Autonomic cardiac function in children and adolescents with long COVID: a case-controlled study.

Although the mechanisms underlying the pathophysiology of long COVID condition are still debated, there is growing evidence that autonomic dysfunction may play a role in the long-term complications or persisting symptoms observed in a significant proportion of patients after SARS-CoV-2 infection. However, studies focused on autonomic dysfunction have primarily been conducted in adults, while autonomic function has not yet been investigated in pediatric subjects. In this study, for the first time, we assessed whether pediatric patients with long COVID present abnormalities in autonomic cardiac function. Fifty-six long COVID pediatric patients (mean age 10.3 ± 3.8 y) and 27 age-, sex-, and body surface area-matched healthy controls (mean age 10.4 ± 4.5y) underwent a standard 12-lead electrocardiography (ECG) and 24-h ECG Holter monitoring. Autonomic cardiac function was assessed by time-domain and frequency-domain heart rate variability parameters. A comprehensive echocardiographic study was also obtained by two-dimensional echocardiography and tissue Doppler imaging. Data analysis showed that pediatric patients with long COVID had significant changes in HRV variables compared to healthy controls: significantly lower r-MSSD (root mean square of successive RR interval differences, 47.4 ± 16.9 versus 60.4 ± 29.1, p = 0.02), significant higher values VLF (very low frequency, 2077.8 ± 1023.3 versus 494.3 ± 1015.5 ms, p = 0.000), LF (low frequency, 1340.3 ± 635.6 versus 354.6 ± 816.8 ms, p = 0.000), and HF (high frequency, 895.7 ± 575.8 versus 278.9 ± 616.7 ms, p = 0.000). No significant differences were observed between the two groups both in systolic and diastolic parameters by echocardiography.  Conclusion: These findings suggest that pediatric patients with long COVID have an imbalance of cardiac autonomic function toward a relative predominance of parasympathetic tone, as already reported in adult patients with long COVID. Further studies are needed to clarify the clinical significance of this autonomic dysfunction and demonstrate its role as a pathophysiological mechanism of long COVID, paving the way for effective therapeutic and preventive strategies. What is Known: • Long Covid in children has been described globally, but studies have mostly focused on collecting the temporal evolution of persisting symptoms. What is New: • Cardiac autonomic imbalance toward a relative predominance of parasympathetic tone is a mechanism underlying Long Covid in children, as also described in adults.

Ultrathin catalyst-free InAs nanowires on silicon with distinct 1D sub-band transport properties.

Ultrathin InAs nanowires (NW) with a one-dimensional (1D) sub-band structure are promising materials for advanced quantum-electronic devices, where dimensions in the sub-30 nm diameter limit together with post-CMOS integration scenarios on Si are much desired. Here, we demonstrate two site-selective synthesis methods that achieve epitaxial, high aspect ratio InAs NWs on Si with ultrathin diameters below 20 nm. The first approach exploits direct vapor-solid growth to tune the NW diameter by interwire spacing, mask opening size and growth time. The second scheme explores a unique reverse-reaction growth by which the sidewalls of InAs NWs are thermally decomposed under controlled arsenic flux and annealing time. Interesting kinetically limited dependencies between interwire spacing and thinning dynamics are found, yielding diameters as low as 12 nm for sparse NW arrays. We clearly verify the 1D sub-band structure in ultrathin NWs by pronounced conductance steps in low-temperature transport measurements using back-gated NW-field effect transistors. Correlated simulations reveal single- and double degenerate conductance steps, which highlight the rotational hexagonal symmetry and reproduce the experimental traces in the diffusive 1D transport limit. Modelling under the realistic back-gate configuration further evidences regimes that lead to asymmetric carrier distribution and breakdown of the degeneracy depending on the gate bias.

Two case reports of fetal alcohol syndrome: broadening into the spectrum of cardiac disease to personalize and to improve clinical assessment.

BACKGROUND: Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) refers to a broad spectrum of disabilities, in infants and children, resulting from moderate to excessive prenatal alcohol exposure. Significant associations with alcohol exposure were already reported with congenital structural heart defects: i.e. ventricular septal defects, atrial septal defects, conotruncal defects. CASES PRESENTATION: We describe two cases of children with FASD, both admitted to the Center for Rare Diseases and Birth Defects of Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli, in whom asymptomatic cardiac rhythm alterations were detected in absence of structural cardiovascular system anomalies or cardiac channelopathies. CONCLUSIONS: No other reports about cardiac rhythm anomalies in individuals affected by FASD are actually available from the literature. We would like to make an alert for clinician, given the possibility of finding anomalies of heart conduction and rhythm in children affected by FASD even without structural congenital heart disease.

MPI-blastn and NCBI-TaxCollector: improving metagenomic analysis with high performance classification and wide taxonomic attachment.

Metagenomic sequencing technologies are advancing rapidly and the size of output data from high-throughput genetic sequencing has increased substantially over the years. This brings us to a scenario where advanced computational optimizations are requested to perform a metagenomic analysis. In this paper, we describe a new parallel implementation of nucleotide BLAST (MPI-blastn) and a new tool for taxonomic attachment of Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) results that supports the NCBI taxonomy (NCBI-TaxCollector). MPI-blastn obtained a high performance when compared to the mpiBLAST and ScalaBLAST. In our best case, MPI-blastn was able to run 408 times faster in 384 cores. Our evaluations demonstrated that NCBI-TaxCollector is able to perform taxonomic attachments 125 times faster and needs 120 times less RAM than the previous TaxCollector. Through our optimizations, a multiple sequence search that currently takes 37 hours can be performed in less than 6 min and a post processing with NCBI taxonomic data attachment, which takes 48 hours, now is able to run in 23 min.

[Family and migration strategies in the Senegal basin]. / Famiglia e strategie migratorie nel bacino del Senegal.

A comparison of migration patterns among the Soninke and Toucouleur ethnic groups that inhabit the Senegal river region is presented using data from a 1991-1992 survey of 3,400 rural families. "The differences primarily regard the duration and the destination in their migration patterns. Those differences are then analyzed according to family's subsistence strategies and multi-level activity as well as the system of social relationships which develop between the emigrant and his/her family or community of origin." (SUMMARY IN ENG AND FRE)