Background: Cystic Fibrosis (CF) is a chronic disease characterized by an increased energy demand.Despite an improvement in nutritional status during the last decades, malnutrition remains a problem for many CF patients.Aim: To compare growth charts of Italian CF patients and normal subjects.Patients and Methods: We studied 892 CF patients aged 0-18 years (M 50.7%, mean age 9.2±6.4yrs) followed-up in 10 Italian Reference Centres.Height-for-Age percentile (HAP), Weight-for-Age percentile (WAP) and BMI were calculated in all patients and used to draw the correspondent growth charts in two sexes.We compared the course of 50th percentile (pc) in CF patients and normal subjects (CDC 2000).Results: HAP, WAP and BMI 50th pcs in CF patients were lower than normal subjects, in both sexes and at all ages considered.Conclusions: Our results show that Italian CF children have subnormal growth at all ages.Nutritional management is difficult for several clinical and psychosocial reasons but an early detection of malnutrition is essential for a better prognosis.

S19cells over-expressing NHERF1.These data suggest that NHERF1 participates in the organization of the actin cytoskeleton through activation of RhoA and ezrin.

Diabetes mellitus is an increasing complication of cystic fibrosis (CF), as a result of the improved life expectancy. There is clear association between diabetes and increased morbidity and mortality. Lung function and clinical status deteriorate up to 2–4 yr before the diagnosis of cystic fibrosis-related diabetes (CFRD). The aim of our study was to evaluate the effects, on glucose homeostasis and clinical status, of the early treatment with insulin glargine in CF patients with impaired glucose tolerance (IGT). We selected six subjects with IGT diagnosed at oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT). Median age was 18.12 yr (range 9.2–27.8). Insulin glargine was administered at the median dosage of 0.3 U/kg/day (range 0.2–0.5). After the initial adjustment of the dosage, no patient manifested hypoglycemia during treatment. Median glycosylated hemoglobin (HbAIc) did not show any significant variation during treatment: it was 5.9% at baseline (range 5.5–6.2) and 6.1% (range 5.0–6.7) at the end of follow-up (p = 0.496). Median body mass index (BMI) z-score significantly increased during treatment, from −0.95 (range −3.2–+0.6) at baseline to −0.5. (range −3.0–+0.9) at the end of follow-up (p = 0.026). Lung function, measured by median forced expiratory volume in the first second (FEV1%), showed a mild but significant improvement during insulin treatment. It was 72.7% at baseline (range 41.5–98.4) and 76.7% (range 42.0–106.8) at the end of follow-up (p = 0.027). No significant variation was found between the number of hospitalizations for clinical exacerbation (no./patient/yr) in the last 2 yr before treatment and during follow-up. Median number at baseline was 1.95/patient/yr (range 1–3) and 2.0/patient/yr (range 1–3) at follow-up (p = 0.715). Our data seem to indicate that early insulin therapy can be safe, no patient manifested hypoglycemia or other adverse effects during treatment. Insulin is an anabolic hormone implicated in both lipid and protein metabolism. The appearance of IGT out of infections can indicate an early insulin deficiency, with a potential impact on the nutritional and clinical status of the patient, even before the appearance of overt diabetes. Larger controlled trials are necessary to verify if early insulin therapy is able to reduce the deterioration of nutritional status and lung function associated with the onset of IGT. (J. Endocrinol. Invest. 29: RC1-RC4, 2006)

SiOx materials and their interfaces with a-Si have been studied using synchrotron radiation photoemission. We have also analyzed the effect of hydrogen atom either embedded in the SiOx matrix or at the SiOx-Si interface. The effect of hydrogen and bulk SiOx is to decrease by 0.5 eV the distance between the top of the valence band and the Fermi level. An opposite effect has been observed at SiOxSi interface, where a hydrogen intralayer decreases the valence band discontinuity.

In (6) it was shown that a linear mapping > of one C*-algebra ft with identity into another which carries unitary operators into unitary operators is a C*-homomorphism followed by multiplication by the unitary operator >(/), i.e. (A)*, and p(A2) =p(A)2 for each A in a. We continue in that spirit here, with the unitary group replaced first by an arbitrary semigroup contained in the unit sphere, then by the semigroup of regular contractions. By a C*-algebra we shall mean a uniformly closed self-adjoint algebra of bounded linear operators on some Hilbert space, which contains the identity operator.