition and during rTMS trains of 10 stimuli at 25 Hz, delivered through a focal coil over right or left posterior parietal cortex (P5 and P6 sites) and triggered synchronously with visual stimulus Randomly intermixed sham rTMS trains were employed to control for non-specific effects Right parietal rTMS induced a significant rightward bias in symmetry judgements as compared with basal and sham rTMS conditions No differences emerged between other conditions

High concordance of KRAS status between primary colorectal tumors and related metastatic sites: implications for clinical practice.

Abstract: Purpose Several studies have suggested that KRAS somatic mutations may predict resistance to cetuximab- and panitumumab-based treatments in metastatic colorectal cancer (CRC) patients. Nevertheless, most experiences were conducted on samples from primaries. The aim of this study was to evaluate the grade of concordance in terms of KRAS status between primaries and related metastases. Patients and methods We analyzed KRAS codon 12 and 13 mutations from formalin-fixed sections of 107 CRC primaries and related metastases. Eight pairs were excluded from the analysis because of the low amount of tumor tissue in the available samples. The main characteristics were: 50 men, 49 women; median age at diagnosis, 71 years (range, 41-84). The metastatic sites analyzed were the liver in 80 patients (80.8%), lung in seven patients (7.1%), and other sites in 12 patients (12.1%). Results A KRAS mutation was found in 38 (38.4%) primary tumors and in 36 (36.4%) related metastases. The rate of concordance was 96.0% (95% confidence interval, 90.0%-98.9%). Discordance was observed in only four (4%) patients. Conclusions Our results indicate that the detection of KRAS mutations in either primary or metastatic tumors from patients with CRC is concordant and this assessment could be used to predict response to targeted therapies such as cetuximab and panitumumab.

Multiple positive solutions of some elliptic problems via the Morse theory and the domain topology

Abstract: We use Morse theory to estimate the number of positive solutions of an elliptic problem in an open bounded setΩ ∉ ℝN. The number of solutions depends on the topology ofΩ, actually onP t (Ω), the Poincare polynomial ofΩ. More precisely, we obtain the following Morse relations: $$\sum\limits_{u \in K} {t^{\mu \left( u \right)} } = tP_t \left( \Omega \right) + t^2 [P_t \left( \Omega \right) - 1] + t\left( {1 + t} \right)\underset{\raise0.3em\hbox{$\smash{\scriptscriptstyle\thicksim}$}}{O} \left( t \right)$$ , where $$\underset{\raise0.3em\hbox{$\smash{\scriptscriptstyle\thicksim}$}}{O} \left( t \right)$$ is a polynomial with non-negative integer coefficients,K is the set of positive solutions of our problem andμ(u) is the Morse index of the solutionu.